Why I love inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism cinema

Over the decades, cin­e­ma has carved many nich­es even with­in beloved gen­res. Under the wider umbrel­la of hor­ror you might find a slash­er or a super­nat­ur­al film, while a com­e­dy might be ​‘black’ or ​‘screw­ball’ in nature. You could even refer to the Matthew McConaugh­ey rom-com sub­genre, or the Sean Bean screen death canon. But there is one sur­pris­ing­ly rich niche genre that deserves the spot­light, so to speak: inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism cinema.

Films like Spot­light, All The President’s Men, She Said, The Post, Zodi­ac, Good Night, and Good Luck – and to some extent even Dark Waters and The Insid­er – have such a com­pelling nar­ra­tive embed­ded with­in them, you can­not help but care for the caus­es they high­light. Even when they’re not always the most pleas­ant peo­ple, you’re like­ly to root for these intre­pid reporters – and some­times lawyers – to get to the bot­tom of the sto­ry (par­tic­u­lar­ly if they’re played by Mark Ruffalo).

Inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism films have had quite an impact on me per­son­al­ly. I decid­ed I want­ed to be a jour­nal­ist after see­ing Spot­light. There is some­thing grip­ping about watch­ing reporters fig­ure things out pure­ly with guts and the desire to uncov­er the truth. No flashed police badges or guns point­ed – just vigour and a need to tell an impor­tant sto­ry no mat­ter what.

There is a psy­cho­log­i­cal rea­son why inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism films res­onate with us so much: they pro­vide hope that the good guys will pre­vail and that jus­tice will be served, even if it doesn’t seem like it. Den­nis Relo­jo-How­ell, the man­ag­ing direc­tor of Psy­chreg, explains why we’re so drawn to them: ​“Peo­ple are drawn to inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism movies for sev­er­al rea­sons. One pos­si­ble expla­na­tion is that humans have a nat­ur­al curios­i­ty about the world around them and enjoy uncov­er­ing hid­den truths. Inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism movies tap into this desire to learn and under­stand more about a top­ic or event,” he says. ​“Addi­tion­al­ly, inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism movies often fea­ture com­pelling char­ac­ters who are dri­ven by a sense of pur­pose and a desire to seek the truth. These char­ac­ters may embody traits that we admire, such as intel­li­gence, courage, and deter­mi­na­tion, and we become invest­ed in their jour­ney to uncov­er the truth,” he adds.

Anoth­er rea­son these sto­ries prove so pop­u­lar is that they claim to tell us ​“the truth” about a big news piece from his­to­ry in a com­pelling, nar­ra­tive dri­ven for­mat, free of any pub­lic dis­course — which is often filled with a lot of conjecture.

“I think there are two ele­ments which have con­verged over the last few years in our love for sto­ries and in inter­na­tion­al pol­i­tics. And the kind of sto­ries we love changes over time, and I think can be traced to what is going on in soci­ety,” explains Jon­ny Persey, film pro­duc­er and direc­tor at Met­Film School. ​“Over the years, I’ve noticed how we have turned the news from a staid report­ing of events into nar­ra­tive-dri­ven sto­ries, often episod­ic. And I think the resur­gence of inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism in the movies is a com­bi­na­tion of that dri­ve for sto­ry and the search for truth as a response to the appar­ent lack of it in pub­lic discourse.”

Inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism movies often deal with impor­tant social and polit­i­cal issues or events, such as cor­rup­tion, injus­tice, or gov­ern­ment cov­er-ups. Dark Waters takes us through the work of a lawyer as he uncov­ers how DuPont was respon­si­ble for pol­lut­ing drink­ing water with life threat­en­ing chem­i­cals that caused mul­ti­ple deaths in West Vir­ginia. The Post and All The President’s Men detail how the Pen­ta­gon papers and the Water­gate scan­dal unfold­ed respec­tive­ly under the Nixon admin­is­tra­tion. These issues often evoke strong emo­tions and opin­ions, and pro­vide a plat­form for dis­cussing and explor­ing these topics.

A lot of the time, inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism films high­light issues the gen­er­al or glob­al pub­lic may not be aware of. I had no idea about the DuPont deaths until I watched the film, and sub­se­quent­ly read the New York Times arti­cle that Todd Haynes’ Dark Waters was based on. Sim­i­lar­ly, it wasn’t until I saw Spot­light that I knew any­thing about the mass-scale abuse going on in the Catholic church.

