Hollywood vs. the Media: A Presence of Malice?

The scene: The handsome, young candidate holds a tempestuous news conference in his hometown. Surrounded by thousands of enthusiastic supporters, many with prepared signs denouncing the media, a horde of print and TV news reporters jostle for position, shouting barbed questions at their political adversary.

The drama: As tensions mount, tempers begin to flare--the candidate grows testy, the reporters more combative. Upset by the media’s seemingly harsh treatment of their hometown hero, a crowd of local supporters chant a loud chorus of boos, drowning out many questions.

The mood: Ugly.

Obviously that incident isn’t from a fanciful Hollywood script. It’s from Page One, as the media circus rolled into Sen. Dan Quayle’s hometown of Huntington, Ind.

But what made the scene so striking was its similarity to sequences in many recent films and TV shows, where the media--particularly its boisterous brigade of TV news reporters--have become Hollywood’s new villains.

Not convinced? Watch “The Dead Pool,” this summer’s Dirty Harry installment, on Hollywood Boulevard and see for yourself.

Call him a lawless vigilante. But if Dirty Harry is the symbolic envoy for our most seductive, though socially unacceptable, fantasies, then the news media are in big trouble.

As Harry, Clint Eastwood has made a living acting out our guilty pleasures, blowing away vicious psychopaths, crackpot terrorists and sleazeball mobsters. Judging from audience reaction, Harry has found a popular new target--the news media.

On the scene of a grisly murder, Harry finds an obnoxious TV newswoman shoving her camera in the face of the victim’s weeping girlfriend. Enraged, Harry grabs the camera and smashes it to the ground.

The crowd reaction in the theater was wild shouts of approval and noisy applause.

Is Harry onto something?

“The Dead Pool” displays plenty of bodies, including the bloody corpses of a shamelessly self-promoting “Geraldo”-style TV talk show host and a lame-brained TV film critic.

“Die Hard,” another summer box-office contender, also blasts away at the media. When Bruce Willis and Bonnie Bedelia are held hostage by terrorists in a Los Angeles high rise, a slimy TV news reporter (William Atherton) races off for a scoop--an interview with their toddlers. Barred from the family’s home by a Latino maid, the reporter cooly threatens to call the Immigration and Naturalization Service and have her deported. (By the end of the film, Bedelia is so enraged by Atherton’s abrasive behavior that she decks him with a roundhouse punch.)

Other recent Hollywood films, including “Broadcast News,” “Street Smart,” “Year of the Dragon,” “Robo Cop” and “Switching Channels,” have repeatedly depicted reporters--especially the TV news variety, as everything from likeable lightweights to rude, exploitative creeps.

After seeing so many cinematic portrayals of this snarling pack of media wolves, the clamorous Quayle press-conference took on the garish air of life impersonating art.

Since the incident, numerous commentators and letter-writers have attacked the media, denouncing what they call cheap-shot pack journalism. As Roger Ailes, George Bush’s media adviser, put it: “We recognize journalists have to kill somebody each week, and that week Danny (Quayle) was it.”

It’s no secret that the media’s image is at a low ebb. “It’s funny that you should be calling now,” said Reed Irvine, founder of Accuracy in Media, a Washington watchdog organization that frequently berates the news media for its alleged liberal bias. “I haven’t seen such a welling-up of public antagonism--even hatred--for the media in years.

“I’ve been swamped with calls saying how unfair the media has been, especially in this Quayle affair. And it’s not just me--CNN says their calls were running 50-to-1 against the media coverage. I think people feel that journalists just don’t have any sense of propriety anymore--they nit-pick about everything. If I were running a network, I’d be having an emergency meeting, asking my news people, ‘Are we cutting our throats?’ ”

But how much effect does Hollywood have in shaping this image?

“I don’t think the movies invent these characters--they simply reflect them--but once they’re in a film, it does have an indelible impact,” said film producer Lynda Obst, a former New York Times editor and producer of “Adventures in Babysitting.” “I think many people have grave reservations about the press. They seem to feel that the media is intrinsically hostile. And the movies are picking up on these deeply ingrained attitudes.

“Movies are always looking for bad guys who don’t need a lot of explication,” Obst said. “During the Watergate scandal, it was government officials. During Contragate, it was the military-industrial complex. Now it’s the press, which is pretty frightening. Because if you encourage hostility and distrust toward the news media, that pretty much translates as hostility and distrust toward freedom of speech and the First Amendment.”

