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October 15, 2022,
They report the news that we need to know, must know, sometimes at great risk to themselves.
They have a lot to lose.
Including their lives.
A free society has a lot to lose if they don’t take risks.
Journalists and reporters sometimes expose themselves to danger, particularly when reporting in areas of armed conflict or in countries that do not respect the freedom of the press.
Organizations such as the Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Borders publish reports on press freedom and advocate for journalistic freedom.
As of November 2011, the Committee to Protect Journalists reports that 887 journalists have been killed worldwide since 1992 by murder (71%), crossfire or combat (17%), or on dangerous assignment (11%).
The “ten deadliest countries” for journalists since 1992 have been Iraq (230 deaths), Philippines (109), Russia (77), Colombia (76), Mexico (69), Algeria (61), Pakistan (59), India (49), Somalia (45), Brazil (31) and Sri Lanka (30).
The Committee to Protect Journalists was founded in 1981 in response to the harassment of Paraguayan journalist Alcibiades González Delvalle.
Its founding honorary chairman was Walter Cronkite
The organization is a founding member of the International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX), a global network of more than seventy non-governmental organizations that monitors free-expression violations around the world and defends journalists, writers, and others persecuted for exercising their right to freedom of expression.
The Committee to Protect Journalists also reports that as of December 1, 2010, 145 journalists were jailed worldwide for journalistic activities. Current numbers are even higher. The ten countries with the largest number of currently-imprisoned journalists are Turkey (95), China (34), Iran (34), Eritrea (17), Burma (13), Uzbekistan (6), Vietnam (5), Cuba (4), Ethiopia (4), and Sudan (3).
Apart from physical harm, journalists are harmed psychologically.
This applies especially to war reporters, but their editorial offices at home often do not know how to deal appropriately with the reporters they expose to danger.
A systematic and sustainable way of psychological support for traumatized journalists is strongly needed.
One of the ways we can feel the impact of what they go through has often been played out powerfully on film.
All the President’s Men is a 1976 American biographical political drama-thriller film about the Watergate scandal that brought down the presidency of Richard Nixon.
Directed by Alan J. Pakula with a screenplay by William Goldman, it is based on the 1974 non-fiction book of the same name by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, the two journalists investigating the Watergate scandal for The Washington Post.
The film stars Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman as Woodward and Bernstein, respectively; it was produced by Walter Coblenz for Redford’s Wildwood Enterprises.
The film was nominated in multiple Oscar, Golden Globe and BAFTA categories, and in 2010, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”
The nuts and bolts.
On June 17, 1972, security guard Frank Wills at the Watergate complex finds a door’s bolt taped over to prevent it from locking. He calls the police, who find and arrest five burglars in the Democratic National Committee headquarters within the complex.
The next morning, The Washington Post assigns new reporter Bob Woodward to the local courthouse to cover the story, which is considered of minor importance.
Woodward learns that the five men—James W. McCord Jr. and four Cuban-Americans from Miami—possessed electronic bugging equipment and are represented by a high-priced “country club” attorney. At the arraignment, McCord identifies himself in court as having recently left the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the others are also revealed to have CIA ties.
Woodward connects the burglars to E. Howard Hunt, an employee of President Richard Nixon‘s White House counsel Charles Colson, and formerly of the CIA.
What we thought at the time was, no one should be above the law. Even the President of the United States.
We’re not so sure that holds true today.
Let’s move up the timeline.
Under Fire is a 1983 American political thriller film set during the last days of the Nicaraguan Revolution that ended the Somoza regime in 1979.
Directed by Roger Spottiswoode, it stars Nick Nolte, Gene Hackman and Joanna Cassidy.
The musical score by the brilliant Jerry Goldsmith, which featured jazz guitarist Pat Metheny, was nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Score.
Here is the captivating storyline.
The journalists then travel to Nicaragua to join the international press corps covering a conflict between the government of President Somoza and rebels lead by Rafael, an underground figure who has never been photographed.
What we liked about the well written film was that it occurred during a time when we felt that good people who are dedicated to an important cause can make a difference.
Dictatorships and corrupt regimes were not the norm, like they are today.
If all of us who believed in freedom would form a supportive net, as long as the journalists brought the world the story, something would be done to solve the problem.
How different the world was then.
One more.
The Post is a 2017 American historical political thriller film about The Washington Post and the publication of the Pentagon Papers.
It was directed and produced by Steven Spielberg, and written by Liz Hannah and Josh Singer.
It stars Meryl Streep as Katharine Graham, the publisher of the Washington Post, and Tom Hanks as Ben Bradlee, the longtime executive editor of The Washington Post, with Sarah Paulson, Bob Odenkirk, Tracy Letts, Bradley Whitford, David Cross, Bruce Greenwood, Carrie Coon, Alison Brie, and Matthew Rhys in supporting roles.
Set in 1971, The Post depicts the true story of attempts by journalists at The Washington Post to publish the infamous Pentagon Papers, a set of classified documents regarding the 20-year involvement of the United States government in the Vietnam War and earlier in French Indochina back to the 1940s.
We wonder, are people so jaded that they would even care today?
Have we gotten to the place, in terms of corruption, we feel that few governments are not and it has become acceptable?
We hope not. Hope is the operative word. Not believe.
The free world in particular needs courageous journalists. We shudder to think what the world would be like without them. So many atrocities would occur in the dark, maybe never to be uncovered.
In every way that we can, if we love freedom, shouldn’t we support journalists that share with us, sometimes at risk to themselves, what we absolutely need to know?
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Post_(film)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalist
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Under_Fire_(1983_film)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_the_President%27s_Men
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