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32 to this notion. Directed by Bill Condon, the movie explores the complex character of
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Cinema is usually seen as a synthesis of the other arts: architecture, sculpture, painting,
music, literature, poetry, and dance. It was Ricciotto Canudo in 1921 who accurately
defined cinema as “the seventh art”.

The seventh art and the fourth estate have understood one another from the beginning.
In the latter the former has found an inexhaustible source of subject matter and stories.
The legacy of these stories is a long list of cinematographic masterpieces considering
journalism and the media from all angles, through all lenses and throughout the ages.

We have movies that celebrate courageous efforts by the media and media outlets to
denounce and resist political, economic, or social corruption. At the other end of the
spectrum are those movies that present the darker and corrupter side of journalism itself.

On the positive side we could look to All the President’s Men (1976), a movie about
the Watergate Scandal directed by Alan J. Pakula and starring Robert Redford and
Dustin Hoffman. Another is The Insider (1999), directed by Michael Mann and featuring
Russell Crowe and Al Pacino as a whistleblower and a news presenter who expose the
cancerous additives in tobacco. Third, we have The Post (2017), directed by Steven
Spielberg with Meryl Streep and Tom Cruise as mesmerizing leads. The pair piece
together classified information to denounce the Vietnam War. Last but not least is Tom
McCarthy’s Academy Award-winner Spotlight (2015), where the journalistic scoop is a
pedophilia cover-up within the Archdiocese of Boston.

Citizen Kane, (Orson Welles, 1941)
Alexander Kahle - RKO Radio Pictures /
Public domain

Meanwhile, on the less positive side: considered by many to be the greatest film of all
time, Citizen Kane (1941) is a prime example. In the composite character of Charles
Foster Kane, Orson Welles demonstrates how information can be manipulated to one
person’s advantage. A second in this category would be Ace in the Hole (1951), in
which Kirk Douglas plays the role of the unscrupulous journalist. Finally, there is Sidney
Pollack’s Absence of Malice (1981), starring Paul Newman and Sally Field. The movie
reveals the danger of not comparing sources before publishing a story.