The Movie is Called ‘The Post,’ But the Times Got the Scoop on the Pentagon Papers
The Movie is Called ‘The Post,’ But the Times Got the Scoop on the Pentagon Papers by Roy Harris – Boston Globe
“THE POST,” Steven Spielberg’s film about The Washington Post’s Pentagon Papers coverage, in 1971, opens Friday. Meryl Streep has rightfully won raves as publisher Katharine Graham, who manages to triumph in a male-dominated corporate world and forms a powerful alliance with Tom Hanks’s cantankerous editor Ben Bradlee.
Making such a nonfiction movie somewhat limits Spielberg’s ability to create “Jaws”-like tension, as he does in his fictional classics. Still, a couple of sharks lurk in “The Post.”
One is the Nixon administration, which goes to court to block press accounts based on the stolen secret documents that reveal decades of US government deception about the Vietnam War. The other? The New York Times, which gets the Pentagon Papers scoop first, turning the Post into a jealous rival eager to catch up…
