Truth: A Terrible, Terrible Movie About Journalism

[mystery-ak]

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/10/truth-a-terrible-terrible-movie-about-journalism/412036/

Truth: A Terrible, Terrible Movie About Journalism

James Vanderbilt's directorial debut gets almost everything wrong about its putative subject.

Late in the movie Truth, the former 60 Minutes Wednesday producer Mary Mapes (played by Cate Blanchett) offers a Big Speech about the state of journalism, decrying the fact that all that people want to read or watch on television these days is “conspiracy theories.” The irony apparently lost on her (or at least on the writer-director James Vanderbilt) is that she makes this charge while she herself is in the midst of presenting a conspiracy theory.

The film concerns 60 Minutes’s 2004 pre-election reporting on George W. Bush’s service in the Texas Air National Guard. Two documents central to the news program’s contention that Bush was granted preferential treatment were subsequently revealed to be almost certainly fraudulent. This error ultimately resulted in the retirement from CBS of Dan Rather (played here with likable understatement by Robert Redford) and the firing of Mapes and others. It’s in the midst of her “conspiracy theory” speech that Mapes suggests that the fraudulent documents were a cunning ploy by pro-Bush forces—immaculately sophisticated in some respects, but childishly certain to be recognized as fake in others—intended to discredit further reporting into his military record. Could this be true? Stranger things have happened, I suppose. But it’s pretty much the definition of a conspiracy theory.

continued

[truth_seeker]

Journalism is "if it bleeds it leads," and has become a daily search for circuses to entertain the already over-entertained.

I remember as a kid moving (back) to California and going from two to seven channels. I rember getting color TV during high school.

I remember copy machines, mainframe computers, handheld electronic calculators, fax machines, personal computers, mobile phones, internet, wireless, etc.

Not to mention 330 channels, in every language of mankind, and forums to scream every point of view. And now many streaming options, which allow me to essentially stand inside a giant DVD store and pick a content without commercials.

To win the competition for our time, "news" needs to have something extra, hence the 24/7 hype about the world's fastest, biggest, most dangerous, etc. etc.

The Donald understands this better than most politicians. Conservatism just isn't entertaining enough or fun enough, so The Donald stole them.