September 5 (Fenbaum, 2024)

I admired and respected September 5 as a work of art, but I confess that my interpretation of it seemed so out of step with those I saw it with and the advance reviews I read about it that I was left feeling someone must be praising it for all the wrong reasons.

I heard from the Q&A with a local journalist at my community screening of the film that the subject matter is important, and I agree. The ABC coverage of the terrorist attacks at the 1972 Munich Olympics was a pivotal moment in American journalism. Gradually, then all at once, we went from a world that mostly received news once a day, carefully curated and prepared in advance, to one that preferred “you are there” immediacy. At the time of Munich, we had not quite arrived at the 24/7 news cycle where everything — war, hostage negotiations, Bronco chases, trials — was followed in real-time. But by the end of the same decade, the same Network would introduce “America Held Hostage” to expand nightly news from evening to late night when covering the ongoing story of American hostages in Iran. (Full disclosure: my family was a part of that story, so my perspective on how journalists cover crises is informed by personal experience.) That show evolved into Nightline, and a year later (1980) CNN was launched. Not everyone had cable, but those who did had news anytime and all the time.

I agree that the topic of the film is an important one, but I disagree with the interpretations of the film that it illustrates that the sports crew rose to the challenge or even just did an admirable (or adequate) job given that they were the first crew to confront some of the issues of journalistic ethics that are now common discussion fodder for any undergraduate course in mass media. The archival reports from Peter Jennings and Howard Cosell are cringe-worthy in the way those correspondents describe the hostage situation as if it were a sporting event — predictions, color commentary, metaphors. After a brief discussion of adjectives, the newsroom comes to the consensus that to call the attackers “terrorists’ is too biased and political even though, well, they meet the legal definition and refusing to apply it means they are being biased in another direction. The German police, furious that a potential raid may have been thwarted by the cameras broadcasting live where and how armed police were approaching the room where the hostages were being held, demanded that the crew turn off the live feeds of the Olympic compound. At first the newsroom complies, but then the team almost immediately turn the cameras back on–driven not by journalistic principles but fear of getting scooped or losing ratings. And, of course, in the key moment of the film, Geoffrey Mason (John Magaro) commits the firable offense of telling his anchor to report that the hostages have been freed even though they don’t have official or reliable confirmation.

That information turned out to be wrong, and it is both to the film’s credit and detriment that it has the participants recognize the error of their conduct but largely refuse to think about the harm it caused in anything other than reputational terms. If the screenplay had been written by, say, Aaron Sorkin (and really I feel like the film’s themes were more highly developed in Season 3 of The Newsroom) we might have gotten more than the journalists breaking out drinks to celebrate and then sheepishly putting their bottles away — we might have gotten families of the hostages rejoicing at their loved ones’ deliverance, only to be all the more devastated to find out that, no, sorry, they are all dead. Didn’t mean to get your hopes up.

In short, this isn’t really a story about professionals in uncharted territory rising to the occasion. At nearly every turn, they mess up, mostly because they put corporate profits and personal ambition above principles. That being said, I am less interested in whether modern critics or viewers misread the film than whether the film misreads the event. A credible case can be made that the film is actually critiquing the journalists, not merely for making understandable mistakes but also for refusing to acknowledge and learn from those mistakes.

At the end of the day, Mason tells his German colleague that she did a great job and she shrugs it off. Once again innocent people died on German soil. In the face of that, personal and professional accolades seem insignificant to her. Mason, in turn, is reassured by Roone Arledge (Peter Sarsgarrd) that even though “it may not feel like it,” Mason did good work. Sure, the most important decision he made was wrong, causing avoidable and unimaginable pain to those who took ABC’s word that what they were reporting as fact was true, but ratings went up, bosses were pleased, and Mason had capitalized on a golden opportunity to advance his career.

If I could convince myself that the movie was consciously attempting to criticize the journalists and that it was ironically commenting on their refusal to trust the audience to respect facts over immediate sensation by trusting its own audience to evaluate the story it has just seen, I would be higher on the film than I am. If this was like The Big Short or The Report or Spotlight or even Bombshell … if it were a movie that was unequivocably about systemic failures rather than just personal ones, I’d be putting it much higher in my awards predictions than I am.

But I am just not convinced the film is consciously making that argument. I have a nagging feeling that it wants to have its cake and eat it too. That it wants to praise journalists for eventually catching up with the changes in technology that altered the way we consume news without ever asking why it took so long to do so. That it wants to praise individuals with high degrees of professional and personal integrity without ever stopping to ask why they are the exceptions rather than the rule. Ethics and integrity are praised on a personal level, but the industry doesn’t appear to be one (at least as depicted in the film) where violating them has any negative personal or professional consequences.

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Postscript: Since I mentioned in this review my experience of being part of a news story (The Iran Hostage Crisis) that prompted a lot of media coverage, I would like to add on a personal note that the film made me reflect on that experience. It gave me occasion, not for the first time, to be thankful that those journalists who covered my family and interacted with me were, with few exceptions, models of professionalism and integrity. I will always be thankful that while my personal trauma unfolded, it was covered by men and women who, while imperfect, always strove to balance the competitive drive to “get the story” with the human compassion to consider how their decisions impacted a thirteen-year-old going through a year-long nightmare. If my personal experiences trigger me to get angry when I see (or think I see) lazy, selfish, or manipulative journalists, they also remind me to be grateful for those journalists who do rise to the occasion. Forty-some years later, I don’t remember which of “the Morefield Press Corps” (as we so drolly called them) broke which developments first. But I absolutely remember which — and yes, I could tell, even at thirteen years of age — looked on me as a means to an end and which cared about me as a person. Journalists past and present who might be reading this, may you have ears to hear.