Film Reviews

Page One: Inside The New York Times

• Rating:
• Director: Andrew Rossi
• Starring: David Carr
• Details: US / 92mins (16).

"It's a dangerous moment in American journalism." As readers turn to the internet for their news and with advertising following suit, major broadsheets are declaring bankruptcy in record numbers. Andrew Rossi's documentary, an unprecedented axis to the day-to-day inner workings of one of the world's most famous newspapers, explores how The New York Times is doing in the face of extinction.
Journalism is changing. How people are getting their news and who is giving it to them is changing. This raises concerns in the journalistic world: people are checking blogs, Facebook and Twitter for news but 'traditional' journalists claim that those posting news may not be qualified - the point that just because you've got internet access it doesn't make your opinion valid is raised - and may have an agenda. When it comes to war, you can tweet and blog, they say, but a thousand bloggers talking to each other is no substitute for someone, a trained journalist, on the ground. The New York Times believe this but according to bloggers, who are interviewed here, the newspaper giant is 'living in denial'.
Flitting about the offices of the paper, as more and more people are let go or have voluntarily left, Andrew Rossi's camera finds the charismatic and outspoken media and culture columnist David Carr, a former drug addict who discovered a career in journalism late in life. Carr has resisted the temptation to get on board with the likes of Twitter for some time – "why talk when you can tweet?" he asks sarcastically – but is now an advocate: "I can get today's news and how people are reacting to it while waiting in line at Starbucks." Carr reckons if papers go under, the iPad could be the saviour of informed journalism.
Time is given over the Wikileaks, with editor Julian Assange describing himself as 'a journalist and an activist' and Rossi draws parallels between the furore over the site's leaking of the Afghan War Diaries and The New York Times' coverage of the Pentagon Papers in 1971. Rossi doesn't find a difference between the two and the comparison highlights that times are evolving; by the close The New York Times team up with Wikileaks – there could be life in the old lady yet.
Don't go thinking that Page One is a love in, though. Time is given over to reporters Jason Blair and his fabrications and Judith Miller's wholesale buying of the war in Iraq (she appears here to apologise for the overwhelming support her column gave Bush).
Not so much 'a day in the life', although we get a little of that too, Page One is a snapshot of a newspaper fighting for survival but there's enough here to suggest it just might.

Review by Gavin Burke