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The Paper
Henry Hackett ..... Michael Keaton
Bernie White ......
Robert Duvall
Alicia Clark ......
Glenn Close
Martha Hackett .... Marisa Tomei
McDougal .......... Randy Quaid
Graham Keighley ... Jason Robards
Marion Sandusky ... Jason Alexander
Paul Bladden ...... Spalding Gray
Universal presents a film directed by
Ron Howard. Produced by Brian Grazer and Frederick Zollo.
Written by David Koepp and Stephen Koepp. Photographed by John Seale.
Edited by Daniel Hanley and Michael Hill. Music
by Randy Newman. Running time: 112 minutes.
Classified: R (for strong language).
"The Paper" is not quite
as fast paced as the preview suggested, nor as fast and funny as "The
Front Page," the classic newspaper drama of the 1930s. Yet it is
well-performed, written and directed, and it gives us a good sense of the
hectic rush of newspaper life. Journalist reviewers have given it high
marks for realism. It builds up very logically the problems of editors
and reporters who have seven or eight things to do at once, and
who have to do them an hour ago.
That deadline lies behind the moral
issue central to the plot: if a newspaper intends to run a story, but has
reasons to think that story is wrong, are they obligated to change it,
even when they are past deadline?
Two visiting WASP businessmen are
murdered in a black neighborhood of New York. Racial epithets are painted
on the car. The police arrest two black youths, creating fears of race
riots. The New York Sun, scooped
on the story by other papers, has reason to suspect that the arrest was
illegitimate. But their publication deadline comes and goes, and they
still do not have sufficient confirmation of their own theory, which is
that the businessmen were killed by mob hit men, who made it look like
a racial incident.
Henry Hackett,
an assistant editor of the paper, played by Michael Keaton,
is trying to do the right thing. He has never knowingly printed a false
story. But the editorial board has decided to slant the arrest of the
youths with the caption "Gotcha!"
under a giant front-page picture of them, in the best tabloid tradition of
sensationalism. But what if the boys didn't do it? "No problem,"
says Alicia Clark (Glenn Close), the "bean counter" in charge of
trimming costs and personnel, who has saved the paper's existence through
various financial crises. "We taint them today, make them look good
tomorrow." But that's not enough for Hackett.
He wants to get out the truth tonight.
Of course, Hackett
has other things on his mind. His wife Martha (Marisa Tomei)
is ready to deliver a child, he has an opportunity to take a new job at
the prestigious New York Sentinel (read Times), he has a dinner engagement
with his wife and parents that night supposedly to celebrate that
new opportunity. Martha, formerly a reporter, longs to get back
into the action, and she fears that motherhood will be the end of
her career. One of the paper's columnists, McDougal
(Randy Quaid), is sleeping in Henry's office
with a gun in his belt, because Marion Sandusky,
a city official and subject of his critical columns,
is "plotting" against him. Alicia is angling for more money
for herself, while resisting on economic grounds (and up to a
point) Henry's attempts to maintain the paper's integrity. Editor
Bernie White (Robert Duvall) has an enlarged
prostate, two ex-wives, and a daughter who won't talk to him. In other
words, we have here enough plot for at least five films, and the criss-crossings of the story lines make great theater.
At the climax, Henry physically battles Alicia to "stop the
presses;" Martha gives birth among serious complications; Sandusky and McDougal
wrestle for a gun, which goes off and shoots another character.
There is no reference to God in the
film, but that is only realistic, granted the present state of the
journalistic profession. Still, as usual, there are matters here
demanding theological analysis and evaluation. Chief of these is the
moral dilemma posed by the paper's account of the killing: what if
the boys are innocent?
In the world of this paper, points
of view about the incident are expressed in terms of possible headlines.
Do they run "Gotcha!", meaning that
the cops succeeded in apprehending the real perpetrators? Or do they run
"They Didn't Do It!" as Hackett hopes
to do? Or do they relegate the story to page two and lead with a
"minor derailment" of the subway? Alicia wants to run "Gotcha!" tonight and tomorrow to revise it, if
necessary, to "They Didn't Do It!" Henry is desperate to get
enough confirmation to run "They Didn't Do It!" tonight.
The movie applauds Henry's heroic
measures in trying to get the story right the first time. At the end, even
Alicia is on his side. I guess I applauded too. But what if getting
the information required eight hours past the deadline, rather than three?
I'm inclined to think that there is a point-- some deadline after the
deadline-- at which you have to run what you've got. After all, Hackett didn't know that the men were innocent until fairly late at night. Why couldn't he
have run what he had, and then amplified or corrected it the next day?
You can only run what you know to be true, right?
The reason why, according to the
film, it was urgent to correct the story today was the nature of the agreed-upon headline, namely, "Gotcha!" That headline presumed the guilt
of the youths. I'm a bit surprised that such a headline would even be
considered, since journalists today are terribly scrupulous to say
"alleged" this and that, even in cases of obvious guilt,
to protect the legal presumption of innocence. I am not
altogether sympathetic with that scrupulosity: why can't journalists
express their opinions on matters of guilt as they do on every
other significant issue? But surely it is inconsistent to maintain those
scruples and then to formulate a headline like "Gotcha!"
The obvious solution, then, to that
moral dilemma, would have been to drop that headline, to use a less
prejudicial expression concerning the arrest. They could then have run
the original story, then later suggested the boys' innocence, if necessary,
when additional facts were available.
Why was that solution never
considered? Well, it would have made a duller movie, certainly! But within
the structure of the film itself, the main reason evidently is that the Sun is a certain kind of paper. It
is a sensationalistic tabloid. And of course the grabber headline,
followed by an inevitable exclamation point, is the very trademark of the
paper, an absolute essential. A neutral, non-prejudicial (and
therefore bland) treatment of a story is simply an impossibility.
So the real moral issue here is whether this kind of tabloid journalism is itself a legitimate enterprise. That question, of course, never arises in the film. It is simply assumed that this paper is a wonderful institution and that its employees are heroically striving to communicate the truth to the public. How easily we deceive ourselves! The well-accepted conventions of journalism are among the main problems afflicting contemporary society, and we need dramas and documentaries that face up to that fact. In that regard, The Paper takes the easy way out. It's fine entertainment, but as a study in heroism it lacks credibility.