How­ev­er, it is impor­tant to note that these films are enter­tain­ment first, and there­fore may not always be a pure reflec­tion of the truth. For exam­ple, when Boston Stran­gler was released ear­ly this year, the end cred­its fea­ture a nota­tion that the con­vict­ed mur­der­er, George Nas­sar, was still in prison in Mass­a­chu­setts. The real­i­ty is that Nas­sar died in prison in 2018. When you see a drama­ti­sa­tion of real life events on the big screen, it’s always good prac­tice to look things up after to see where the facts may have been embellished.

Anoth­er com­pelling ele­ment of inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism films is the his­tor­i­cal aspect. When you watch All The President’s Men (or even read the book for that mat­ter), you are tak­en behind the scenes of how two jour­nal­ists risk every­thing they have in the pur­suit of the truth. You see how Bob Wood­ward and Carl Bern­stein worked togeth­er, gath­er­ing intel and scour­ing through hun­dreds of leads and dead ends, in order to be able to report on some­thing big­ger than they ever imag­ined. In this respect, these films bring audi­ences clos­er to events that shaped our world.

When­ev­er a film­mak­er makes a film about inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism, it usu­al­ly coin­cides with a poignant time in mod­ern human his­to­ry. She Said, a film about the jour­nal­ists who uncov­ered the sex­u­al abuse alle­ga­tions against Har­vey Wein­stein, came out on the heels of the #MeToo move­ment and the Depp-Heard tri­al, while Steven Spielberg’s The Post was released in the­atres, as the world was neck deep into the throes of the Trump admin­is­tra­tion. In an inter­view with The Guardian at the time, Spiel­berg explained the urgency behind want­i­ng to make the film: ​“The lev­el of urgency to make the movie was because of the cur­rent cli­mate of this admin­is­tra­tion, bom­bard­ing the press and labelling the truth as fake if it suit­ed them.”

These films also high­light just how time con­sum­ing jour­nal­ism is. Often­times, the gen­er­al pub­lic fails to acknowl­edge the amount of hours, months and some­times years that go into report­ing a sto­ry — most­ly due to the fact that they nev­er see it hap­pen. Spot­light in par­tic­u­lar does a good job of con­vey­ing this grind, while Zodi­ac being set over decades high­lights how those obsessed with solv­ing the case alien­at­ed peo­ple around them.

To watch Mark Ruffalo’s Mark Rezen­des give an impas­sioned speech about why it is nec­es­sary to expose the wrong­do­ings of the Catholic church in Spot­light, or Meryl Streep’s Kather­ine Gra­ham stand by her reporter Ben Bradlee (Tom Han­ks) in The Post, or David Strathairn’s Edward Mur­row tell the pub­lic about the impor­tance of broad­cast jour­nal­ism in Good Night, And Good Luck evokes an emo­tion only this genre of cin­e­ma can manage.

Many films show us the tri­umph of good ver­sus evil. The entire ethos of the super­hero genre is to see the Iron Mans and Cap­tain Amer­i­c­as of the world win against the bad guys – but the fact that the pro­tag­o­nists of inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism movies are ordi­nary peo­ple with­out any super­pow­ers is part of what makes these films so com­pelling. No super­hero film can mim­ic the sus­pense and the fear of lis­ten­ing to Kather­ine Gra­ham make the deci­sion to print more of the Pen­ta­gon papers in The Post even when every oth­er per­son in the room is telling her not to. The stakes feel high­er in these films – deal­ing in real sto­ries about real peo­ple who have shaped our world, they com­bine a his­to­ry les­son with ele­ments of the polit­i­cal thriller and mys­tery genre to cre­ate a hybrid that is both enter­tain­ing and inspiring.

As a jour­nal­ist, every time I suf­fer burnout or am over­whelmed by the volatil­i­ty of this indus­try as a whole, a good rewatch of Spot­light nev­er fails to restore my faith in this career choice, and remind me why I fell in love with the pro­fes­sion in the first place. No mat­ter how many times I watch them, I get the same kind of rush, and the same feel­ing of hope that in the end, jus­tice will pre­vail, no mat­ter how hard it may seem at the start.