Judging from interviews with movie execs and TV news reporters, the key to understanding Hollywood’s hostile image of the media lies in grasping the deep-seated ambivalence with which many outsiders view the press. A recent example: “Year of the Dragon,” where blue-collar cop Mickey Rourke conducted a stormy affair with a beautiful, young TV news reporter.

“Platoon” director Oliver Stone, who wrote the screenplay, said by phone: “One of the keys to casting the character of that girl was that she represented both the glamorous side of the world--which Rourke found dazzling--as well as a side of life that Rourke had total contempt for. He definitely was supposed to feel enormous ambivalence toward her.

“We all have those feelings--the media is always provoking its audience. It brings out your most emotional impulses--love, hate and back again. Take me, for example. You always hear people complain that the media is too left wing. But I look at that same media and I think, ‘Hey, they’re so right wing!’ ”

Because of their constant exposure on television, today’s most visible media members--TV reporters--have blossomed into full-force celebrities, often as recognizable as the political or show-biz figures they cover. In fact, many TV news broadcasters and reporters are marketed like stars, with promotional spots (touting their private passions and hobbies), print ads and billboards.

Over the last several years, TV has mimicked National Enquirer-style sensationalism in its search for ratings. “Oprah” plugs shows with women who are “sex addicts.” “Geraldo” goes behind bars to debate killer Charles Manson. If there’s a gruesome tragedy somewhere in America, you can bet Fox TV’s “A Current Affair” will follow the scent. In fact, that video scandal sheet has done so well in national syndication that Paramount TV is already trying to sell a show based on a similar tawdry theme--”Tabloid.”

No matter how much scorn critics heap on these programs, millions of viewers loyally watch them. And oddly enough, the public doesn’t seem to make a huge distinction among Geraldo and Tawny Little and Sam Donaldson. Regardless of their journalistic skills, each holds sway as a glamorous power broker, viewed with a volatile mix of envy and approbation, reverence and scorn, fascination and suspicion.

As Orange County Register film critic Jim Emerson wrote in a recent column: “After watching ‘The Dead Pool’ and ‘Die Hard,’ you get the feeling that nothing would please audiences more than a summer blockbuster in which the hero blows away Geraldo Rivera.”

Of course, if everyone has such contempt for Rivera’s journalism, why is he getting such great ratings? (In L.A., where his show airs at 4 p.m., Geraldo has not only trounced “The Smurfs” and “Superior Court” but is challenging the ratings supremacy of Channel 4 and 7’s newscasts.)

“The public and the press have a real love-hate relationship,” said Thom Mount, producer of “Bull Durham” and former president of Universal Pictures. “What does it say if Geraldo, the master of revelation for its own sake, can unmask the contents of an empty safe on live TV--and get the highest ratings (by a syndicated TV special) of the year?

“I think to understand these films’ attitudes you have to look at the political attitudes of the past decade, because the movies basically offer a cultural reinforcement of ideas already in circulation. At some point, the Reagan Administration discovered a substantive anti-press feeling which it has used so brilliantly that we now have an institutionalized anti-press attitude.”

According to Mount, TV’s “news packaging” has created widespread public distrust of the news-gathering process. “The whole format of electronic media--the exploitative sound bites, the imperial, inquisitional reporting, the emphasis on celebrity glitz--has made the public completely suspicious and cynical about the entire process. And I think it’s that cynicism that you see reflected in many films today.”

Hollywood has always sent out mixed signals about journalists. Many early films doted on reporters--in fact, you could probably trace much of journalism’s raffish, romantic image to freewheeling comedies like “His Girl Friday” and “Woman of the Year.”

But for every irresistible reporter, you could find an irresponsible one, ranging from “Sweet Smell of Success’s” ruthless columnist J.J. Hunsecker (Burt Lancaster) to “Five Star Final,” 1932, which decried a sensationalist tabloid editor (Edward G. Robinson) and his unscrupulous reporter (played by--talk about great casting!--Boris Karloff).

Even during the ‘70s, journalists were lauded as plucky crusaders, both in “All the President’s Men” (with Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman as nosy reporters Woodward and Bernstein) and “The China Syndrome” (with Jane Fonda as the driven TV fluff-reporter-turned investigator and Michael Douglas as her angry cameraman).

In recent years, the tide has turned. In “Street Smart,” Christopher Reeve plays a bone-head magazine reporter who promises his editor a hot story about a Times Square pimp. When his scoop fails to materialize, he simply makes the entire story up. In “Switching Channels,” cable news exec Burt Reynolds and crack reporter Kathleen Turner are presented as goofy, cartoon stereotypes.

