The media and parliament

For decades, indeed centuries, the Scottish media have been a source of national pride. Alongside the education system, the Church of Scotland and the legal apparatus the media have been rightly viewed as a distinctive Scottish cultural institution, a key part of what makes Scotland a nation rather than a region. Scotland has long sustained, per capita, one of the richest and most diverse media systems in the world, encapsulating a heady mix of local newspapers such as the West Highland Free Press, national [i.e., Scotland-wide] newspapers and broadcast outlets such as BBC Scotland and the Scotsman, and UK-based media with Scottish editions such as the Sun and the Mail. These media have reflected and fuelled what is in turn a distinctive Scottish political identity separate from, though connected with that of the United Kingdom as a whole. There has, for example, been no major paper with a pro-Tory editorial line north of the border for longer than most of us can remember, reflecting (and perhaps contributing to) the Conservative Party’s poor showing in successive Scottish elections.

Journalism in the cinema

This chapter explores the representation of journalism in one of the most important popular culture forms, cinema. It advocates the use of movies about journalism in journalism studies teaching and research, and reviews the existing literature on the subject.

Journalism's screen test

I’ve been researching, teaching and writing about journalism for more than two decades. Throughout that time I’ve used feature films to illustrate howthe journalist is represented in popular culture.

Journalism at the movies

Welcome to the first of what will be a regular review essay on films about journalism, covering recent releases as well as looking back at established classics and under-rated obscurities. And there is plenty to write about. Since 2008, and the end of the research period which informed my 2010 book on Journalists in Film there has been a steady stream of films in which a journalist is a primary character, and in which the nature and functioning of journalism is a theme. Morning Glory (Roger Michell, 2010), the story of a ‘serious’ news man (Harrison Ford) having to adapt to the infotainment environment of breakfast news, came out early in 2011 in the United Kingdom. The well-received UK indie Monsters (Gareth Edwards, 2010), a sci-fi with a journalist at its heart, was released in 2010. In The Soloist (Joe Wright, 2009) Robert Downey Jr played a feature journalist who befriends a mentally ill street musician and seeks to rescue him through his writing. Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy has produced three Swedish films, all of them focused on the campaigning journalist Mikael Blomkvist. The first of these is being remade by Hollywood as of this writing.

Journalists at war

Journalism is an especially hazardous profession when it takes the reporter into zones of war and conflict. The Committee to Protect Journalists records that in 2010 44 journalists were killed while carrying out their duties. Some of these were reporting conflict in Afghanistan, Somalia, Iraq and elsewhere. Others were on assignments covering crime and corruption in Mexico, Russia, Venezuela*all places where telling truth to power can easily get you killed, beaten or banged up. In the last 20 years some 874 journalists have been killed on the job, and we salute them all. Journalists get criticised a lot by we scholars, and often for good reason. They can be villains, for sure, but they can also be heroes, when they lay down their lives in the pursuit of the truth. As this piece was being edited, photojournalists Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros were killed in Libya.

The Scottish media and politics

This chapter will explore the performance of the Scottish media in post-devolution political life, before turning its attention to the specific coverage of the 2007 election.

Journalists in film : heroes & villains

We both love and hate our journalists. They are perceived as sexy and glamorous on the one hand, despicable and sleazy on the other. Opinion polls regularly indicate that we experience a kind of cultural schizophrenia in our relationship to journalists and the news media: sometimes they are viewed as heroes, at other times villains. From Watergate to the fabrication scandals of the 2000s, journalists have risen and fallen in public esteem. In this book, leading journalism studies scholar Brian McNair explores how journalists have been represented through the prism of one of our key cultural forms, cinema. Drawing on the history of cinema since the 1930s, and with a focus on the period 1997-2008, McNair explores how journalists have been portrayed in film, and what these images tell us about the role of the journalist in liberal democratic societies. Separate chapters are devoted to the subject of female journalists in film, foreign correspondents, investigative reporters and other categories of news maker who have featured regularly in cinema. The book also discusses the representation of public relations professionals in film. Illustrated throughout and written in an accessible and lively style suitable for academic and lay readers alike, Journalists in Film will be essential reading for students and teachers of journalism, and for all those concerned about the role of the journalist in contemporary society, not least journalists themselves. An appendix contains mini-essays on every film about journalism released in the cinema between 1997 and 2008.