Top Ten Movies About Journalists

Whether they are portrayed as intrepid heroes or haunted anti-heroes, I have long thrilled to see journalists featured as cinematic characters, their craft of telling true stories as a story that is itself worth telling.

There's something peculiar about journalists on the big screen. For one thing, journalist-characters appear disproportionately on television and are typically distinguished by being charmingly stubborn. Think: The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Lou Grant, Growing Pains, Just Shoot Me, Suddenly Susan, Murphy Brown, Perfect Strangers, Adventures of Superman, Gilmore Girls, etcetera.

Journalists aren't as often featured in the cinema. When they are, it's often as secondary characters whose purpose in the film is to simply convey narrative information that affects the characters who actually matter---think of the screen shots of newspaper headlines, or of an anonymous TV news anchor reporting on, say, the Ghostbusters phenomenon taking over New York City.

But when the journalist is featured as an actual character, rather than a narrative tool, and when their work is given space and time for exploration ... ah, that is the thing. Folks like me get giddy with inspiration and moody with thoughts on how the nature of observing something changes the thing itself.

I have literally learned how to be a better journalist because of these movies. And so, it's with joy and total fandom that I name my Top Ten Movies About Journalists.

Side benefit of these films? It's damn funny to look at how the logistics of journalism have evolved over the decades (oh, mimeograph machine, nobody misses you). It's fodder for thinking about what in the tradition is worth carrying forward and what can be left behind. Particularly pertinent in these times as journalism evolves in a web-based age.

These Top Ten movies are ranked specifically on the portrayal of the journalist(s) in the film; not necessarily on whether I like one film overall more than another. Note that I use the term "journalist" to mean "media professional"--not necessarily an on-the-ground reporter. Note also that there are major films about journalists that I simply haven't seen. Network, Absence of Malice, The China Syndrome, The Killing Fields and Broadcast News are among those classic movies that sit temptingly on my Netflix queue. Perhaps a film festival is in order ...

See the Top Ten Movies About Journalists, with clips and trailers, after the jump ...

Image Credit: FilmLovers

Comments

[freeverse21]

this is a fun one--thanks.

once you see those other movies you mentioned, id be interested to see what gets bumped/moved around from your top ten. The Killing Fields is really amazing. And what about Anchorman? And remember Courteney Cox in Scream?

[Anna Clark]

I haven't seen Anchorman! Big gap on my part--I have a feeling I'll love it.

I DO actually remember Courteney Cox in Scream, as that crazed caricature of a local TV news reporter whose enthralled with the bloodbath. I thought it was kind of hilarious.

[Greg Rappleye]

The Year of Living Dangerously (1982)

Salvador (1986)

[Anna Clark]

Those two are hereby added to the Netflix queue ... thanks, Greg!