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How the Film “Kill the Messenger” Relates to Sociology
The movie “Kill the Messenger” is a political thriller characterized by threats, arrests, intrigue, and untimely revelations. The film relates to sociology in that it presents the social problems encountered by massagers bearing bad news. The following essay is a response highlighting the insights I obtained from the movie.
The movie’s purpose is to expose the US government’s involvement in facilitating the importation of illegal drugs, and the film is about Garry Webb. The movie takes place in the 1990s when an investigative journalist interviews a drug dealer who reveals that government officials are trafficking drugs to the US. After much research, the journalist uncovers that it is the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) are importing cocaine to California and selling it across the ghettos and using the profits to assist the Nicaraguan Contras rebel group in buying arms (Kill the Messenger). With support from his family, the journalist went public with the evidence he had gathered. However, after publishing the story, the journalist’s life turned upside down due to criticism from rival journalists and the CIA. The film was about Gary Webb, who starts as Jeremy Renner. The movie is about Webb because it is based on his real-life story. In 1996 while journalist Garry Webb worked in the San Jose Mercury Newspaper, he started investigating the role of the CIA in drug trafficking and dubbed his findings as “Dark Alliance.” This report asserted that the CIA was responsible for bringing crack cocaine into the US However, the story was dismissed as many, considered it a conspiracy theory.
The most striking thing I found about the movie is that Webb did not become a journalism hero. I learned that society perceives whistleblowing as a malicious act of one’s disloyalty towards authorities. Instead of receiving a heroic treatment for exposing the government’s disgusting activities, Webb suffered under the clout of influential agencies and institutions. After Webb put together his findings, he was hugely criticized, leading to the destruction of his personal as well as his professional life. Due to the criticism, his wife divorced him, and Webb was demoted to a pariah in the newspaper business. Eventually, he committed suicide, and many politicians, drug dealers, and CIA operatives breathed a sigh of relief to be rid of this investigative journalist. I learned that, while society depends on courageous people to alert the public on social problems, the government h socialized to persecute them rather than to praise them. When one reports wrongdoing by the government, the government often starts to look for what might be false or what might be wrong with the person(Anna Grøndahl,1239). One factor for this is that the government perceives the whistleblower as a threat because the whistleblower can stir up guilt for misconduct.
I can relate ideas of my further assignment to my life by developing an ethical, social culture that will aim at minimizing, controlling, and eliminating wrongdoers and wrongdoings in the society. First, I will strengthen the moral education of intelligence agencies. From a sociology view, the requirement for ethical training is to carry forward the social development of the society, given that the implementation of social stability relies on the moral quality of the community. Therefore, developing a rich knowledge of the expected kind of behavior will have a very critical role. Second, I will reinforce the desired behavior by visibly rewarding the right acts and by punishing the wrong deeds. According to the sociology of operant conditioning, one can continue the practice by reinforcing it or discontinue it by punishing it because people do what they have been incentivized to do. Thus, aligning rewards with ethical behavior will be a solution to many ethical problems in society. Third I will provide the tools people need to act rightfully. These include adequate modeling, supervising, and consulting. Here, I will anchor practices and strategies to clearly stated principles that can be shared within the society.
After watching the movie, I discovered how vital disclosing information in the public interest is essential. However, I have a concern with the lack of whistleblower protection exhibited in the movie as it represents the actual situation of the modern-day society. According to the film, people who exposed the wrongdoings of national security in their community were given weak or no protection creating a chilling effect on other people wishing to speak out. It appears that the system provides the intelligence agencies the opportunity to suppress the investigative journalist while depriving them the opportunity to vindicate his rights .only from following complicated rules and procedures such as denouncing his remarks was the journalist protected by law from retaliation. What’s more, is that the protections were weak so, they forced the journalist down a narrow path for the agencies to launch retaliatory inquests against him. As a result, Webb’s life was forever tarnished by the vengeful agencies. The reason is that the intelligence agencies seemed to have successfully lobbied for exemptions from the Congress against scrutiny. I think it is time that Congress reasserts its right to receive information directly from investigative journalism. It can accomplish this by providing an independent adjudicator to its investigative journalism reprisal claims with appeals to the courts to vindicate their rights.
Works Cited
Kill the Messenger. Directed by Michael Cuesta, Bluegrass Films, 2014.Netflix
Larsen, Anna Grøndahl. “Investigative Reporting in the Networked Media Environment.” Journalism Practice, vol. 11, no. 10, Sept. 2016, pp. 1231–1245. doi:10.1080/17512786.2016.1262214.