Journalism in the Movies

Journalism in the Movies
Author: Matthew C. Ehrlich
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Total Pages: 244
Release: 2004-06-23
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780252029349

Matthew C. Ehrlich's Journalism in the Movies is the story of Hollywood's depiction of American journalism from the start of the sound era to the present. Ehrlich argues that films have relentlessly played off the image of the journalist as someone who sees through lies and hypocrisy, sticks up for the little guy, and serves democracy. Focusing on films about key figures and events in journalism, including Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, All the President's Men, and The Insider, Journalism in the Movies presents a unique opportunity to reflect on how movies relate not only to journalism but also American life and democracy.

Girl Reporter

Girl Reporter
Author: Howard Good
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
Total Pages: 228
Release: 1998
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 9780810833982

Good examines Hollywood's infatuation with the girl reporter, challenging the prevailing critical notion that the girl reporter has been one of the few women on screen portrayed as equal to any man.

Journalism Ethics Goes to the Movies

Journalism Ethics Goes to the Movies
Author: Howard Good
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2008
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780742554283

How far should a reporter go for a story? What's the role of the press at the scene of an emergency, or a murder? Why has journalism suddenly become so susceptible to plagiarism? Here's a book that poses these and other urgent questions--and offers candid answers. At a time when professionals and the public alike worry that journalism has lost its way, Journalism Ethics Goes to the Movies is available to provide much-needed, accessible guidance. Its twelve chapters, written by some of the nation's leading journalism scholars, explore issues that should concern anyone who aspires to a career in journalism, who works in the field, or who relies on news for daily information. Best of all, as the title suggests the contributors conduct their dynamic and engaging investigations at the movies, where sportswriters, war correspondents, investigative reporters, crime reporters, spin doctors, TV anchors, and harried city editors tackle these pressing issues. Journalism Ethics Goes to the Movies isn't your typical textbook. Using popular movies from Wag the Dog to Good Night, and Good Luck to illustrate the kind of ethical dilemmas journalists encounter on the job, this student-friendly book is sure to spark interest and stimulate thinking.

Encyclopedia of Journalists on Film

Encyclopedia of Journalists on Film
Author: Richard R. Ness
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 533
Release: 2020-01-15
Genre: Reference
ISBN: 1538103605

From All the President’s Men to Zodiac, some of the most compelling films of the last century have featured depictions of journalists in action. While print journalism struggles to survive, the emergence of news from social media outlets continues to expand, allowing the world to be kept informed on a second-bysecond basis. Despite attacks on journalists—both verbal and physical—a free press remains a crucial bastion for civilized society. And just as the daily news reflects the current state of affairs, films about journalism represent how reporting has evolved over the last few centuries. In Encyclopedia of Journalists on Film, Richard R. Ness provides a comprehensive examination of the fourth estate in cinema—from newspaper reporters to today’s cyber journalists. In this volume, Ness provides in-depth descriptions and analyses of more than five hundred significant films, from the silent era to the present, including international productions and made-for-television movies. The entries focus on the image of the press on screen and ethical issues or concerns raised about the practices of the profession. Collectively, the entries demonstrate that there is a recognizable genre of journalism films with definable plot patterns and iconography. Each entry features: Major credits including directors, writers, and producers List of characters and the actors who portray them Running time Plot synopsis Analysis of the role of journalism Many of the entries feature critical reviews as well as cogent selections of dialogue. Films discussed here include comedies such as His Girl Friday (1940), nail-biting thrillers like Foreign Correspondent (1940) and The Parallax View (1974), social commentaries like Network (1976) and The China Syndrome (1979), dramas like Citizen Kane (1941) and The Post (2017), and of course, Academy Award winners All the President’s Men (1976) and Spotlight (2015). A definitive study of a film genre, Encyclopedia of Journalists on Film will be of interest to film scholars, researchers, journalists, and students of popular culture.

Heroes and Scoundrels

Heroes and Scoundrels
Author: Matthew C. Ehrlich
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2015-03-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0252096991

Whether it's the rule-defying lifer, the sharp-witted female newshound, or the irascible editor in chief, journalists in popular culture have shaped our views of the press and its role in a free society since mass culture arose over a century ago. Drawing on portrayals of journalists in television, film, radio, novels, comics, plays, and other media, Matthew C. Ehrlich and Joe Saltzman survey how popular media has depicted the profession across time. Their creative use of media artifacts provides thought-provoking forays into such fundamental issues as how pop culture mythologizes and demythologizes key events in journalism history and how it confronts issues of race, gender, and sexual orientation on the job. From Network to The Wire, from Lois Lane to Mikael Blomkvist, Heroes and Scoundrels reveals how portrayals of journalism's relationship to history, professionalism, power, image, and war influence our thinking and the very practice of democracy.

