Broadcast News (1987) has always been my favorite James L. Brooks movie. I love the characters, the wit, and the commentary on journalistic ethics. Brooks can get sentimental but, in this film anyway, never saccharine. Watching Broadcast News is like visiting old friends. I especially love the relationship between Jane (Holly Hunter) and Aaron (Albert Brooks). Their friendship has always been relatable to me.
Brooks’ films all deal with neurotics of one kind or another. In Broadcast News the characters’ feelings of inadequacy and self-loathing go hand in hand with a perfectionism that I always felt a kinship with. No matter how good a job Jane does she always feels like it could have been better. These are very human, very contradictory characters. These characters feel like people one could actually meet. That’s the most relatable aspect of the entire film for me.
But beyond my own subjective feelings regarding Broadcast News the film has something very important to say about journalism. Now more than ever the issue of ethics and objectivity feel relevant. Biased journalism forms the majority of our country’s social and political discourse which is terrifying. The “devil” that Tom (William Hurt) represents has come and taken over the news as we know it.
Brooks’ commentary on journalistic ethics is akin to Frank Capra’s indictment of political corruption in Mr. Smith Goes To Washington (1939). Both films address very real threats to American democracy in the idiom of the romantic comedy. Somehow it works. These films get us thinking about what has gone wrong with our country while reassuring us that things can change for the better. There are Mr. Smiths and Janes out in the world dedicated to preserving our way of life.
The idealism at work in Broadcast News makes the film hopeful. It is this hopefulness coupled with the complex characters that solidified Broadcast News as a classic film. It possesses a very real urgency that forms the subtext of a first class workplace romantic comedy. It’s a balancing act that not even James L. Brooks has managed to replicate.
