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.

Justice Hugo Black, in the Pentagon Papers ruling

 

One of the most talked-about movies of recent months is also one of the most strikingly relevant. With this year’s Oscar nominations due on Tuesday, you’d probably expect any project that involved Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep and Steven Spielberg – as well as Spotlight screenwriter Josh Singer – to be near the top of the list, and it undoubtedly will be.

But given the civic importance of the current moment, and the nature of the subject matter, it’s hard to imagine a better combination of entertainment and timeliness. Hyped-up it may have been; but it deserves it. The Post is simply an outstanding piece of work from a brilliant ensemble cast. This is a love letter both to journalism and a time when the idea of questioning authority and exposing government wrongdoing was more necessary than ever. The parallels to the present day are there for all to see.

As a drama, it is a remarkable true story that holds you captivated as skillfully as any thriller – even though you know how it ends.

Yet while the movie is about the eponymous Washington Post, it is another paper that is in so many ways the elephant in the room. In 1971, the New York Times published reports leaked by Pentagon whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg showing that the US government – across several administrations – had been aware the Vietnam war was a lost cause. When the Times was blocked by an injunction from publishing more than its initial revelations, the Post – at the time regarded primarily as a ‘local’ rather than the ‘national’ paper it is today – chases the story.

The movie’s parallel plotline concerns itself with the heart and soul – and very future – of the paper and how its owner Katharine Graham (an excellent portrayal by Streep) navigates the conflicting worlds of quality journalism and economic profitability; together with how her position as a Washington socialite affects her ability to speak truth to power. In a world of Trump and Weinstein, such a character becomes even more important.

There are a number of scenes where the enormity of what Graham is dealing with is dramatically made apparent. And there a couple of standout moments – you’ll know them when you see them – where audiences in the US have applauded in movie theatres.

She is perfectly complemented by Hanks as Ben Bradlee – the Post’s iconic editor – with his smoke-wreathed supporting cast of journalists committed to telling the story and beating the opposition, until they stand together at the Supreme Court in pursuit of a higher principle.

The confrontational relationship between the Nixon White House and the press corps – and the importance of the concept of freedom of the press – is echoed jarringly in the present day, with the current administration’s adversarial approach to how it is reported. Witness, for example, the President’s recent remarks about US libel laws.

As Spielberg told critic James Mottram: “American citizens are now “listening to the news with new ears.. They see the truth being labeled ‘fake’ if the truth doesn’t please those who are calling it out as fake. And, of course, when the news does please those in power, they call it the truth. If it doesn’t please them they call it fake or alternative facts. And I said ‘This is the time to tell the story when we can all become part of this national conversation.’”

And the importance of “investigative reporting” – particularly for the Post – has hardly been more relevant. You can draw a direct line from Ben Bagdikian in The Post, through Woodward and Bernstein in All The President’s Men to the present day work investigating Donald Trump carried out by David Fahrenthold.

Spielberg said in an interview with The Guardian that the urgency to make the movie “was because of this administration”, telling Jonathan Freedland that he read the script only 11 months previously and decided instantly that he “wanted to make this story of a Republican president at war with the press.” Freedland writes:

As it happens, The Post has a couple of Spielberg hallmarks. There is the familiar clash of idealism against pragmatism, the brave soul (or souls) ready to stand up for what’s right, against the vastly bigger forces pressing them to back down. In Bridge of Spies, Hanks was a lawyer pressured to cut corners who insisted, instead, on the primacy of the constitution. In The Post, Hanks is a journalist taking the same stand. (Both films join Lincoln as hymns to the virtues of the US constitution.) And – like those fleeing the shark, the dinosaurs, or the relentless truck in Spielberg’s debut movie, Duel – the good guys have to face down an implacable bully.

It’s been interesting to read The Post’s own coverage of itself as the star of the show. Michael Rosenwald writes about the “incredible drama” that the movie – which he says “predictably Hollywoodizes” the story – leaves out, “Like the night Chief Justice Warren Burger, holding a pistol, greeted two Post reporters at his front door in his bathrobe.”

And just as there is that direct line in the role of relentless reporting personified by The Post, there is an important connection between Ellsberg and high-profile modern day leakers like Chelsea Manning and, particularly, Edward Snowden. In a fascinating exchange between Snowden and Ellsberg for The Guardian last week, the two discuss whistleblowing and the timeliness of Spielberg’s movie. Ellsberg ultimately warns:

I believe this president will indict journalists, which has not happened yet in our country. We fought a revolution to avoid that. And we have not yet broken that first amendment, which protects press freedom, in our constitution. But this president is likely to do so. The climate has changed. And that was true under Obama, who prosecuted three times as many people for leaking as all previous presidents put together – he prosecuted nine. I think Trump will build on that precedent. He will go further and do what Obama did not do and directly indict journalists.

As well as inspiring nostalgia among those of us of a certain age with the lovingly-shot images of hot metal newspaper production, this is a brilliantly cathartic reminder of what old-fashioned journalism could be like and why it will always be required.

In Bradlee’s own words: “We have to be a check on power. If we don’t, who will?”

Also published on Medium.