How to Read a Film

How to Read a Film
Author: James Monaco
Publisher: New York : Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 568
Release: 1981
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN:

Now thoroughly revised and updated, the book discusses recent breakthroughs in media technology, including such exciting advances as video discs and cassettes, two-way television, satellites, cable and much more.

High Concept

High Concept
Author: Justin Wyatt
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Total Pages: 250
Release: 2010-07-22
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 029278659X

Steven Spielberg once said, "I like ideas, especially movie ideas, that you can hold in your hand. If a person can tell me the idea in twenty-five words or less, it's going to make a pretty good movie." Spielberg's comment embodies the essence of the high concept film, which can be condensed into one simple sentence that inspires marketing campaigns, lures audiences, and separates success from failure at the box office. This pioneering study explores the development and dominance of the high concept movie within commercial Hollywood filmmaking since the late 1970s. Justin Wyatt describes how box office success, always important in Hollywood, became paramount in the era in which major film studios passed into the hands of media conglomerates concerned more with the economics of filmmaking than aesthetics. In particular, he shows how high concept films became fully integrated with their marketing, so that a single phrase ("Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water...") could sell the movie to studio executives and provide copy for massive advertising campaigns; a single image or a theme song could instantly remind potential audience members of the movie, and tie-in merchandise could generate millions of dollars in additional income.

Journalism in the Movies

Journalism in the Movies
Author: Matthew C. Ehrlich
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Total Pages: 210
Release: 2010-10-01
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0252091086

From cynical portrayals like The Front Page to the nuanced complexity of All the President’s Men, and The Insider, movies about journalists and journalism have been a go-to film genre since the medium's early days. Often depicted as disrespectful, hard-drinking, scandal-mongering misfits, journalists also receive Hollywood's frequent respect as an essential part of American life. Matthew C. Ehrlich tells the story of how Hollywood has treated American journalism. Ehrlich argues that films have relentlessly played off the image of the journalist as someone who sees through lies and hypocrisy, sticks up for the little guy, and serves democracy. He also delves into the genre's always-evolving myths and dualisms to analyze the tensions—hero and oppressor, objectivity and subjectivity, truth and falsehood—that allow journalism films to examine conflicts in society at large.

The Journalist and the Murderer

The Journalist and the Murderer
Author: Janet Malcolm
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 177
Release: 2011-06-22
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0307797872

A seminal work and examination of the psychopathology of journalism. Using a strange and unprecedented lawsuit by a convicted murder againt the journalist who wrote a book about his crime, Malcolm delves into the always uneasy, sometimes tragic relationship that exists between journalist and subject. Featuring the real-life lawsuit of Jeffrey MacDonald, a convicted murderer, against Joe McGinniss, the author of Fatal Vision. In Malcolm's view, neither journalist nor subject can avoid the moral impasse that is built into the journalistic situation. When the text first appeared, as a two-part article in The New Yorker, its thesis seemed so radical and its irony so pitiless that journalists across the country reacted as if stung. Her book is a work of journalism as well as an essay on journalism: it at once exemplifies and dissects its subject. In her interviews with the leading and subsidiary characters in the MacDonald-McGinniss case -- the principals, their lawyers, the members of the jury, and the various persons who testified as expert witnesses at the trial -- Malcolm is always aware of herself as a player in a game that, as she points out, she cannot lose. The journalist-subject encounter has always troubled journalists, but never before has it been looked at so unflinchingly and so ruefully. Hovering over the narrative -- and always on the edge of the reader's consciousness -- is the MacDonald murder case itself, which imparts to the book an atmosphere of anxiety and uncanniness. The Journalist and the Murderer derives from and reflects many of the dominant intellectual concerns of our time, and it will have a particular appeal for those who cherish the odd, the off-center, and the unsolved.

James Agee: Film Writing and Selected Journalism (LOA #160)

James Agee: Film Writing and Selected Journalism (LOA #160)
Author: James Agee
Publisher: Library of America James Agee
Total Pages: 780
Release: 2005-09-22
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN:

[The author] had a passion for art in all its aspects, but it was the new art of the movies that was his greatest inspiration as a critic. [This book] has long been recognized as the single most influential American book about movies. Witty, probing, lacerating his moral criticisms, eloquent in his admiration of filmmakers from Charlie Chaplin to John Huston, [the author] is a critic who engages the reader no matter what subject he is writing about.-Back cover.