Calder, State of Play

I think that a large part of State of Play was showing the levels of freedom that the media actually has. The story begins as an almost run-of-the mill political sex scandal, with one exception; the mistress in question is dead. The scandal takes place in the midst of a new buy-out of the newspaper by a major corporation, which is not interested in getting the important story, but the story that will sell the most papers. If the press is the slave to the consumer, there is no freedom of the press. Newspapers sell many more if the person is the Congressman who just got caught cheating on his wife. How many papers were sold with John Edwards’ mistress on the cover compared with a paper with the federal judge firings as the lead story? As the Congressman Stephen Collins says about his affair “I’ve sponsored two bills and this will get more attention than any thing I’ve ever done.” In another scene Cameron reproaches Cal and Della, because they do not cover the story about Sonia’s roommate; a purely sensational story about an ménage a trios. Instead they are still trying to track down the relevant truth; who murdered Sonia, and what extent was Point Corps involved. The freedom that the press does have is their ability to slant a story one way or another. Cal tells Dominic this in he scene where he tells him that the story can be slanted to either implicate or leave him out entirely.