The Best Journalism Movies

Journalism is all about finding answers, meeting deadlines, getting the facts straight, and delivering these facts to the world. This thrill is what makes journalism movies such as hit in Hollywood.

Most of the movies we see have a basic and predictable formula. There is a bad person who does an evil thing; the good guy tries to find out what it is, and he defeats the evil person in the end. Journalists are not often the ones who are inside the car during a car chase, nor are they included in shoot outs. But what journalists do are also important. They are the ones who dig deep into the story and let people know about the bad things being done by individuals, corporations, and even countries. Journalists tell the stories of corrupt politicians, bad cops, illegal corporations, and other people doing wrong things. Given how exciting a journalist's job is, there is no wonder that there are plenty of journalism movies around. Here are some of the best there is.

The Insider

This is a favourite among journalism movies for most people. It is a dramatic retelling of an exclusive interview by 60 minutes with a whistle blower in the tobacco industry. But this was not aired until after a lot of the facts have already been revealed by the media. Al Pacino played the role of Lowell Bergman who is now in PBS's Frontline. He recently bagged a Pulitzer prize. The story talks about the events that can occur if corporate politics are used in newsroom decision making.

All the President's Men

This is never missing when the top journalism movies are ranked. It is always among the highest rates ones. The movie involves the investigation about the break-in at the headquarters of the Democratic Party in the Watergate building. It is basically one of the many journalism movies made about the Watergate scandal which resulted in President Richard Nixon's resignation. This is one of the greatest achievements of the journalism field. The people responsible for this feat were Bob Woodward along with Carl Bernstein. These two, immortalized by Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman, were reporters from the Washington Post. It was initially just a burglary story but it quickly became a historical event in the US history.

Shatter Glass

This is one of the best journalism movies I have seen. It is based on the true story of one Stephen Young who was the rising name in The New Republic. The dilemma here was that he was not actually doing journalism; he was simply making up his own stories complete with facts and quotes. This is a good movie about how the ethics of journalism works and how trust is a crucial aspect in this field.

Network

Network is one of the older journalism movies but it remains a favourite one. It is about a made-up TV network that is working hard to improve on the ratings. This is for the people who think that current state of TV news is deteriorating.

State of Play

This is a newly released movie about a six-part series that BBC created. Russell Crowe played a character that works for the Washington Globe newspaper. He was tasked to do the investigation when a mistress of the Congressman dies. The Congressman is a close friend of his. The film deals with how the newspapers in America are declining in quality.

Some other classic journalism movies you can watch are The Paper, The Pelican Brief, Good Night and Good Luck, Absence of Malice, and Broadcast News.