Five great movies about newspapers

HIS GIRL FRIDAY (1940) Witty and wise screwball comedy starring Cary Grant as a hardboiled tabloid editor who schemes to prevent his star reporter and ex-wife Rosaland Russell from getting married. A classic.

CITIZEN KANE (1941) Orson Welles’ epic account of a fictional newspaper baron’s life was inspired by the exploits of media mogul Randolph Hearst and is built around a reporter’s efforts to find out who Charles Foster Kane really was.

WOMAN OF THE YEAR (1942) The first of nine films Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn made together, George Stevens’ sparkling comedy tells the story of two writers who fall in love. She’s an intellectual columnist, he’s a sports reporter, and they don’t see eye to eye.

ACE IN THE HOLE (1951) If you take a dim view of journalists, your worst prejudices will be confirmed by Billy Wilder’s hard-hitting classic, which stars Kirk Douglas as an unscrupulous reporter who delays the rescue of a man trapped in a desert cave so he can fully capitalise on the story.

SPOTLIGHT (2015) Tom McCarthy’s perfectly judged drama is based on the Boston Globe’s exposure of decades of clerical abuse. Michael Keaton plays ‘Robby’ Robinson, the Globe editor who oversaw an arduous investigation that faced resistance at every turn.