The tears I'm referring to here, you'll be relieved to know, are not those that caused such a flurry of crazed misogynist prognosticating among certain hurricane-volume pundits in the last days of the New Hampshire Primary. No, I have little wisdom to add to that particular instance of soundbite politics, of the seismic short-term memory of the news cycle.
No, what I'm referring to here is a different set of tears. Twenty years ago, the hit film Broadcast News made waves with its literate screenplay and its quirky treatment of a love triangle between a dumb, charismatic anchor (played by William Hurt), a driven, intrepid producer (Holly Hunter), and a seasoned, substantive, and unmarketable reporter played by Al Brooks.
In my bid to catch up with a number of bad-80s movies, which always make me feel strangely comforted and nostalgic, I finally got around to seeing Broadcast News this week. I found the writing annoyingly self-impressed, as if Beltway reporters watched nothing but Whit Stillman movies in their spare time; the soundtrack was cloying treacle. However, the movie was prescient about the changing priorities of the network newsroom, as I will discuss below.
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