Peter Bart: Even In The Movies, Media’s Quest For Objectivity Has Been A Lost Cause
12.10.2023 - 20:23
/ deadline.com
“Politics is poisonous – even in making movies.”
Those were the words of William Goldman, the gifted screenwriter, who was finishing his script for All the President’s Men in 1972, when his director told him to quit writing. It seems Robert Redford, the co-star, had a new take on his character and he would take over the writing.
Goldman was shocked. His director, Alan Pakula, was depressed. The movie was stalled. Ultimately, Redford pumped up the polemics, the script was finished and the movie was a hit. But for Goldman and Pakula, the lesson was clear: No more political movies; too up tight and personal.
I was reminded of this incident this week when a network executive told me, “Objective coverage won’t stand a chance in the 2024 election. Look at the early mess in covering the Trump trials” – week two of the civil trial began Tuesday, with four criminal trials to come.
The executive is far from alone. “Trump will hijack coverage until the fact-checkers want to shoot themselves,” one on-air anchor says.
The nightmare goal of “objective” coverage dominates two thoughtful new books about media written by Martin Baron, retired editor of the Washington Post (he was depicted on screen in the the Oscar-winning Spotlight by then-Ray Donovan star Liev Schreiber) and Adam Nagourney, a veteran reporter of the New York Times. Both deal (in part) with the challenging impact of Trumpism.
And, taken together, both implicitly raise this question: Is “objectivity’ a realistic goal in covering contemporary politics? Would it be more realistic for TV or print organizations to acknowledge that political news takes on greater clarity and intelligibility when the façade of objective truth is dropped?
Both Baron and Nagourney are firm