In The Post, Hollywood reminds us what true news should look like
In a world of fake news and alternative facts, Steven Spielberg’s The Post shows us what true journalism should aspire to be, writes the University of Melbourne’s Denis Muller in this crossposting from The Conversation.
Thank God for the Americans! Strange words to be uttering at this time, and yet within the space of three years their mighty image-making machine, Hollywood, has produced two masterpieces sheeting home to us all the indispensability of a free press.
In an age of so-called “fake news” and “alternative facts”, these stand as a signal reminder of what true news looks like, and how it can – must – be produced in the teeth of opposition from vested interests and government power.
The first of these was Spotlight, the story of how The Boston Globe ripped the lid off a decades-long cover-up by the Boston Catholic diocese of child sexual abuse by its priests. It won the Oscar for best picture in 2016.
Oh, my god! You’re telling me all those endless stories about the Krapdashians, PRoxy and Samantha Xcruciating are not real news? What’s the world coming to!
Is there anything else “journalists” do now besides bemoan the “good old days”? Maybe the issue is that the really good ones still do their thing, and all the sub-par aspirants who write tripe for a living were never really hard news journalists to begin with. I can’t think of a more self-congratulatory bunch of people than those who identify their sense of selves as “journalists”