With only six shows in Season 1, the penultimate show just aired and really gets down to the business of smear, spinning and the real-life consequences felt by those who wind up on Page 1 of a tabloid screaming about their life.
The sex hookups are out of way: Holly (Charlotte Riley, above) with a rival reporter from The Post, Ed; Peter and Amina, Deputy Editor and Editor-in-Chief at The Herald. Holly has switched sides and joined The Post, upset at the inertia of covering stories at the financially weak, and somewhat seedy offices of The Herald. There are mouse traps in the hallways.
Holly's been lured by the editor at The Post, Duncan Allen, a man for whom the truth means whatever he says it is. He's been quoted as saying, "I decide what the readers are interested in. They have no idea." He's been trying to get her to join the staff by sending presents, (e.g. a laptop) but Holly has so far just returned then.
Thoroughly pissed at The Herald, Holly solicits and gets an offer from Duncan that she feels is good enough to jump ship. For her first day on the job she changes her appearance from a jean-wearing, ponytail, graduate uni-look, to that of a more attractive woman, wearing her hair down, applying some makeup, and even going so far as to wear a skirt, a surprise ensemble that startles her former colleague at The Herald when he sees her heading from the plaza coffee cart that sits between the two buildings and strides over to the rival's offices.
Everything about The Post exudes success. The building is nice, the lobby is nicer, the elevator is probably even better; the hallways don't have mouse traps set out. But Holly is not about creature comforts and "looks" she is about the story.
Having snared Holly to come work for him Duncan hardly fawns over her. He tries to exclude her from the morning meeting of senior writers and editors, despite her status as a "special correspondent" who reports directly to him. He rebuffs her initial story idea and instead tells her his agenda. Well, he is after all the boss.
Holly is no puff piece, and she walks into the meeting anyway. Duncan is setting out the turf for the continued coverage of a 17 year-old kid whose social skills are zero and who put three kids in the hospital at school.
Holly feels the story has exhausted itself. She's not asked, she just says so. She makes unwanted suggestions on the coverage, "look into the lad's background, upbringing" and gets others in the group to agree with her, even the Deputy Editor. Duncan pulls her aside and strands on the outside of the office door, goes back in and continues to hammer away at what's needed: More Page 1 treatment of the "monster."
Holly has been shown her desk, or actually a work-space by Duncan's assistant, (Holly is "sorted"). And she does rate. She's not positioned near the toilets, and has natural lighting at her back. If she turns, she has a view, apparently not a common accommodation in the warrens of modern office space.
Duncan has given Holly a napkin he's pulled out of his office safe where the bombshell stories might come from. The napkin has one word on it, "Resonance" and some numbers. Holly asks what does it mean, and Duncan tells her that's her job to find out. Duncan's been given the napkin by someone at one of those "boozy" lunches Fleet Street is supposedly famous for.
Meanwhile, the office become transfixed with the televised news that the 17 year-old lad, the bully, has committed suicide, likely caused by being depressed at how he's been smeared over the newspaper as someone who might be sub-human.
Holly was right. The Post had already gone too far. Now what does Duncan do? His coverage is going to be the story since the kid offed himself while staring at the front page story on his iPad of himself with blurred photos of giving the press the finger as they scrummed at his front door.
Duncan is at a loss for how the paper should react to the suicide. An apology is out of the question. Holly, again not asked, offers Duncan what apparently they call on Fleet Street the "reverse ferret" strategy.
Internet to the rescue: Reverse ferret is a phrase "used predominately within the British media to describe a sudden reversal in an organization's editorial line on a certain issue [volte-face]—and generally, this will involve no acknowledgement of the previous position." In other words, having it both ways.
Rupert Murdoch's reversal on telephone hacking in the wake of being caught at it in the phone hacking scandal of messages on the phones of the Royals is offered as a prime example of "reverse ferret."
Duncan's "reverse ferret" consists of the paper taking a stand against bullying; start an anti-bullying campaign; get the boy's mother to join the paper and come out against bullying. This isn't what Holly had in mind when she suggested a "reverse ferret" to Duncan. But it is what Duncan has in mind.
The Post camps out at the mother's door, gets her on Skype after a reporter offers her £5,000 to read/recite a statement The Post has crafted for her to come out against bullying. Her son as well was a victim of bullying. Duncan has spun, and Holly wants to vomit.
As all the hub bub is swirling around the "bully monster" story, Holly has brought in a Syrian refugee who has a story of tremendous atrocities committed in Syria. The young male adult would like £5,000 to tell the story. It is a whopper.
Duncan has insisted that he met the individual before paying for a story. The fellow gets impatient waiting to see Duncan, and just plain leaves.
In what has to be perhaps the shortest time on record for being a Post employee, Holly disappears and strides back over to The Post and asks for her job back. Amina has just announced to the staff that they're going to be a free paper, wrapped in advertising, there will be some online access, but they are building a paywall on a subscription basis. They are going to be different.
Holly doesn't beg, but she apologizes for harsh words on leaving. Amina tells her she should have always been a reporter, and that she'll in effect be one The Herald.
