A movie tradition of love and hate

In an edited extract from his book Journalists in Film, Brian McNair, professor of journalism and communication at Strathclyde University, points out that cinema has played a key role in how journalists are perceived. He writes: 'The movies perpetuate stereotypes of journalists which are stupid and crass (and why not? Some journalism is certainly possessed of those qualities), but they also contain sophisticated, often radical critiques of how the media work, and of how they relate to political and financial power.'