The Post – Extra Credit
I really hoped that you enjoyed the movie, The Post, this weekend. I think we got to see some pretty smart acting, decent writing, and a slice of 1971 politics and newspapers. As we saw, the Washington Post was trying to become more than just a regular, “local paper” as they called it, when Katherine Graham, the publisher played by Meryl Streep, looked to sell stock in the company and raise $3 million to hire 25 new reporters. At the same time that this stock offering is getting ready to go, the New York Times began publishing the opening series of the Pentagon Papers, a 7,000 page report detailing American involvement in Vietnam from 1945 – 1967. Ben Bradlee, the editor in chief for the Post, played by Tom Hanks, wants those papers too, since he sees the Times as his paper’s biggest competitor. 
Please answer the following questions:
- A lot of the movie tries to be faithful to the 1971 time frame – pay phones, newspapers, teletype, black and white TVs, the clothes, etc. How has life changed since then, and is this movie glorifying an age (the age of crusading newspapers) that may never come back? Why or why not?
- Examine how the film portrayed Katherine Graham as the lone woman in a sea of powerful male players – lawyers, bankers, etc. Provide specifics from the film as it shows her growth from sociali
te publisher to powerful player. - The film’s reviews – many have made the case that this film is timely and completely relevant to today. Freedom of the press is something that must be fought for, again and again. You could see that Nixon had tried to muzzle the press with the injunctions against the Times and the Post, but the Supreme Court had rescued the press w/ its 6-3 decision in U.S. v. New York Times. With what’s going on w/ the media (“fake news”) and other issues, how do you see this film as relevant and timely? And why is freedom of the press so important?
- The film shows both Graham and Bradlee conflicted over pushing former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara (who had worked for Presidents Kennedy and Johnson) to divulge or hand over the Vietnam War study that the New York Times had broken first. Bradlee had regular weekly dinners at the Kennedy White House and Graham was good friends w/ McNamara. Do you think that these kinds of cozy ties between journalists, editors, and publishers with the actual politicians compromise the integrity of publishing damaging information about those politicians? Why or why not?
Life has changed significantly since 1971. One of the biggest differences is of course the computer. The computer was not widely introduced into offices until the early 1980’s, and the computer makes life today very different from then. If they had had computers and the internet, there would have been no boxes of documents on planes, or people running across the city to get information before the newspaper was printed. They would have simply pressed send an email. The movie is glorifying an age of newspapers that may never come back because it portrays the newspaper as the vessel which brings information and truth to the American people. However, glorifying this age is perhaps not a bad thing, as many people grew up with the newspaper being there every morning to let them know what was happening in the world, and it is a little sad that this centuries old tradition is dying out.
One thing that shows Katharine Graham’s growth from socialite publisher to powerful player is how she regards the relationships that she had with former presidents and other political figures. At the beginning of the movie she is more inclined to defend them while near the end she realizes that they were not the most honest people and sees that the truth and the press is more important than her friendships with these figures. Another thing that shows this change is how she shows motivation and determination toward the paper. At the beginning, she is concerned with her social life and parties while later in the film, she stops in the middle of a speech because she gets a call about the newspaper. This shows her growing dedication to her paper.
I see this film as very relevant today due to the “fake news” ideas that have become popular. They were living in a time when the public did not know what was truly going on, while we are living in a time where we do know what is going on, but many people choose not to believe it because it does not support their politics, ideologies, or way of life. The film emphasizes the importance of the truth. Freedom of the press is very important because if the people do not know what is really happening, the people will not know how to properly act. The press must be free and separate from the government because while our democracy is overall pretty good, from the constitutional convention to today, there have been corrupt individuals in places of power.
I think that journalists being too friendly with politicians certainly compromises the integrity of the information published about those figures. No person is going to be as hard on their friends as they will people who they do not know. For one, it is harder to believe that your friend has actually done something bad. Additionally, most people would want to avoid ruining their relationship with that person, or being thought of badly by that person. I think that there are many parallels to this sort of behavior today, especially with some of the television news anchors.
1) Life in 2021 is what people probably imagined the future would be like, in terms of how we get our news. Gone are the days where people stake out a story, sit on the phone waiting for a call back and type on a typewriter their story on carbon copy paper. The most glaring difference now vs then is that we as a society get our news in real time as events are happening. The phenomenon of smartphones and their camera/ video capabilities allows reporters today to record and film the event. Historically, I believe people went to the news outlets be that paper or tv for their information. Reporters and their stories were where people got the information and relied on the truthfulness of the information. This is a far cry from the last 4 years where reporters were called liars, the news was deemed fake and Americans questioned the truthfulness of what was being reported. I believe that this movie glorified an era when there was a mystique that existed in the newsroom. People looked up to reporters and journalists. Today anyone with a phone can post the news. We are too far gone in our world of instant gratification to ever return to that era of news making.
2)Katherine Graham became one of the world’s most powerful women. She was born to privilege and married and raised her children in DC where she was really a homemaker. The story goes that her brothers did not want to take over The Post and her husband Phil took over as the paper’s publisher following Phils death, Katherine was elected president of the washington post. This was a unique role for a woman to be in during this time period. The silver lining for Graham is that she has worked for her fathers company in various positions. One example of katherines “growth was her hiring of Ben Bradlee. This is depicted in the movie and would be pivotal in making the washington post one of the country’s best newspapers. Possibly the biggest show of professional leadership came a couple of years after, Graham was the Post publisher. It was during this time that America was involved in a controversial war with Vietnam. The NYT had published papers known as the Pentagon Papers which exposed US involvement with vietnam. The NYT was barred by court order from publishing any more of these papers. In the movie we see her character struggle with Ben Bradlee’s character about the morality and legality of publishing these papers and weighing all of this against the press being viewed as the fourth estate, the eyes and ears of the american people. This decision by Graham could have caused him the loss of not just talented people but the Washington post itself. The movie goes on to show Graham’s victory where the Supreme Court ruled that the papers didn’t put the government at risk and furthermore supported freedom of the press.
