Kill The Messenger (2014) * * *

Directed by:  Michael Cuesta

Starring:  Jeremy Renner, Rosemarie De Witt, Oliver Platt, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Ray Liotta, Andy Garcia

If you watch the "Breaking News" coverage of mass shootings or other terrible events on network or cable news channels, new developments flash on screen instantaneously whether the development is actually true or not.    Some are debunked.    Some are outright fabrications.     Some are partially true.   Some are totally true.     In the race to beat the competition, the actual fact checking and journalistic integrity suffers.      Does anyone even bat an eye anymore when a "fact" is proven to be fiction?     This is why Kill The Messenger evokes anger and frustration.     It is based on true events (which of course means there will be factual inaccuracies and scenes pumped up for dramatic purposes), but the overall message is what hits home.      It is sad that the reporter here is vilified, exiled, and soon an outcast in his profession for writing a story that was completely true.     Kill The Messenger shows how this is possible.

The reporter is Gary Webb (Renner), a reporter for the San Jose Mercury News circa 1995 who stumbles across a story involving known drug dealers possibly working in tandem with the CIA.     After further digging, Webb discovers the CIA worked with drug cartels in Nicaragua in the mid-1980s to secretly fund their war against uprising Communist forces.     The CIA could not gain funding through the normal channels, so they cut a deal to use the drug money to fund the secret war.    Webb uses anonymous sources, not an uncommon practice, to gain information.    There are also discoveries that the CIA allowed the drug dealers to infiltrate major cities with their product, such as Los Angeles and New York.  

This is certainly a game-changing story which the paper publishes early in 1996.    Circulation rises, profits rise, and everyone is happy.     The CIA issues denials.    The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times, upset that the smaller newspaper scooped them on the story, perform de facto smear campaigns against Webb himself.     They dig up his past, which includes an adulterous affair with a reporter at his previous paper that led to tragic consequences.     He goes from journalistic hero to persona non grata quickly.     How did this happen to a reporter who wrote a true story?

Webb's own paper exiles him to a small town writing stories on police horse deaths.     His marriage, already on tenuous ground due to his previous affair, begins to crumble.    Mysterious men in suits may or not be following him.     Why did this happen?     Why did these larger reputable newspapers ostensibly take the side of the government instead of possibly investigating further?    Were they afraid of drawing the ire of the CIA?    Isn't the press' function to ensure that they keep the government in check?

In this case, freedom of the press takes a holiday and Webb is left holding the bag.     My questions reflect pie-in-the-sky thinking in a world with numerous shades of gray, but they are still legitimate.     We learn that Webb later submitted his resignation due to his disillusionment with the journalism business and never worked again as a reporter.     His own paper hired an investigator to check up on each of his sources, all of whom denied their involvement.     The corporation running the paper accepted this explanation instead of backing up their reporter or checking further.     They bought into the smear campaign.

It is of little comfort to Webb that the story was proven to be true in 1998 after a government investigation.    The CIA made false promises to communities like South Central LA to investigate, but nothing was ever done.     As all of this plays out, Kill The Messenger becomes a story about what happens when controversy threatens corporate profits.      Webb's paper runs for cover.    They would sacrifice him rather than stand by him.      Jeremy Renner's performance is at the heart of the film.    He is a guy who loves his job and does it diligently, but is ill-equipped to handle the shit storm that followed.     He gains our sympathy without any speeches or begging us to do so.   

Kill The Messenger is less about the art of journalism than say, All The President's Men (1976), which depicted Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's merciless uncovering of the Watergate scandal which ultimately brought down a presidency.     Gary Webb may have been ok if he had an editor like Ben Bradlee, who delivered the best line in All The President's Men:  "Fuck it, let's stand by the boys."   

Instead, Webb committed suicide in 2004.