Absent any "no disclosure agreements" being in effect, Holly gets to tell Amina and the Deputy Editor about the napkin fetched from the safe by Duncan. In an earlier episode, it just so happens that a colleague at The Herald, James Edwards, has met with a source from MI5 who cryptically sat in a car and merely mentioned the word "resonance" to him. No more details than that. Now, through the short speech by Duncan, Holly has been told "Resonance" could be very embarrassing to the Prime Minister. (It doesn't matter which Prime Minister. Just the PM) Obviously, there's a story here somewhere.
Now we have the title of the last episode: Resonance. Coming attractions give an indication that Holly and Duncan might face off somewhere in court? Will "resonance" prove to be connected to the Syrian's story? At the close of Episode 5, Holly has tracked the refugee down and offered an advance from her own money, plus the remainder of the £5,000 from her own funds when the story breaks—at The Herald, of course.
---------------------------------------------
Well, the sixth and final episode of what I hope will be more seasons has aired: Resonance.
The MI5 source about the highly confidential program has come out, met with the reporters at The Herald, and given them enough information that it is necessary for them to offer him safe passage to Ecuador. He's got to get out of the country. He is after all violating the Official Secrets Act and could be thrown in prison. He's sacrificing a lot by offering information.
Ecuador. If any of the plot lines in 'The Press' resemble the NSA, WikiLeaks, Harvey Weinstein, Joel Epstein, Edward Snowden and the sequestering in the Ecuadorian Embassy, you wouldn't be wrong. Don't the British have their own homegrown problems? I guess they're staying away from The Royals.
Nevermind. A good story is a good story, even if it shows that the U.S. and the U.K. are two countries with more in common than a common language with different pronunciations.
The Resonance program is a version of our NSA private citizen spying revelation where any device in a person's home or hand can be turned into an active wiretap—without a warrant. The program has anti-terrorism on its mind, but does it stop there?
The guy who really knows everything in these episodes in George Emmerson, the Rupert Murdoch portrayal who has incredible sources. He tells Duncan that The Herald is doing the story on Resonance.
Holly at The Herald at the same time is preparing a Duncan Allen take-down piece that will be her revenge for watching Duncan turn troubled young man in a suicide victim because of the incredible press coverage of his bullying. Okay, he put three kids in the hospital, but the coverage was over the top by Holly's standards. And the reverse ferret tactic smelled as bad a skunk.
Holly and Duncan met—twice—in the Journalist's Church, a real-life church, built in 1672, designed by Christopher Wren, named St. Bride's. It is located on Fleet Street in the City of London and has been the sendoff place for many press and media types over the years. There are plaques on the walls. It is the Westminster Abbey for scribes.
Holy and Duncan met there for Holly to tell Duncan about the take-down piece. It is going to be a torpedo, concentrating on Duncan's more than aggressive manner in telling a story, his tax returns, his dysfunctional family life, his paid to live-in escort Krystyna, a statuesque Russian or Serbian blonde who looks as if she made her country's Olympic team throwing the discus, and who could easily satisfy any man no matter what their stamina is. She is the gift that keeps giving.
Journalist's Church. The British. Full of history and tradition. I don't know of any American equivalent other than St. Peter's Roman Catholic Church on Church and Barclay in Lower Manhattan, two blocks north of the Trade Center.
The Church Street side of the church now has a piece of steel that resembles a cross from the World Trade Center ruins. There is also a plaque honoring the newsboys, the "newsies" who hawked newspapers for pennies at the turn of the 18th and 19th century. These ragamuffins were the unwashed kids who lived in squalor in the Lower East side.
These kids actually went on strike in 1899 and convinced the major newspaper publishers, William Randolf Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, to buy back the unsold papers from the bundles they bought for 85¢. The closest New York ever had to a Fleet Street was Printing House Square, near City Hall and the Brooklyn Bridge where several newspapers had their buildings.
Duncan has learned the whereabouts of the whistleblower and threatens to get him arrested if The Herald goes ahead with their story. He knows they're going to try and get him out of the country.
Duncan has been promised a massive promotion to editor-in chief of all of George Emmerson's media holdings, huge amounts of money to help him counter the nasty divorce he's going through, a football field-size office, and the undying love of Emmerson if he can get The Herald's story killed.
Duncan offers Holly that he won't call the police in and get the source arrested for violation of the Official Secrets Act if Holly kills the piece. Holly gives Duncan a Winston Churchill-type speech in her soft Scottish accent about journalistic responsibility, democracy, and what kind of journalist Duncan used to be before he became a garbage collector.
What happens? Spoiler alert. Duncan calls off the planned police notification, Holly's story runs, and Duncan gets ready to pack up and leave his employment because he couldn't fulfill Emmerson's mandate to kill the story. Duncan caved.
Oh yeah? Duncan is a cornered animal, who in a flash of media instinct, smears Holly on the front page of the next edition of The Post as being an ENEMY OF THE STATE for exposing a program designed to keep the country safe from terrorism, but now has been brought out in the open and with the inevitable dismantling, puts everyone's life in Britain in certain danger from terrorists. They will win.
The shots of war have been fired. Duncan gets all that Emmerson promised him. Emmerson is tickled pink at the ENEMY OF THE STATE headline. Holly appears in front of The Herald's building and faces a scrum of reporters who have descended on her. It is a repeat scene from the first episode where she was in the same position. She introduces herself. The scene fades away.
If ever a series deserved to keep going, this one does. We'll see.
http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com
No comments:
Post a Comment