New Spielberg film seen as antidote to fake news label

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At a time when the US media is under attack over so-called fake news, Hollywood A-listers are celebrating freedom of the press in a new movie.

"The Post," which opens in theaters in the United States on Friday, recounts the fraught behind-the-scenes story of the Pentagon Papers scandal.

The 1971 publication by The Washington Post of the documents exposed the corruption behind US involvement in the Vietnam War.

Directed by Steven Spielberg, the film stars Meryl Streep as aristocratic Post publisher Katharine Graham and Tom Hanks as the newspaper's scrappy executive editor Ben Bradlee.

Speaking to reporters on the red carpet at a screening last week, Spielberg, Hanks and Streep downplayed suggestions the movie was a shot across the bow of President Donald Trump, who has waged a vitriolic campaign against media outlets he believes are unfair to him, or peddling "fake news."

"I think it's very, very important that our movie is seen not as a political, partisan play on the part of what they call the liberal media or Hollywood," Spielberg said.

"I see it not as a partisan movie," he said, "but a movie about patriotism and a movie about the courageous media, the Fourth Estate, and what they did to be able to get the Pentagon Papers published ..."

Director Steven Spielberg arrives for the premiere of "The Post" in Washington. /AFP Photo

The drama at the heart of the film revolves around Graham's decision to go ahead and publish the Pentagon Papers, a move which could have had potentially fatal consequences for the family newspaper she took over eight years earlier upon the suicide of her husband.

The Pentagon Papers, leaked by whistle blower Daniel Ellsberg, were a 7,000-page classified report which determined – contrary to the public assertions of US government officials – that the Vietnam conflict was unwinnable.

The New York Times published excerpts until the administration of president Richard Nixon obtained a court injunction barring the newspaper from continuing to do so on national security grounds.

That's where the Post stepped in, braving legal and financial peril to take up the torch.

Tom Hanks, Rita Wilson and Marty Baron at the premiere of "The Post" in Washington. /AFP Photo

Spielberg, Streep and Hanks attended the screening of "The Post" at the shrine to journalism, the Newseum, in Washington, located just a few blocks from Trump's White House.

The president has been particularly scathing about CNN and The New York Times but he has also repeatedly attacked the Post, calling it "dishonest," "phony" and – his favorite – "fake news."

He refers to the newspaper in his tweets as the "Amazon Washington Post," a reference to Jeff Bezos, the owner of online retail giant Amazon who purchased the Post from the Graham family in 2013.

Meryl Streep stars as The Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham in "The Post". /AFP Photo

Despite Spielberg's protestations, reviewers are finding parallels inescapable between "The Post" and its championing of the media and the non-stop vilification of the press by Trump.

"('The Post') takes you back to a time when the outcome was precarious, and the freedoms we thought we took for granted hung in the balance," said Variety. "Just as they do today."

For The New Yorker, "The Post" is "not a period movie."

"Instead, it is squarely addressed to the present day, striving for the urgency of a headline," it said. "The film is here to warn us of fresh threats to press freedom."

( Top image credit to Reuters. )

Source(s): AFP