In "Absence of Malice," Paul Newman angrily confronts reporter Sally Field over a damaging story she has written about him.

By Barbara Vancheri
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

It's no secret newspapers have fallen on hard times, given shrinking news holes and the rise of the Internet, bloggers and 24-hour cable channels. But darned if Halle Berry doesn't play an investigative reporter in "Perfect Stranger."

	Brandon Routh plays Clark Kent in "Superman Returns." Click photo for larger image. Related review 'Perfect Stranger'

In real life, a journalist who looked like Berry would be wooed by television. Still, newspapers have factored in films such as "The Front Page," "His Girl Friday," "Citizen Kane," "Call Northside 777," "Deadline U.S.A.," "Ace in the Hole" and "Teacher's Pet," to name a few.

A sampling of recent movies:

1. "Zodiac" (2007): A serial killer taunted cops and those who covered them in this dutiful retelling of the Zodiac killer who terrified the San Francisco Bay area. Jake Gyllenhaal's editorial cartoonist and Robert Downey Jr.'s crime reporter become obsessed with the case in different ways.

Accuracy: The newsroom mess was minimal, but the after-work drinking, late 1960s furnishings that included heavy metal desks and sight of a news meeting -- all white men, many in short-sleeved shirts -- were on the money.

2. "Superman Returns" (2006): Lois Lane is now a single mother, Clark Kent is back after a mysterious five-year absence, and the Daily Planet newsroom hums with the sound of TV newscasts. But Perry White insists three things still sell newspapers: tragedy, sex and Superman (or, today, Anna Nicole Smith).

Accuracy: Reporter as superhero. Happens all the time.

3. "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" (2004): This technological triumph placed actors, including Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow, against a blue screen and digitally created the 1939 universe around them. Law's ace aviator and Paltrow's dogged reporter are on the trail of disappearing scientists, flying robots and a plot that would spell Earth's doom.

Accuracy: In modern newsrooms, man vs. machine means getting the computer to cooperate when you're on deadline.

Naomi Watts stars as a newspaper reporter in the horror flicks "The Ring" and "The Ring Two." Click photo for larger image.

4. "The Ring" (2002): Naomi Watts is a Seattle newspaper reporter whose family is touched by tragedy when a 16-year-old dies after her heart inexplicably stops. When Watts hears about a videotape that spells death seven days later, she investigates this urban myth turned reality.

Accuracy: Much of the movie takes place outside the newsroom, but she uses her research skills, just as any gutsy, dogged reporter would. That part is not far-fetched.

5. "The Mothman Prophecies" (2002): Richard Gere is a Washington Post reporter in this movie inspired by eerie events preceding the 1967 collapse of a West Virginia bridge. The Post-Gazette played the D.C. newsroom and memos warned cast and crew: "Thanks to the journalists, we can make a better movie by having the opportunity to film their authentic messy desks. Please realize that there is an underlying logic -- if not genius -- to what appear to be piles of paper to your untrained eye."

Accuracy: The 8-foot winged man with glowing red eyes may or may not have been real, but the newsroom was.

6. "True Crime" (1999): Clint Eastwood is an alcoholic womanizer barely holding onto his job as an Oakland Tribune reporter. Assigned to interview a convicted murderer (Isaiah Washington) and cover his execution, he decides the man may be innocent and he's in a race against time.

	Robert Downey Jr. is a crime reporter in "Zodiac," based on real-life events. Click photo for larger image.

Accuracy: Sure, your average reporter can do in 12 hours what a trial and six years could not, although the Oscar-winning Eastwood has proven he can do anything, even translate Italian at the Academy Awards.

7. "The Paper" (1994) -- Ron Howard updates the screwball classics of old with this newspaper comedy-drama starring Michael Keaton as the harried metro editor of a New York tabloid. He has a serious caffeine habit, a pregnant wife, a job interview at a more prestigious paper, bosses who sacrificed lives for careers and crises at every turn.

Accuracy: Editors don't go out on the streets to track down stories, staffers don't typically carry guns, and we won't even address the fisticuffs that erupt. However, other details are delightfully on target, from the reporter constantly complaining about his chair to the nonstop jokes and workmen fixing the AC.

8. "Sleepless in Seattle" (1993): Meg Ryan is Annie Reed, a reporter for the Baltimore Sun who is engaged to the paper's associate publisher, a decent man who seems perfect ... until she hears a stranger on the radio on Christmas Eve. He is a widowed father, played by Tom Hanks, living in Seattle, in this romantic comedy.

Accuracy: Annie hires a detective, on the newspaper's dime, to track down information on her mystery man. That's not something reporters did, especially from their desks. Today, of course, she could just go to Google or Nexis.

Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford in "All the President's Men." Click photo for larger image.

9. "Absence of Malice" (1981) -- In this drama by former newspaperman turned screenwriter Kurt Luedtke, Sally Field is a Miami reporter manipulated into printing a damaging story about a wholesale liquor dealer (Paul Newman) who happens to be the son of a dead mobster. An innocent man is maligned by headlines about a federal investigation, a weepy woman with an airtight alibi for a friend must weigh the consequences of revealing it, and a reporter's career suddenly isn't so promising.

Accuracy: Field isn't kidding when she tells a distraught Melinda Dillon, "You're talking to a newspaper right now, do you understand?" Even if she doesn't, everyone else should appreciate how this movie serves as a cautionary tale about truth vs. accuracy, manipulation of the media and why reporters shouldn't fall for sources or information leaked to them.

10. "All the President's Men" (1976) -- Sleuthing out a scandal, bringing down a U.S. president, inspiring starry-eyed journalism students and then seeing Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman play you in the movies. Does it get any better than that for Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein? Everyone knew how this one was going to end, but it was fascinating to the final frame.

Accuracy: Hal Holbrook made a better Deep Throat than W. Mark Felt, the real secret source ... but other than that, we bought it.

Bonus pick: "Never Been Kissed" (1999): Drew Barrymore plays the youngest copy editor at the Chicago Sun-Times, a distinction that merits the 25-year-old an office, an assistant and an undercover assignment at a high school where she falls for an English teacher played by Michael Vartan.

Accuracy: Copy editors may be the real Supermen and Superwomen of newsrooms but they never have offices, assistants or undercover gigs, especially ones that require them to be outfitted with tiny hidden cameras. That could give a whole new meaning to the idea of "Grammar Police," though.