J298 – Hacks of the Silver Screen: Reporters on Film, Reporters in History

Hacks of the Silver Screen

Reporters on Film, Reporters in History

Spring 2022//Monday 6 -10

Mark Danner

If you think back to when you first discovered what a journalist looks and acts like, chances are you learned it at the movies. From

Clark Kent and Lois Lane to Dith Pran and Sydney Schanberg, and almost from the beginning of film itself, reporters have been staple characters of the silver screen. The rich history of journalists on film offers a history of journalism and its evolution from a working class, “gumshoe” job hardly more elevated than that of cop or con man to the smooth professionalism of today’s elite “mainstream media.” In this class, we will read books, sift through articles and, above all, watch films, tracing the history of reporters on the silver screen and through them the history of journalism. We’ll be screening a film a week and reading a good deal of criticism. And we’ll be watching a lot of compelling films, from His Girl Friday to All the President’s Men, from Citizen Kane to The Battle of Algiers, from Sweet Smell of Success to Ace in the Hole, from Absence of Malice to The Killing Fields to Salvador to Network to The Parallax View to A Private War to Talk to Me to I’m Not Your Negro to Spotlight – to much else besides. The list will evolve but the fact won’t: This is a class to gather together and watch and discuss great films.