Film 32 - Ace In The Hole

Yesterday the journalism department at my uni (Sheffield) organised  a showing of the film for all the first year students in the department, and I'm very glad I was forced to go.

I don't usually like old films (Casablanca aside) but this story of a journalist willing to do anything for a story really resonated with me and I'd just like to C&P the comment I posted on the blog of the department, as it pretty well sums up my view:

It seems a common view these days that journalism is dying and isn't what it used to be, but if what is portrayed in Ace In The Hole is reasonably accurate; journalism has always had its good and bad side. The case can be argued that Chuck Tatum has a lot in common with the protagonists of the News of the World phone-hacking scandal. In both cases the journalist or journalists would do anything they had to, in order to get a story. In many ways the phone-hacking was of a far less serious nature than what Tatum did, blackmailing corrupt officials and getting a man killed, but the general face of journalism hasn't changed, there have always been reporters willing to break the law and act unethically to get a story and there always will be. The only difference seems to be that the methods have changed, and in many ways have got more sophisticated.