FF2 Chats with Journalism Professor Chris Hanson about ‘Shattered Glass’
(First Posted in 2003)
Jan Huttner |
||||
“I grew up in one of those classic Democratic homes where what Woodward & Bernstein did was seen as entirely heroic. They saved the country.” (See NYT article by David Carr – 10/19/03) |
||||
Rich Miller Chris Hanson What Woodward & Bernstein actually did was keep the story alive until it drew the interest of serious people in government intent of pushing the official investigation — people like Judge John Sirica and Senator Sam Ervin. They really drove what eventually happened to Nixon. The final scenes of the film, however, seem to imply that “Woodstein” single handedly brought down the President. Well, they did play a part, but they had help from of a lot of courageous whistle-blowers inside the government. It was a joint venture between two reporters, some gutsy civil servants, and Sirica and the Senators. Rich Miller Chris Hanson While I can’t say that ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN was the main cause of my going into journalism, I was very taken with the film when I saw it, and also with the book (published prior to the film). And ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN definitely led to other films with the same message like THE CHINA SYNDROME and THE INSIDER. In THE INSIDER, the reporter has to go around his own corporation in order to get his story out. So it tells us something about what has happened to the news business since Watergate. A news organization is swallowed up by some company which has been swallowed up by another company. Before you know it, the news division is just part of a conglomerate, and the news values get lost. Rich Miller Chris Hanson Rich Miller Chris Hanson I also liked THE INSIDER as a drama because it deals with the way journalists sometimes have to push potential whistle-blowers in order to get information. Rich Miller Chris Hanson One of the things that you need to do as a reporter is gage the level of naiveté and vulnerability of your source, and take that into account. If you don’t do that, if you don’t do something to help protect a vulnerable person from himself, you can end up doing pretty awful things. So you have to balance the importance of the information with alternative ways to disclose it (not revealing the person’s name or whatever). It’s messy. ABSENCE OF MALICE shows an example of a reporter really blowing it. Parallels to other professions? That’s a very complicated question. I once talked to this guy in British Intelligence, and he thought the jobs were very similar, despite all of the glamour attached to movie spies and so on. There’s a lot of drudgery to the routine, going back to sources over and over and piecing information together. But one thing that intelligence agencies tend to do far more than journalists is corrupt people and then blackmail them. First the agent gets a person to cooperate for some idealistic reason, next he induces him to take money. Then he’s got him by the balls. Of course, there’s a little edging toward blackmail in ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN. One married source doesn’t want anyone to know that he met a woman in her apartment. Woodward hints he might disclose this unless the source cooperates. Jan Huttner Rich Miller Chris Hanson From what I’ve read, the real Guerin was one of them. According to Emily O’Reilly’s book, she reported in the first person, & treated the news as a personal crusade with herself as the hero. Like Geraldo. If that weren’t troubling enough, she let criminals manipulate her, believing and printing lies that evidently resulted in a mob bloodbath, as the film points out. Guerin was supremely talented and brave but she needed a strong editor with serious news values to guide her very carefully. However, it seems her paper wanted sensationalism
|
||||
Chris Hanson I was somewhat disappointed by SHATTERED GLASS, which let THE NEW REPUBLIC off the hook too easily. The other day I pulled out copies of TNR and just looked at a number of Stephen Glass’s real articles. They make preposterous claims about organizations that never existed. The quotations from sources are just too perfect. If it were satire it would be hilarious, but it’s not. How could the editors believe this stuff? Jan Huttner Chris Hanson Rich Miller Chris Hanson Jan Huttner Chris Hanson Jan Huttner Chris Hanson Rich Miller Chris Hanson Many people hate the media, so filmmakers use media stereotypes to build villains. That’s fine up to a point but I think it’s probably damaging to the whole institution of the press. The media deserve criticism. There are a lot of very exploitive people out there. But the demonization goes too far. Jan Huttner Chris Hanson Rich Miller Chris Hanson Jan Huttner Chris Hanson
FILMS FOR TWO® ADDENDUM: Chris Hanson at a recent journalism conference sponsored by Indiana University. Christopher Hanson is an Assistant Professor at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland. Prior to receiving his Ph.D. in Mass Communication from the University of North Carolina, Chris spent 20 years as a print reporter. Among his numerous “routine” assignments, he’s been as close to home as the presidential races in 1988, 1992, and 1996, and as far a field as the civil war in Rwanda. He also served as a combat correspondent during the first Gulf War. In addition to his Ph.D., Chris also received an M.A. from Wadham College at Oxford University, and a B.A. in History from Reed College in Portland, Oregon. In 1990, he was the Seattle Post-Intelligencer nominee for the Pulitzer Prize for his series on white collar corruption at Boeing. Chris currently teaches courses in Journalism Ethics and Advanced Reporting: Beats and Investigation at U of Md. He’s a Contributing Editor for the COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REVIEW, and a regular contributor to various NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO programs. We first contacted Chris after hearing him interviewed on the NPR program ON THE MEDIA on a topic of great mutual interest: media coverage of women in the military. Since this feature barely scratches the surface of Chris’s expertise, we sincerely hope he will join us for another chat in the near future! © Jan Lisa Huttner & Richard Bayard Miller (11/05/03) – Special for Films for Two. Reposted with permission. |