I went to see the above film (it is not about the Royal Mail) yesterday, needing a change of mental air. It is excellent and entertaining. Also includes one of my great modern heroes, Ben Bradlee, played by Tom Hanks this time. I’ve been a fan of Bradlee ever since the days of the Watergate scandal - he died two years ago at a great age, having carried the flag for freedom of the press in an exceptional way.
It’s a Spielberg film in the tradition of ‘All the President’s Men' (one of my favourite films of all time, which told the story of Watergate and the bringing down of President Nixon) and ’Spotlight’ (how the Boston Globe broke of the scandal of child sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church). I love these types of film because they are so heartening in terms of the possibility of ’speaking truth to power’ - a phrase we hear a lot these days - but do little of.
'The Post’ is the Washington Post in case you hadn’t cottoned on - I hadn’t. Its scandal is the Pentagon Papers. Way back in the ‘70s there was a leak of thousands of documents telling the real truth about Vietnam, that the establishment had long known they could not win that war, but continued it because they couldn’t face the shame of a significant military defeat. The New York Times got the papers first, but the White House produced a legal injunction preventing them from publishing them. A Post employee then gained the documents and the proprietor and editor had to face a hard choice about whether to go ahead with the publication, knowing it might not just destroy the paper but also the Graham family who owned it, and that the proprietor, Mrs Graham, and Bradlee might go to jail. Meanwhile, the US was still fightingt in Vietnam! And thousands of American soldiers had died and were continuing to die, in the belief they were dying for some worthwhile reason.
I was thinking, coming out, that Spielberg made the film now for a reason. It’s a message to Donald Trump. Don’t think Presidents can’t be brought down - they can. It isn’t accidental that the same two newspapers are in a battle with the White House today - among many other media. Trump’s method of self-defence differs from Nixon’s, who used unashamed bullying, lies and control of the media by threats of their destruction. Today we live in a different world but the same issues play out. Trump uses tactics of public pillorying, rubbishing, rhetorical attempts to turn the villains into the heroes, and vice versa. Fake truth! He has almost succeeded. You need all your lamps at home to tell the difference! The question has even been asked whether there is a difference! Perhaps we have been mistaken in all these years, imaging that some things can be true while others are not?
Let's be clear - we are not dealing in truth as an absolute moral principle here. This has always been open to debate. For example, whether lying is always wrong is open to debate, because no one can pronounce on that unassailably. What would count as evidence of the truth of such a statement? It's impossible to say. On the other hand, whether Jesus Christ was raised from the dead is a matter of historical evidence. If there is insufficient evidence, then, sorry, it's not a truth. Recognising this, you are not prevented from believing it, nor would you be right in saying that it is therefore not true. Matters about which there is little evidence now have subsequently proved to be true. The jury is simply out, for now. But until then, what you believe remains what you believe, not the same as truth. Nor are we dealing with perception: it is true that everyone perceives their experience according to their own particular 'filters.' We tend to register evidence which accords with our beliefs, while ignoring stuff that seems to disprove them. You might say this is human nature. Nevertheless, this does not establish that all is perception and nothing is truth! The evidence still counts. Some things are still 'out there' while others are 'in here'. And in discussing 'fake' news we are in the realm of evidence. One and nine still add up to ten. It is not a matter of opinion or perception! This is where news media come in, it seems to me. They cannot rely solely on opinion biased by personal perception, or governed by vague statements of dubious principle, like 'you can't trust the newspapers.' Because how would you go about getting convincing proof of that? Trump's position is worse than this, since he wants to say 'you can trust this source but you can't trust that source.' Which amounts to 'my personal perception is always right' - and anyone who has never challenged their own personal perceptions should start to worry about it. But he also wants to be the one with 'correct' perception of truth, and to require his followers to think the same. This is dangerous practice of the type often exhibited by demagogues.
I was thinking, as I came out of the film, that it was a pity our own media had been so cowardly over the Rupert Murdoch affair. You may recall (and it will be a struggle because it has already sunk without trace!) it emerged in court that Murdoch had influential information held over the heads of members of the British Establishment to make sure they didn’t reveal the anti-social tactics involved in the way his newspapers got their information. True, one editor got the push on enquiry, but got the push for colluding with these tactics, not taking a stand against them! It’s strange that our media has such a reputation abroad as hell hounds braying for stories, and this may be true sometimes, but I wonder whether it’s their fixation on celebrity lifestyles and gossip they are talking about? I see little sign of any thirst for speaking truth to power. Yes, some, but they are struggling voices finding it harder and harder to be heard. Over here, the press, we are often told, are the enemy, not the friend of truth. I have noticed that the BBC has lately been attempting to be more critical of government. I always thought it ironic that the view of the political right was that the BBC was liberal left and in the pockets of the anti-establishment, while the view of the left was that the BBC was the voice of the establishment in the UK! Hard to be both at the same time - but the problem has been a perpetual conflict between what the journalists and broadcasters would like to say and what the BBC governors will allow them to say. Hence ‘the news’ was rather a tame account of events as they saw them, hedged with caveats about what might and might not be the case, and plenty of avoidance of challenging powerful reputations. Meanwhile they continued to produce actual quality programmes about, for example, evil doings in the military and in the NHS which were true enough (had enough solid evidence) to get the nod from the bosses. Perhaps the current Director has changed that, and brought together the two halves of the corporation. I can but hope!
The film exposes the degree to which all media are subject to the willingness of their employers to speak truth to power. Meryl Streep does a good job of playing Mrs Katherine Graham who owned the Post and inherited the paper from her dead husband, so had no previous experience of the newspaper business, and had to face some hard decisions. Some nice shots of her surrounded by men in dark suits and ties trying to tell her what to think! How courageous she turned out to be.
There are also some lovely shots of the Linotype machines rolling away like thunder with their little blocks of type which are so small and yet so powerful. And scenes of the days when the delivery vans rumbled out of the gates of the offices in the middle of the night, in their droves, and spread their bundles of solid newsprint all over their territory. What a lot we are missing today! There is a vast difference between the poodle yapping of the social media with its obsession with opinion for opinion’s sake, ungrounded by anything approaching solid evidence, which nobody has had to sacrifice anything or even do any hard work to get hold of, and which those who most need to hear it may or may not do so: and the clarion call of the great newspaper headline that is heard by everyone.
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