"The Paper" Review and Reflection

James Cornelison
jc077713@ohio.edu

Almost immediately, a common theme that's evident in Ron Howard's "The Paper" is the blurring of lines between personal and professional choices. The film follows editor Henry Hackett as he navigates his life, his marriage, and his career seamlessly. After a police investigation begins with sensational information and the potential to impact the lives of everyone involved, the audience gets to watch a newsroom full of journalists balance ethical reporting with ethical decision making and ethical communicating.

In other professions, workers may not be quite as invested personally in the outcome of their work. It is a means to an end. For the average specialist working from 9-5 on an assembly line, or in a factory, or in a cubicle, the culture of the company is such that inspires quotes like "Don't bring your work home with you." However, in this environment, it's hard to determine what is a decision made with people in mind and what's a decision made with workplace advancement in mind. And it's virtually impossible to make those decisions impartial to all the variables involved.

In the beginning a conflict is introduced that could have been central to the film, but it is unexpectedly resolved about halfway through. The conflict is a job offer by a larger, more prestigious newspaper. Clearly this discernment would require both personal and professional considerations in a lot of industries, but the reasoning here is not as distinct. Parallels of this conflict are numerous throughout the film. If the overarching conflict is between work and home, work is winning decisively.

There's also another theme in this film that is more subtle but also more important:The blurring of lines between entertainment and actionable news content. Whatever the editors decide about the headline of the paper will be significant in shaping public opinion and maybe even courtroom sentiment. The protagonist says repeatedly in as many words what is at stake. When papers such as Hackett's are given an amount of credibility, a headline, an implication, or a data point can be the difference between a guilty or non guilty verdict. Hackett is undoubtedly aware of this and therefore careful about what he decides to utilize. Even we, as consumers and civil servants let journalism impact our personal and interpersonal relationships.

So with all the conflicts and different variations of the same conflicts involved in this movie, it provides a good exhibition of the inner struggles and considerations journalists and other communication professionals will one day have to face. Hopefully, despite its fiction, we can all learn from the mistakes of these characters and use those lessons to build a foundation of ethical behavior. This foundation will not only protect our career, but it will protect our personal lives from the demands of the workplace.

Blurred lines and personal investment can certainly be a good thing. It means you take pride in your work, in means you enjoy it enough to contribute in your own time, but we should be cautious not to let either aspect of those decisions drastically overpower other aspects enough to impact decisions at our own expense.