3)Freedom of the press is so important because first and form first we live in a democracy. The case was the landmark decision in which freedom of speech was pitted against national security interest. What the case ruled there was no security risk and that the former president, LBJ had in fact lied to the american public. The relevance today is that there is a duty upon the press to report what is true and accurate even if what they are reporting on is ugly and unpalatable. I believe that most people could pursue a career in journalism due so with the intent of providing information in an unbiased matter. Even those reported “fake news” as well as their counterparts are all subject to the same scrutiny that first amendment protection is vital to our american society.
4)These relationships were and our how stories get broken, the public gets informed and relationships like these are critical to those in the news business. The obvious problem is where behavior and decision making doesn’t line up with popular opinion or the decision is unfavorable in the mind of the reporter who has the relationship. I think back in the day reporters could perhaps slant a story in order to stay in favor. The struggle we see was when the act of keeping something quiet was so serious that the public should know but that comes at the risk of losing their relationship. We saw with Trump that Fox news litteralty created him and his platform for 4 years. The entire broadcast was devoted to Trump and his agenda. So basically, I believe, that this area is so murky. The lines between appropriate and not are blurd and sometimes morality and what is right trumps the relationship.
1.In the movie, newspapers were the only way for the public to find out the current events, which is why newspaper companies were very important and made such an impact in society. This has changed greatly today because technology has evolved and it is much easier to find out current events online. Payphones were also very common during that time because phones were new. Nowadays, most people have their own portable phones to call people. This has been made possible through the development of phone towers and wireless technology. Also, typewriters were used a lot and there were even people who specifically had the job of typing newspapers. This is not something that has been continued today, because we now have keyboards which can type much faster and more efficiently. This movie is glorifying the age of crusading newspapers because it is showing the positive impact that the newspaper companies were able to make by providing the public with true information. They sacrificed a lot for the public wellbeing, but now with news being shared all over the internet, it is hard to know what is true information and what is false information.
2.This film portrayed Katherine Graham as the lone woman in a sea of powerful male players because at the beginning of the movie, she has low confidence in herself to make the right decisions for the company, and constantly looks to the people around her for guidance. A major example from the film that shows her growth from socialite publisher to powerful player, was the situation The Washington Post faced on whether they wanted to post confidential papers on the United States involvement in the Vietnam war. The New York Times was already involved in a federal court case for the same reason and the President was threatening to destroy them. They risked facing a federal court case, jail time, and the future of the entire company by publishing the papers, but Katherine went against all warning advice and went through with her decision to defend the first Amendment and spread the truth to the public. After her daring decision, the Supreme court ruled that the publishing of the confidential papers was protected under the first amendment. This daring decision prompted many other companies to follow suit and publish more exposes, and it put the Washington Post on the map.
3.This film is relevant and timely to what is going on right now with the media, because it reminds the country of our freedoms in the first amendment. There has been a threat to the freedom of speech, with some members of the government claiming it to be “fake news”, but it just reveals more and more why we need protections put in place. The freedom of the press is so important because it keeps the government accountable for its decisions and limits the danger of a dictatorship. The public can stay informed, and we won’t be so quick to blindly follow without making our own opinions on what happens in the U.S.
4. I definitely believe that the cozy ties between journalists, editors, and publishers with actual politicians can compromise the integrity of publishing damaging information about those politicians because they might feel an obligation to protect them or portray them in a better light. If they are good friends, journalists will feel morally compromised to destroy someone they care about. I think it is very important to have a journalist with no connection to a politician to write an expose on them, so there is no reason for a biased story.
American life has changed in many ways since the 1970s and is very different now. The movie showed a time where technology was very different, and most importantly, there was no computer. Today in the age of computers, news would spread very differently through online sources. The age of competing newspapers would not happen today because of all the advances in technology. With news now on the internet, it is much easier for people in the public to see news from many different sources and learn the truth. This movie is glorifying an age where people had to learn the news from the newspaper they got in real life, as what the newspaper was putting out created the whole conflict of the movie.
Katherine Graham shows what it was like to be a woman working in that position during that time period. The movie showed her being uncertain and anxious about her job, but it also showed her as a strong woman who overcame that to run her company. The movie also made sure to show how male people she worked with doubted her or wanted her to fail. One of her advisors even said “people are concerned about a woman being in charge of the paper, that she doesn’t have the resolve to make the tough choices.” The movie then showed her overcome her doubters and stay firm in her choice to want to publish the papers even if there were risks.
The ideas behind this film are still relevant today. Even if news is given to the people through the internet now, people with power still try to control what goes in the news and what the public knows. This can be done for many different reasons, and even though the internet makes it so people have more sources to learn the truth, they also have more sources they see that might be fake news. It is much easier for anyone to put out news now with the internet, which leads fake news to being a problem. However, in both the 1970s and today, freedom of press and the first amendment are very important and a right to the American people. The movie showed an example of this coming into play in the 1970s, and fake news and other issues show it being relevant today.
These ties and relationships definitely had an influence on the integrity of the newspaper. Publishers with close relationships with politicians will want to say damaging things about the politicians less because they are close. Not only that, but politicians might bribe these publishers to say what they want. This has likely happened many times in American history and has influenced the news that the public gets to see.