His Girl Miller
Oct. 17th, 2005 11:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lurkittyIf you haven't seen His Girl Friday, get on Netflix and then curl up some stormy Sunday afternoon with this vintage gem. Rosalind Russell's second best flick (after Auntie Mame, a role I have always aspired to) trading barbs with the incomparable *sigh* Cary Grant. In it, Russell plays a hard-boiled reporter who gets tired of the newspaper game and wants to quit to get married, only to be tricked into stumbling onto the story of her life by her old boss Grant. Screwball comedy ensues.
There are a couple of scenes where the pool of reporters in the courthouse phone in stories to their respective newspapers. In search of that big break, each gives the news a special spin. As I read the tediously (think "unnecessarily") lengthy article about Judith Miller's odyssey, I couldn't help but think about that scene. Judith Miller was one of those hungry marginally talented career reporters spinning stories looking for that big break, stretching the truth beyond the point where it snapped. She did it over and over again, yet the NYT just kept her on. It really sounded sad. Here was a lady with a great deal of potential. Exactly when did she get to the point where her need to publish overcame her need to tell the whole truth?
Unfortunately, spinning is more the norm than the exception nowadays. We expect that when we turn on the news what we hear is accurate and precise. Watching the Katrina coverage vs. the Kashmir earthquake coverage should cure anyone of that notion. Did you notice that the casualty figures for Katrina went constantly downward, while the Kashmir earthquake figures are still going up? That's called discretion, folks, something we no longer have in the era of 24 hour news. In the US, we go with the most sensational figure because it sells. In the rest of the world, they go with the most conservative, because they don't have to correct it later.
Stretching the truth makes for great screwball comedy. I hope the TImes figures out it makes for poor news.
There are a couple of scenes where the pool of reporters in the courthouse phone in stories to their respective newspapers. In search of that big break, each gives the news a special spin. As I read the tediously (think "unnecessarily") lengthy article about Judith Miller's odyssey, I couldn't help but think about that scene. Judith Miller was one of those hungry marginally talented career reporters spinning stories looking for that big break, stretching the truth beyond the point where it snapped. She did it over and over again, yet the NYT just kept her on. It really sounded sad. Here was a lady with a great deal of potential. Exactly when did she get to the point where her need to publish overcame her need to tell the whole truth?
Unfortunately, spinning is more the norm than the exception nowadays. We expect that when we turn on the news what we hear is accurate and precise. Watching the Katrina coverage vs. the Kashmir earthquake coverage should cure anyone of that notion. Did you notice that the casualty figures for Katrina went constantly downward, while the Kashmir earthquake figures are still going up? That's called discretion, folks, something we no longer have in the era of 24 hour news. In the US, we go with the most sensational figure because it sells. In the rest of the world, they go with the most conservative, because they don't have to correct it later.
Stretching the truth makes for great screwball comedy. I hope the TImes figures out it makes for poor news.
