A-Katherine Graham (Meryl Streep), publisher of The Washington Post, is going over a list of financial and legal documents once again, rehearsing her answers to the questions she will be getting from bankers about selling shares in the company to the public for the first time. And that, my friends in journalism, is why this film about the real-life publication of the Pentagon Papers is not about the New York Times, which published them first, but about the then-considerably second-tier Washington Post and Mrs. Graham, who risked the collapse of the crucial deal to secure their finances, published second. But we also see her growing in the realization of the power of The Post and her own power as well. In “The Post” she once again blends into the ensemble and she plays a character who is used to deferring to men. Mrs. Graham points out to Bradlee that his close friendship with President Kennedy compromised his integrity as a journalist, as he asks her not to let her close friendship with McNamara compromise hers.

Source: Huffington Post December 25, 2017 23:15 UTC