Film Review: Why everyone should see “The Post”

After finally getting to see this much-hyped film, I walked out with one simple takeaway: we need journalists who are paid for what they do

(Spoiler: The term ‘fake news’ will not be used anywhere (except in this spoiler alert) throughout this post…)

It’s ironic that I should finally get my sorry ass along to see The Post.

Ironic because it comes after reading an article on Medium about how to cheat ‘MSM’ (are we still REALLY using that term — it’s so 2013) paywalls.

An article that made me pretty damned angry because, while I understood where the writer was coming from given their seeming mission to rabble-rouse and shake the joint up, it misses a point that The Post, luckily, puts front and centre.

Yes, I know the legacy or heritage media is riddled with flaws, political intrigue and jostling, and, let’s be honest, corruption.

And yes, I also know that as gatekeepers of news and information, they have failed in many ways such that having a degree of contempt, or, if that’s too strong, at least suspicion, of these media companies of the ancien regime is healthy and necessary.

But, alert the media, some good shit comes out of them too.

Major earth-shattering, life-changing, government-rattling stories have been broken since the first paper rolled of the press, and continue to be broken because of the hard work of the journalists and editorial staff (not so many of them left now, sadly) who work for these companies.

Hard work that deserves to be paid for.

And can only be paid for if we buy it.

Simple.

You’ll have heard many times that the biggest mistake ever made was making the internet free.

That’s incorrect.

Making information that was not previously free suddenly accessible was the mistake.

And that’s as much the media’s fault as anyone. If they had set up paywalls from day one, as they should have, or at least been ahead of the curve and found ways to monetise content, they wouldn’t all be dropping of like so many dead flies, or being bought up as charity side-pieces or feelgood assets by squillionaires.

I get the argument that the cost of a publication or tuning into free-to-air TV is actually just token-esque.

That we have all been ‘paying’ far in excess of what news is worth by having our eyeballs burned to hell with advertisements.

But the reality is, those ads SUBSIDISE the delivery of news. They make an industry viable that isn’t and hasn’t ever been overly profitable.

Question: would you walk into a store and just take a tub of ice cream off the shelf and argue that because it’s there, you should be able to walk away with it (ok, if you’re a dodgy type, yes you would, but otherwise…)?

Or, would you rock up at the airport and expect to board a flight without a ticket just because there is a chance of there being a free seat on it?

Or would you walk into a movie and claim that just because you will walk away without any real tangible benefit in your hand at the end, you shouldn’t have to cough up a dollar or two (ok, more) for it?

It’s the old ‘free rider’ concept from Eco Theory 101, and leads to the other concept of the ‘tragedy of the commons’ — both incredibly pertinent when it comes to what is happening in the media at present.

Don’t for a minute think I am a sycophantic fan of the legacy/heritage media.

I am ALL for citizen journalism (read this if you don’t believe me), new media, digital, and whatever else is coming our way in the next bit.

And I definitely love relatively NKOTB like Medium, for example, that have found other ways to try and wrangle the economics of content creation, provision, licensing and distribution through unique platforms and models.

BUT…what I am a fan of above all else is people who actually care about the world.

Who will dedicate their lives to ensuring the next Watergate or Spotlight happens.

Which brings us to The Post.

Firstly — Meryl Streep.

Yes. Yes, and another big ol yassssssssssssss.

Sterling job, oh American Queen of Hollywood and beyond.

Through the irrepressible Ms Streep (and a stellar supporting cast), not only does director Steven Spielberg capture beautifully someone (then owner of the Post, Katharine Graham) caught up in the the beginning of a true gender revolution when women finally began finding their voices in industry, literally and figuratively, he also thrusts back into the spotlight how parlous a state the media was in then and finds itself even more so in now.

The film is heightened, and overly dramatic at times, and no doubt has a lot of frippery at the edges to make it more Hollywood and less docudrama. Even still, it must make many legacy/heritage journalists watching their industry be stripped back to the bone feel equally proud and shattered at the unstoppable forces tearing their livelihoods apart.

Because here’s the thing.

For all the zillion blogs and new media organisations and citizen journalist initiatives out there — a new burgeoning digital media landscape that I 100% support applaud and admire — so many of these other NKOTB could NOT produce content without paid journalists at the legacy/heritage media doing the dirty work first.

And the new gatekeepers like Facebook and Twitter and Reddit would all shrivel up and die on the digital bough without news being created by the people who have been doing it for hundreds of years.

Just like Katharine Graham and Ben Bradlee did during the reign of another despot (Nixon. Shudder), we need brave people to find ways to do brave things.

Or they would be forced to make news, actually hire people to write about it, or somehow incentivise people to offer it up without payment.

(An ad-free Facebook feed maybe? Please. Yes. Sign me up. Worth Gold.)

My point?

We have to support the media.

We must see the value in the hard work writers, journalists, photographers, videographers etc pour into the page, feeding the content-hungry-mad digital audience.

We must fight against suppression, threats to freedom of the press and the lies built up about them by despots because they refuse to be their mouthpieces or say ‘nice things’ (truth: every time that fool uses the word ‘nice’, all I can think of him say is ‘pussy) about them.

Just like Katharine Graham and Ben Bradlee did during the reign of another despot (Nixon. Shudder), we need brave people to find ways to do brave things.

We can do that by supporting the media with our wallets out front, just as we do for any other good or service we need, not by finding shonky ways to steal information from them by breaching pay walls.

If we don’t, we will end truly end up in a world of ‘post-truth’, and not a world where The Post and other legacy/media outlets do all in their power to offer us the objective truth rather than the abject opposite.