‘The Post’ on HBO: Why We Love Movies About Journalists at a Time When Journalists Are So Hated

TV and the movies love reporters. Not as much as they love doctors, lawyers, and police officers, granted. But the heroic reporter who uncovers a story of corruption and blasts it out for the world to see are at the center of some of our most cherished stories. All the Presidents Men telling the thrilling story of uncovering the corruption behind Nixon and Watergate. The Oscar-winning Spotlight doggedly pursing the Catholic Church sex-abuse scandal in Boston. Honestly, what is The Ten Commandments if not the story of Moses, the world’s first journalist, who climbed to the top of a mountain to get the scoop on the rules God had for mankind?

What’s funny is that popular acclaim for movies about journalists comes at a time when journalism — and its more general cousin The Media — has been one of the most hated professions in the world for a while. On the list of least popular things in America, the list goes, like Donald Trump > Congress > the media. It’s of course not surprising. In a country so politically polarized, each side spends a lot of energy demonizing each other … and the media. Nobody can agree on what should be done to help the country, but we can all agree that the apparatus that covers it is doing a terrible job. Is some of that enmity deserved? Certainly! But a lot of it is the result of political finger pointing.

But this of course isn’t new! It’s not like Spotlight took place at a time in American history when the press was this beloved institution. It was during the George W. Bush presidency. When “liberal media” was an epithet and the Times was turning a blind eye to falsified evidence that led us to war. Both All the President’s Men and The Post (the latter of which at times feels like a prequel to the former) took place during the Nixon administration, when hostility towards the press was at an all-time high.

One of the central themes of The Post — a compelling and brilliantly acted film that’s lowkey one of Spielberg’s best recent films — is that the publication of the Pentagon Papers, which editor Ben Bradlee (Tom Hanks) and publisher Kay Graham (Meryl Streep) fought and agonized over, marked a turning point in the relationship of the press with the Washington D.C. elected leaders they covered. Graham’s close friendship with men like Robert McNamara (an architect of the war in Vietnam, played with remarkable physical resemblance by Bruce Greenwood) and Bradlee’s boys-club chumminess with JFK are both called into question. In one of the film’s most oft-clipped scenes, Bradleey tells Graham that the Pentagon Papers must mean a reckoning for the blind trust they in the press often placed in their leaders:

“The way they lied,” Bradlee ultimately says, “those days have to be over.” The notion of an oppositional press didn’t begin with the Pentagon Papers or the Vietnam War, of course, but The Post is regardless a timely reminder of why the media tends to charge forward past poll numbers that place their popularity right around the level of a stubbed toe.

In the movies, though, the media isn’t some giant, faceless entity. It’s one dogged reporter. Or, more often (and more accurately), a team of dogged reporters, editors, fact-checkers, and that one 20-year-old who gets barked at most of the time and then shows up with a box full of deli sandwiches. (Can we some day make a movie about the kid with the box of deli sandwiches? Or, like, just the deli sandwiches?)

The Post is an all-timer as far as team-of-journalist movies go. All the way down that masthead, it’s a murderer’s row of talent, from Streep to Hanks to Bob Odenkirk, Carrie Coon, and David Cross working on the story, to Jesse Plemons and Zach Woods as the pipsqueak lawyers trying to keep the paper from getting sued into oblivion, to Tracy Letts and Bradley Whitford doing battle as Graham’s advisors, down to Sarah Paulson as the pillar of strength and support and also snacks. That’s the advantage of being a Steven Spielberg movie: you put out the call, and people will show up.

Historically, films about heroic journalists haven’t done much to bolster the popularity of the media as a whole. America still doesn’t seem to want to bridge the gap between the individual acts of great journalism with why the institution of journalism is good (or, if you’re Trump, even necessary), so if that was what Spielberg was shooting for, it’s not good news. He’ll have to settle for making a smart thriller with stakes, a once-in-a-lifetime cast, and Meryl Streep wearing the greatest caftan in cinema history. BEHOLD IT AND MARVEL:

Where to stream The Post