Denton- State of Play

When most people go into the ballet booth to vote for president they are not too familiar with where the candidates stand on the issues, this is not because they are lazy uninformed voters, but when watching the news, reading a newspaper, online news, etc., the topics covered are not on where the candidate stands on the issue, but rather, what the Republican candidate for president did last summer.
The press is not free. They belong to the Government and too the sales. Sensationalist stories will sell more newspapers or gain more viewers than a dry story about health care. I feel this is best seen in the scene where Della, played by Rachel McAdams first approaches Cal, played by Russell Crowe. In this scene she introduces herself as the “White House Blogger.” She says to him that she is writing a story about Congressmen Collins, played by Ben Affleck, and specifically his recent affair with Sonia Baker. She simply approached Cal, because he was roommates with Collins, this is all her research. But she knows that this is what people want to read about.
This is further supported in the scene where the character of Congressmen Collins, Affleck, says that despite all of his work and trials with PointCorp, he will only be remember for this, referring to his affair. No one is covering the story about his trials but only about his affair and deterioration of his marriage, because that is far more entertaining then a few trials.