In Spielberg’s The
Post (2017), the fateful decision to publish portions of the Pentagon
Papers centers on Katharine Graham’s being willing to rebuff her newspaper’s
lawyers, who represent the company’s financial interests, in favor of Ben
Bradlee’s argument that free speech of the press as a check on government in a
viable democracy—the company’s mission—is of overriding importance. As
important as this critical decision was historically, I submit that the film
allots too much attention to the decision and even the relationship between
Graham and Bradlee at the expense of other deserving matters.
The film gives scant attention to Daniel Ellsberg, the
former Marine and military analyst who “brought the Pentagon Papers to The Times,
and later to The Post, motivated by an all-American notion that the nation’s
citizen’s had the right to know more about what was going on half a world away
in a war financed by their tax dollars and fought by so many of their children.”[1]
The script does not include, for example, his statement, “Taking an oath as a
public servant does not mean keeping secrets or obeying the president—it’s
respecting the Constitution.”[2]
The viewer sees little if any of the internal struggle that must have led to
his conclusion.
Secondly, that Ellsberg first brought portions of the
Pentagon’s study to The New York Times is shown in the film mainly through Ben
Bradlee’s competitive disappointment rather than showing more of what was going
on at The Times. In fact, whereas Bradlee and Graham could look to The Times as
a precedent, Arthur O. Sulzberger, publisher of The Times, had no forerunner
and thus “took on far more risk,” James Goodale, the paper’s in-house counsel
at the time, has written.[3]
“It’s as though Hollywood had made a movie about the Times’s triumphant role in
Watergate,” he added.[4]
Neil Sheehan, the lead reporter on the story, has said in retirement that
Sulzberger “was absolutely heroic in publishing the Pentagon Papers. . . . He
was all alone in making his decision.”[5]
Thirdly, and most importantly, although the film gives
viewers the “important lesson . . . that, in both cases, family-led newspapers
placed their journalistic missions ahead of business imperatives. And they did
so under intense governmental pressure,” scant attention is allotted to the
contents of the articles themselves.[6]
Little is revealed other than that administrations going back to Truman’s lied
to the American people regarding American involvement and prospects in Vietnam.
The film highlights the lying by showing Nixon’s Secretary of State blatantly
lie to the press on his view of the prospects for winning the war. The viewer
is left with the image of a misled public that is nonetheless supposed to hold
its government accountable. Even so, the film does not convey much of what the
Pentagon study found. The scattered, cryptic references made at Bradlee’s house
are not sufficient, given the potential for informing the viewers, and thus a
sizable portion of the American people, on just how bad the lies were by
spelling them out.
The medium of film, as well as its popular situs in modern
society, can handle making “deep” philosophical issues transparent. In the case
of The Post, the increasing power of
the American presidency, referred to academically as the imperial presidency,
could have received attention, as could have the
particular cover-ups by Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon—each
lie specified rather than glided over. It was not just Richard Nixon, who can
be easily relegated as the crook who occupied the White House for a term and a
half. That several presidents successively lied points to something systemic
getting in the way of democratic accountability in the U.S. Besides the growing
power of the presidency since World War II, the ease by which administrations
can insulate themselves from the public, rather than being accountable to it,
would have come through more in the film.
In short, more substance on the main character, the Pentagon
Papers, as well as the initial roles
of Ellsberg and The New York Times, could have come in by not giving so much
screen time to the Bradlee-Graham relationship and even the competing interests
within The Washington Post. The result would have been more of a multi-level
film.
[1]
Jim Rutenberg, “Spielberg’s
‘The Post’ Provides Fitting End to Turbulent Year for the Media,” The New York Times, December 24, 2017.
[2]
Ibid.
[3]
Ibid.
[4]
Ibid.
[5]
Ibid.
[6]
Ibid.
