The Challenges Of Journalism, As Seen in Ron Howard's "The Paper"
The Paper follows 24 hours in the newsroom of a fictional tabloid, The New York Sun; and one of its editors, Henry Hackett. The movie immediately makes the viewer aware of the various financial and personal issues that the company and its staff is confronted with: the owner of The New York Sun is facing bankruptcy, which leads to massive layoffs in order to keep the tabloid afloat. Hackett, meanwhile, is facing issues with his wife after she complains that he keeps putting his work before their relationship.
Within this 24-hour span, The New York Sun encounters a story that involves the murder of two businessmen and the arrest of two African-American teenagers who were apparently seen fleeing from the scene of the crime. Hackett and his reporters, however, obtain information that suggests otherwise-- the police arrested the two teenagers due to political pressure and that they had nothing to do with the murders that occurred.
The immediate issue that the movie presents is that the tabloid’s tight deadlines make it almost impossible for Hackett to prove that the teenagers were guilty and set the record straight with his piece. Though Hackett was able to find proof that the teenagers were innocent: he tracks down a contact at the New York Police Department and interrogates him about the case, he finds additional information about the murders from different publications, the deadlines that the newspaper is confronted with leads them to almost publish the wrong information.
Additionally, the film also shows how personal issues within the staff can affect the quality of work produced by a journalistic publication. The film repeatedly shows how there are personal issues between the reporters of The New York Sun, and their managing editor, Alicia Clark. These personal issues between the staff come to a head when Hackett discovers that Clark has already given her approval to publish the wrong information on the front page of The New York Sun, and gets into a fistfight with her in an attempt to stop the presses and publish the correct information.
If anything, the film shows us not to take journalism as a profession lightly. Covering, writing, and publishing a journalistic piece within tight deadlines is not a joke, given all the work and verification that goes into a piece that gets published in the papers. There is also the pressure to make sure that what gets published is accurate: the film shows us that journalists are always invited to dig deeper and exhaust all their resources to make sure that the story that gets published in the front pages is accurate.
Within this 24-hour span, The New York Sun encounters a story that involves the murder of two businessmen and the arrest of two African-American teenagers who were apparently seen fleeing from the scene of the crime. Hackett and his reporters, however, obtain information that suggests otherwise-- the police arrested the two teenagers due to political pressure and that they had nothing to do with the murders that occurred.
The immediate issue that the movie presents is that the tabloid’s tight deadlines make it almost impossible for Hackett to prove that the teenagers were guilty and set the record straight with his piece. Though Hackett was able to find proof that the teenagers were innocent: he tracks down a contact at the New York Police Department and interrogates him about the case, he finds additional information about the murders from different publications, the deadlines that the newspaper is confronted with leads them to almost publish the wrong information.
Additionally, the film also shows how personal issues within the staff can affect the quality of work produced by a journalistic publication. The film repeatedly shows how there are personal issues between the reporters of The New York Sun, and their managing editor, Alicia Clark. These personal issues between the staff come to a head when Hackett discovers that Clark has already given her approval to publish the wrong information on the front page of The New York Sun, and gets into a fistfight with her in an attempt to stop the presses and publish the correct information.
If anything, the film shows us not to take journalism as a profession lightly. Covering, writing, and publishing a journalistic piece within tight deadlines is not a joke, given all the work and verification that goes into a piece that gets published in the papers. There is also the pressure to make sure that what gets published is accurate: the film shows us that journalists are always invited to dig deeper and exhaust all their resources to make sure that the story that gets published in the front pages is accurate.
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