Journalists in Movies and TV Show

Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black -"[T]he injunction against The New York Times should have been vacated without oral argument when the cases were first presented ... . [E]very moment's continuance of the injunctions ... amounts to a flagrant, indefensible, and continuing violation of the First Amendment. ... When the Constitution was adopted, many people strongly opposed it because the document contained no Bill of Rights ... . In response to an overwhelming public clamor, James Madison offered a series of amendments to satisfy citizens that these great liberties would remain safe ... . In the First Amendment the Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to fulfill its essential role in our democracy. The press was to serve the governed, not the governors. The Government's power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the Government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell. ... [W]e are asked to hold that ... the Executive Branch, the Congress, and the Judiciary can make laws ... abridging freedom of the press in the name of 'national security.' ... To find that the President has 'inherent power' to halt the publication of news ... would wipe out the First Amendment and destroy the fundamental liberty and security of the very people the Government hopes to make 'secure.' ... The word 'security' is a broad, vague generality whose contours should not be invoked to abrogate the fundamental law embodied in the First Amendment. The guarding of military and diplomatic secrets at the expense of informed representative government provides no real security ... . The Framers of the First Amendment, fully aware of both the need to defend a new nation and the abuses of the English and Colonial governments, sought to give this new society strength and security by providing that freedom of speech, press, religion, and assembly should not be abridged.



Heroes and Scoundrels page

Howard Good, "Journalism Ethics Goes to the Movies." But if movies are a source of ethics, it’s not because they express a fully worked-out moral philosophy. Journalism movies tend to be much better at starting a dialog about ethics than finishing it. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. As Leigh Hafrey, who uses novels and movies to teach business ethics at MIT, said, ‘. . . we can fill in the gaps in our knowledge of the events, our vision of the characters, our assessment of the action, with details drawn from our experience and inclinations.’ In the process – and here’s where student benefit greatly – we gain practice and confidence in answering ethical questions for ourselves.



The Image of the Journalist in Popular Culture

The mission of the Image of the Journalist in Popular Culture, a project of The Norman Lear Center at USC Annenberg, is to investigate and analyze, through research and publication, the conflicting images of the journalist in film, television, radio, fiction, commercials, cartoons, comic books, video games, music, art and other aspects of popular culture demonstrating their impact on the American public's perception of newsgatherers.

British Film Institute Great Journalism Movies

While killer features such as Terry Gilliam’s adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998) and George Clooney’s Good Night, and Good Luck (2005) didn’t quite make the top 10, it was also tough to leave out the hilarious San Diego newsmen and women in Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004). In films that may not focus purely on journalism but had memorable journalist characters, Margot Kidder is the definitive Lois Lane in her four Superman films and the first two Die Hards would be poorer without William Atherton’s slimy Richard Thornburg.

Society of Professional Journalists A-Z List


The Performance (Citizen Kane)



The Review