The story of Broadcast News combines the elements of many romantic comedy love triangles while balancing it with an examination into the ethics and responsibility that journalists have towards their subjects and viewers. We watch the film's three main characters, Tom Grunick (William Hurt), Jane Craig (Holly Hunter), and Aaron Altman (Albert Brooks), as young people in school and at home, in a brief prelude, that introduces their character types to the audience. It's a thoughtful and creative way of establishing their personalities for the audience quickly and humorously so that when we meet them as adults, mere minutes later, we feel we already know them. Tom is in an auditorium listening to broadcast news associate producer Jane lecture a thoroughly disinterested audience. After they all leave, only Tom is left and he and Jane discuss their career ambitions. Tom, as it turns out, is being brought into the network Jane works for as a reporter and it isn't long before Aaron, the journeyman reporter already on the job, begins to view Tom with both jealousy and suspicion. It's not just that he doesn't trust Tom, either his intellect or talents, he feels betrayed that Jane doesn't view him the exact same way.
The movie goes on to examine the politics and ethics of broadcast journalism in a way only previously done with broad satire in the 1976 film Network. Here, though, the study is taken seriously, despite the romantic comedy underpinnings. The idea of news as entertainment, of reporters becoming a part of the story they're only supposed to be reporting, and ambition, as people replace those more talented than themselves or try to insert themselves into jobs they can't do, are all covered here. The issues at the center of Broadcast News may not seem as compelling today but the moral center of those issues is still as vital and necessary to understand now as it was then. It's not the specific event as much as the general issue of honesty that's important, and how much, or little, should be expected from a viewer when watching a broadcast. At what point does a reporter's dishonesty help to illuminate a story, at what point does it become the story, and at what point does it distort the facts beyond their capacity to inform? All issues still at the forefront of journalistic debate today.
The cast of Broadcast News is exemplary. William Hurt was already well known, and an Oscar winner, by the time he starred in Broadcast News. He had made his name in the 1980 sci-fi thriller and satire, Altered States, playing an obsessed scientist before becoming a star as a dim but sexually charged lawyer in Body Heat (1981), showing his ability to pivot between playing intellectual and carnal with ease. His role as the decidedly non-intellectual Tom is one in which Hurt effortlessly portrays a character both ambitious and innocent all at once. The world befuddles and confuses him on many levels but a natural talent for calm, steady reporting and a persistent optimism keep him ahead of the game while others lag behind. It's one of Hurt's finest performances.
Holly Hunter had barely made a name for herself by the time Broadcast News was released, having appeared in small roles in television and movies for the six years leading up to it, with one exception, Raising Arizona, released only months before this one. It was her first big lead and coupled with Broadcast News, made 1987 the year Holly Hunter went from obscurity to overnight stardom. She was nominated for Best Actress for her portrayal of a producer standing her ground on principle while others turn away. Later, she would win an Oscar herself for her great performance in The Piano (1993), but this performance may be the one most people will remember as her most complicated creation.
Finally, there is Albert Brooks, well known to anyone who had been paying attention to TV and offbeat comedy in the seventies and early eighties, but still relatively new to working strictly as an actor in other director's creations. He made his debut years before in Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976), but this movie was the one that earned him his first Oscar nomination, for Best Supporting Actor, for a performance that pretty much steals the show. The main thrust of the story may be the attraction and conflict between Tom and Jane, but it's Brooks' Aaron that drives the movie's moral center, pushing Jane towards a conclusion he knows will hurt her but one she must confront.
Broadcast News didn't win the Oscars that Terms of Endearment did but it has held up as a great examination of journalistic ethics. James L. Brooks would go on to more success, in both film and television, but never return to the cinematic world of broadcast journalism again. Perhaps this was his way of purging it from his system or perhaps, after years of working in it and writing about it, he said all he needed to say. He said it well enough that it still stands as one of the best comments on the business and one of the best movies of the eighties.
By Greg Ferrara