Some caricatures have been more artful. In “The Right Stuff,” the press corps (which Chuck Yeager dubs “them little root-weevils”) was actually played by a commedia dell’arte troop, whose dialogue was combined with a tape loop of a swarm of locusts. “Broadcast News” deftly captured the adrenaline sizzle of TV news, but offered grave moral qualms about the superficiality and career-driven aspects of the news-gathering process.

With the exception of “Broadcast News,” most media-oriented films have been wildly inaccurate. Still, it’s hard to imagine Hollywood exaggerating the intrusive--and inane--nature of much national media coverage. After reporters focused on Dan Quayle’s National Guard record and claims by lobbyist Pamela Parkinson about an alleged flirtation, the candidate’s Maryland home assumed the look of an armed camp, surrounded by several dozen TV trucks and vans.

According to a Washington Post account, “After Quayle called Parkinson a liar while he took out the garbage, it seemed to become open season for Quayles of any kind. The camera crews taped Marilyn Quayle picking up the mail. They caught (9-year-old daughter) Corinne coming back from horseback riding. They recorded (14-year-old) Tucker on his bike. They zoomed in on two boys walking a dog down the road--even though none of the cameramen were sure if either of them were Quayles.”

Does this kind of zealous reporting justify the current crop of negative Hollywood news-media stereotypes?

“One reason you see so many negative media images is that--based on the behavior of many reporters--we deserve it,” said KABC-TV film reporter Gary Franklin, who spent nearly a decade as a reporter for KFWB radio. “We have a running joke in our industry about the reporter who arrives breathlessly on the scene and asks the distraught mother, ‘How do you feel about your child lying under the wheels of that truck, ma’am?’

“When I was a reporter, I’d see lots of dumb, neophyte TV news reporters making fools of themselves, on and off the air, with all sorts of rude, ignorant behavior. And what’s ironic is that they probably acted that way not simply because they weren’t prepared to ask any insightful questions. They were probably just repeating what they’d learned in movies!’ ”

Still, many local reporters resent Hollywood’s caricatures. “I saw ‘Street Smart’ and the way it portrayed the media just incensed me--I was furious when I left that film,” said KCBS-TV reporter Jim Moret. “Its portrayal of TV reporters was completely unrealistic. It made it seem as if we manufactured stories on the spot and were completely unethical, pushy, insensitive to anyone’s feelings and just generally superficial idiots.”

Moret insists that if he actually acted the way many reporters do in films, none of his sources would ever talk to him again. “There are certain things I won’t do, that I’d rather be fired than do. If I’m at a funeral, I don’t do a stand-up. Even if the grieving widow is the story, I’m not going to invade her privacy.”

Still, Moret acknowledged that some news organizations are less sensitive than others. “At a previous job, I was told to knock on the door of a family whose child had been murdered, even though the suspect had already been apprehended. They just wanted the tears--and I simply refused. It infuriated me that we were willing to infringe on these people’s privacy--and right after their daughter had died.”

Moret also acknowledged that he is feeling a backlash to the media’s Quayle hunt. “I find myself taking the blame. Even my neighbors, who know me and like me, are complaining about these pushy TV reporters who are harassing him. People think the media are conducting a witch-hunt. Everyone is saying, ‘Give the guy a break.’ ”

Not everyone sees so much distrust. “Sure, sometimes you’ll run into a guy who’ll say that 12 years ago his cousin in Ohio was misquoted by a reporter,” said KNBC-TV reporter Phil Shuman. “But I think--or at least I like to think--that most people consider reporters to be on their side. Maybe it’s because this is such an entertainment town, but I find that people love to talk to me, even in unusual situations.”

Still, many reporters notice the public’s mixed feelings. “I don’t know how much of it has been shaped by the movies, but you do run into a real attraction-repulsion thing,” said Moret. “You walk into the dry-cleaner’s and hear people talk about these lousy networks and their biased news reporting--but then they’ll recognize you and everything changes. They treat you like a star.”

Perhaps anything is possible in an era where--thanks to the very power of the media--image and perception has become more important than reality.

“Just look at Sam Donaldson’s image today,” said Accuracy in Media’s Irvine. “I happen to like Sam very much. But he has such a reputation for being aggressive and obnoxious that you should have heard how many people were complaining to me about his behavior at the Quayle press conference.”

Irvine chuckled. “And here’s the funny thing--he wasn’t even there!”