I was sharing with a friend the fundamental issues of ethics that were discussing in class and he mentioned a movie that he recently saw. I could not find that movie but I found two video clips from the 1981 movie, "Absence of Malice", with Sally Fields and Paul Newman.
In the first scence Fields is discussing with the newspaper's attorney if Newman could be classified as a public figure and if the paper could be sued if the story proved to be false. This reinforces what we have been discussing in class for the past two week.
Here is the YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SGe-IywHXg
The other is a courtroom scene when Fields is asked to describe how she came by the information she used in her story. It became a question of if she broke any ethical rules by reading a file that was left unattended on a District Attorney's desk. This reminded me of Professor Ryan's comment about the symbiontic relationship between the media and government agencies.
Here is the YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XV5JWOU7sqs
I look forward to reading your comments.
NB C-notes
14 years ago
1 comment:
Esthina, Great find! I think you're right, this movie relates really well to our class. Lots of relevant subject matter in both clips. In the first clip it shows the importance of newspapers having attorneys when a story gets sticky.
Sally Field as "Miss Carter," the reporter, has a telling conversation with the attorney, where he says, "Is he (the accused) a public figure? If I knew (what made him a public figure) I should be a judge. They never tell us till it's too late." The attorney then says that he'd be more comfortable if he (the accused) were a football coach or a movie star. "football coaches are very safe indeed." I don't understand the background for the "football coach or movie star" comment, but found the grey area of what constitutes a "public figure" really interesting considering our class lectures and conversations.
Thanks for sharing this. I'm looking forward to watching the whole thing, just reserved it from the library! :-)
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