The Washington Post recently spoke with journalists, including Bob Woodward & Carl Bernstein, Fareed Zakaria and Katie Courtic, about how various films have depicted reporting.
MSNBC’s Hardball anchor Chris Matthews offered his take on Orson Welles landmark 1941 film, Citizen Kane. Here is what Matthews had to say:
“After two years in the Peace Corps in Africa, I flew home on one of those old jumbo jets. For some reason, the plane was spookily empty, and a classic film was on the big bulkhead screen in coach class: Citizen Kane.
Premonition? You decide.
In 1887, William Randolph Hearst became publisher of the San Francisco Examiner, where he started his swashbuckling, empire-building career in newspapers.
It was Citizen Kane that elevated the early Hearst enterprise to heroic stature. “I think it would be fun to run a newspaper!” said Orson Welles, as the grand young Kane.
My own connection to the Citizen Kane story came in 1987. Years after that flight, and a neat hundred years after the first Hearst took charge of the Examiner, William “Will” Randolph Hearst III took me on as its Washington bureau chief and national columnist.
Much of the zest of Citizen Kane remained. What drives daily print journalism isn’t the money, it’s the love of the job.
It’s easily overlooked that Citizen Kane is not just a movie about a journalist. It’s also a work of journalism itself. Its entire plot is the effort by editors and reporters to track down what made men like Hearst tick.
Why would a man with all the money in the world want to spend it on newspapering? Is it simply about wanting to be loved?
Orson Welles, the film’s brilliant creator, thought so.”
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