Monday, June 24, 2013

Manic Monday--Perry White Is The Worst Journalist EVER!

Minor SPOILERS for Man Of Steel start after the pictures. Beware if you care...



In the much-discussed movie Man Of Steel, Perry White is portrayed as the worst journalist in the history of the universe. (Worse than Ben Urich? YES!)

Consider that, as the man who is editor of one of the largest newspapers in the country:

A) Perry sends Lois to cover the NATO investigation of a mysterious object embedded in a Canadian glacier. Said object takes flight in front of witnesses, and Lois is aboard the craft and meets an apparent alien.

Perry kills the story, because "the Pentagon denies it." Yes, really, that's what he said. Because newspapers never run stories when the authorities deny them.

B) After Lois tracks down Clark, but covers it up to protect him (ANOTHER great journalist!), Perry says that he is glad the leads didn't pan out. Why? "Because can you believe how people would react if it were true?" Yes, he really said that. Newspapers don't run stories that might upset people. The truth is less important than keeping your readership mellow.

C) When it becomes public knowledge that Lois knows who this Kal-El is, Perry tells her that she has to spill her guts, because "The FBI is here. You can't fall back on 'journalistic integrity' anymore." Yes, he really said that. Because rules of journalistic ethics apply only when they're easy to stick to.

So, don't expect the Daily Planet to run any stories that are investigative, hard-hitting, and might ruffle authorities' feathers at all. Watergate would have gone unmentioned under Perry's tenure. Which makes you wonder exactly how Lois won her Pulitzer in the first place...working for another paper?

Also, for some odd reason Perry has Lois read her story aloud to him before he rejects it. What? Does every reporter have to do that? For every story? Can't he just read it himself? (Yes, I know it was just a crappy device to justify Lois' narration of the previous scene. Still, it's a crappy device, and as Goyer didn't use it to justify her narration in later scenes, it just looks particularly stupid. It just continues the long trend of Superman writers who haven't a clue about how a newspaper actually works...)

I'm just sayin'...

2 comments:

  1. Seriously, you gotta stop sayin' "I'm just sayin'...", it's a non-confrontational form of belligerence that reeks of cowardice when used in the wrong context and is almost never used in the proper context anyways (just like the stupid "single words punctuated" gimmick like "Worst. Comic. Ever." or "World's. Cheapest. Blowjob." that is ALWAYS misused and in fact *only works when each individual word makes a complete and whole reference to its subject on its own*, like "Real. Good. Food." or "Fast. Reliable. Service." etc) plus, it really shows your age and gets old *really* fast.

    "I'm just sayin..." is supposed to be used when someone suggests something without wanting to be implicated in the results or consequences, like a group of people sitting at a table in a café wishing they had a rope or something to get onto the roof of the pet shop across the street so they could free the animals or something, and the waiter tells them "There's a bunch of milk crates by the dumpster out back that are almost as tall as that roof...I'm just sayin'.", which is exactly why it reeks of cowardice when used clumsily and out of context, because instead of actually offering a solution directly from one person to another, it shifts blame and culpability to someone/where else.

    So yeah, stop sayin' "I'm just sayin'..." at the end of every post. It's like ending your posts with "But you didn't hear it from me...", no matter what the flippin' context was :P

    I mean, if someone was going to end all of their posts with the phrase "I'm just sayin'...", then they might as well just straight-up change the name of their site to "I'm Just Sayin'..."

    I'm just sayin... ;)

    ReplyDelete