Volume XX, Issue XII: Integrity in Journalism
Journalism’s Crisis of Candor
In 1939 Frank Capra made a film in which Jimmy Stewart portrays Jefferson Smith, a young Washington outsider who suddenly finds himself appointed to the United States Senate. Smith, unaccustomed to the ways of Washington, is accosted by reporters who quickly identify him (in their minds) as a dangerous incompetent. Sound familiar? When Smith see’s their ‘reporting’ the next day he goes after the reporters. Chasing them into the hallowed National Press Club he addresses them all: “Why don’t you tell the truth?” Diz Moore, one of the reporters, responds by quoting Pontius Pilate “What is Truth?” That Capra saw this as a problem to be reckoned with in 1939, in the midst of the Great Depression and on the eve of the great World War, is telling. We should probably not be so surprised that it is indeed an even greater problem in 2021.
Reporter Diz Moore, played by Thomas Mitchell who played Uncle Billy opposite Stewart in It’s A Wonderful Life, asks “What is Truth?”
