My take on the movie “Nothing but truth” – (Lots of Spoilers)

In a bizarre setting, I had to view this movie twice in two days and needless to say that it did provoke my thought process a little bit. In a nutshell the movie is about politics versus journalism. The director has very delicately interwoven the complexities of the issue in a well narrated and directed story. The question that movie posed to me were - How can journalism prevail, if it were to report findings of significance against the government? How can the government deal with journalists that potentially compromise national security? As the movie is “inspired” by facts and not based on facts there are many points in the movie that leave you to ponder ‘what would have really happened?’. I would highly encourage you all to watch the movie since it is not possible to reveal the entire story here.

The interesting part, that actually provoked my thought process, was our discussion (house/family) discussion after the movie. We had a two school of thought based on my questions posed above. Each one of them had their own strong sense of feelings for their thought, in way the thoughts became “owned’ and were justified and defended with great prudence (I guess you can also think of this as egotistical discussion session).

My point of view was there should be some balance between empowering either the politics and journalism. I believe that newspapers should have the right to question the political agenda of ruling party and present evidence when things go otherwise. However, when reporting news about national security reporters should exhibit more caution. Government have the responsibility to protecting the identity of the men and women who are willing to sacrifice their lives for the country, just as the journalists are responsible for protecting their sources of information. However, the leaders are not immune to public statements when the nation goes to war.

Primarily, reporters have to respect the stance of their OWN government in the regard pertaining to national security. A newspaper is entirely different from tabloid. When I read about the same piece of information from three different and reputed newspapers, I register it as truth. Therefore the onus is on the reporters to present people with truth and not some kind of hoax. In this movie the reporter had done a tremendous job in putting the story (i.e. possibility that The President could have acted on his personal agenda in attacking a country, while ignoring reports from his own intelligence agency). However, I think that just as she protected her source, the reporter should have also protected the identity of CIA agent. The headlines should have been questioning the motives of The President not taking pride in blowing cover of the CIA agent. (If you can recollect, the front page of the Sun Times has half page picture of CIA agent Erica, which is a deliberate attempt for a newspaper to compete with tabloids). However, the reporter went for the tabloid piece (in this case a chance to get Pulitzer price for journalism) where she thought it was imperative to reveal the CIA agent. If the reporter felt that her source was so important, then the CIA agents (who are sources of information for government) are also that important to the government. There is reason why these people (i.e. CIA agents) are listed as classified. Compromising the names of CIA agents is in a way betraying your own country.

In the part of the movie where the Editor meets the reporter in the Jail, she mentions about interviewing with some reality show host citing that the story was “losing traction”. While Sun Times did not write any article after few weeks that would raise public interest in this matter. It is really disappointing that even the reality show was shown on Jerry Springer channel , which ells us about the nature and composition of the audience that it was targeted to (more evidence of newspaper trying to be tabloid).

In the end, it was partly the failure on the Rachel’s part to see the ‘big picture’ that caused lot of collateral damage. Had the reporter emphasized more on the story (questioning the motives of The president) rather than CIA agent there could have been public outcry (both domestic and international) and the government would have made been ousted in due course, to give way to a better one. As much as commend the reporter for her sincerity (particularly the scene where she asks her husband about The President and not whats on the news about her) and diligence (in securing proper documents from collaborative sources), it is appalling to see that she couldn’t understand the similarity between her source and CIA agent.

Overall, it is movie worth the weekday evening session. Where you have limited time to think and less energy to get into egotistical discussions.