Ron Howard's 'The Paper' and Journalistic Ethical Dilemmas

Curtis Jackson's musical tribute to Ron Howard's film The Paper

John Schwartz
js135210@ohio.edu
Despite its seemingly comedic genre, the 1994 movie The Paper, starring Micheal Keaton and Glenn Close, tackle a surprising amount of ethical issues in journalism. Over the course of twenty four hours, we follow Henry Hackett and his coworkers as they struggle to put out the next edition of New York City's less than prestigious paper, The Sun.
We are first faced with an ethical issue when Henry goes into an interview with a competing paper, The Sentinel. Henry takes advantage of the editor's back being turned and steals a news story from his memo pad. This eventually results in Henry's job offer being declined. It's hard to find any ethical justification for this move. It does eventually result in a progressive, exclusive, and influential issue of the paper, but stealing story ideas, either within your own paper or from a competing one, is a massive breach of journalistic ethical protocol.
Another ethical issue faced in the movie is that of naming sources. Henry and his coworker McDougal struggle to find a police officer who will give them a quote for their piece, either on the record or off. They eventually do get a police source to speak with them, and though we don't see it for sure, we can safely assume that they do not run the informants name. This is an vital ethical standard for a journalist, understanding when sing anonymous sources is appropriate and source confidentiality is of the utmost importance.
Although Henry and McDougal are able to get their source to talk, they are too late in getting the story back to the paper, The Sun is running an inaccurate story on the front page of next day's paper. At first Alicia Clark, another one of Henry's coworkers, is adamant that the printing machine continues with next day's paper absent of Henry updated and more accurate story. McDougal later appeals to her journalistic integrity in a bar, commenting that he realizes that while The Sun may not be the best paper in town, "they've never printed anything they knew was wrong" until that day. Clark realizes the error of her ways and calls the paper's offices to order them to print the more accurate story. Ethically, this is a conflict between money and getting the right information out to the public, a difficult struggle as the movie shows. But at the end of the day, getting the right story, not the cheaper one, is always more important.
Finally, the movie shows the importance of minimizing harm. Sandusky, a city official whom McDougal has been slamming in his columns, assaults him in a bar, saying that "his kids are scared to go to school," and asking for the reason he was so viciously attacked. McDougal simply replies, "You work for the city. It was your turn." While the movie never really concludes that particular subplot, it does show that it's important to always make sure that a journalist is wary of the amount and extent of damage their pieces can do.