A powerful reminder of the need for a free press
For anyone interested in the often fraught relationship between politics and the media, Reporting Trump’s First Year: The Fourth Estate (BBC Two) was a big draw. Documentaries exploring the internal workings of newspapers are nothing new but Liz Garbus’s series about The New York Times promised particularly rich pickings, capturing the embattled mood at the newspaper during the USA’S most turbulent political period in living memory.
Garbus, a two-time Emmy-winning documentary maker, was embedded with the Times at its Manhattan HQ and at its critically important Washington outpost for 16 eventful months. The opening shots dropped us straight into the action, with senior news editors in New York watching Donald Trump’s inauguration address and liaising with the Washington Bureau on exactly what editorial response to make.
“It’s going to be hard but it’s a great story,” said executive editor Dean Baquet in the opening episode’s only moment of understatement. It covered Trump’s first three months in office – when just about all the traditional rules of presidential behaviour (not to mention various members of Trump’s top team) were shredded on a daily basis.
As such, in terms of depicting the extraordinarily feverish pace of life in the modern media (where seconds can make the difference between a major scoop and a busted flush), the cut and thrust of dealing with an openly hostile president (repeatedly calling the US news media “the enemy of the people”) with little or no regard for that holiest of high journalistic virtues, the truth, Garbus delivered on that promise. In particular, the key role of the press in flagging up the Trump campaign’s links to Russia loomed very large indeed.
But there was also something missing in Garbus’s account: any sense that a newspaper is made for readers, or anyone other than journalists and wonks, for instance. Or that those working for it might have political agendas of their own.
Certainly, this opening episode was far from the greatest portrait of a newspaper ever made. But as a snapshot of how politics is evolving, of how Trump-style populism cynically sets out to erode public confidence in the media’s role as a holder-to-account of politicians and the powerful, it was breathtakingly effective in reminding us of the crucial role of a strong, free press in any truly democratic society.
Much as I enjoy Poldark (BBC One), three episodes into this fourth series and I’m finding myself a a little bored. It’s not for lack of incident. Already we’ve had so much: all the usual love wrangles between Ross (Aidan Turner) and Demelza (Eleanor Tomlinson), the death of a major character, a courtroom drama and a thumping political victory against George “Boo! Hiss!” Warleggan (Jack Farthing). Yet it still feels sketchy and underdeveloped – as if we’re stuck in the early stages of a jigsaw puzzle with lots of pieces scattered about, but no coherent picture yet emerging.
“Everything will change,” said Ross last week, following his election win. And with an opening scene that last night saw him racing, not across those familiar Cornish clifftops but over the cobbled streets of Georgian London to the House of Commons, it looked like that might actually happen. But no sooner did he get there – a few snatched scenes of him making suitably heroic anti-slavery speeches, and manfully resisting rapacious London ladies of the night – than he was back again in Nampara, a looming crisis in his tin mine drawing him home. Despite all the pretty plantbased footage of winter melting into spring and on into summer, it hardly felt like he’d been away.
It was left to other characters to pull us onward. Naughty George was plotting to buy his way back into parliament, via a character so rotten even his name was snake-like: Monk Adderley (Max Bennett). And, speaking of reptiles, that pioneering footfetishist Rev Whitworth (Christian Brassington), when not getting sweaty at the sight of his sister-in-law’s socks, was betraying a deathbed confession that will likely come to haunt our hero. But not yet.
Even the ray of light that was the birth of the Enys’s daughter looked in danger of being extinguished as soon as it was lit, Dr Dwight’s (Luke Norris) dark looks and repeatedly furrowed brow indicating something amiss. Like much else in this episode it didn’t so much tantalise as inspire a frustrated wish that one – any one – of the multitudinous storylines being hurled at us would take firm hold and deliver some of that proper Poldark gutwrenching drama.
Reporting Trump ’s First Year: The Fourth Estate Poldark