Ethics in the Five Star Final (1931)

Mervyn LeRoy's 1931 film Five Star Final is nominally a story about a New York tabloid, but anyone who has sat through one of our journalism history lectures will recognize it as something larger: a condensed case study in how American newspapers got themselves into the ethical mess they keep trying to climb out of. The Gazette, the fictional paper at the center of the film, is stalling. Its managing editor, Joseph Randall, and its publisher, Mr. Hinchcliffe, decide to revive a twenty-year-old scandal, Nancy Voorhees's long-buried murder case, not because it is news, but because it will move papers.

 The Shadow of the Penny Press and Yellow Journalism

The Gazette is a direct descendant of everything we learned about. The Penny Press Era of the 1830s established two ideas that never really left the industry: that newspapers could operate independently of political patronage, and that large circulation was the business model. That second idea, "to sell more no matter the cost," is the driver of the entire plot. The Voorhees story is not breaking news. It is twenty years old. But the Gazette's editors know it will draw readers, and that alone is enough to justify running it.

Yellow journalism picked up where the penny press left off, introducing the appeal for local human-interest stories, crime reporting, and political scandal. Five Star Final shows a paper that covers all of these, and yet its circulation has flatlined. The "solution" is to push further: to synthesize the sensational ingredients of yellow journalism into something that would horrify even Pulitzer and Hearst. The film is, in a sense, a warning about what happens when the business logic of mass circulation outlives the journalistic instincts that once balanced it.

Ethics in Four Characters

Mr. Hinchcliffe is the modern media owner in 1931 form. He is unmoved by the damage the Voorhees serial causes, celebrates its commercial success, and cannot be bothered to think about the Townsend family until Jenny, Nancy's daughter, confronts him face to face. Even then, his response is to try to bribe her so the coverage can continue. He is not wrestling with ethics because ethics never entered the room.

Then there are Kitty Carmody and Vernon Isopod, who represent the lowest rung of the ethical ladder. Isopod impersonates a clergyman to gain access to the Townsend home, walking out with private photos, names, and addresses. Kitty breaks into the family's home shortly after the suicides and orders her colleague to start taking photographs without ever even notifying the authorities. Their behavior is not a grey area; it is the kind of conduct that defines the outer boundary of what investigative journalism is allowed to be, and they are well past it.

Joseph Randall is the more interesting figure because he is the one the film expects us to watch change. He is the architect of the revived story and initially goes along with it as just another day at the office. Guilt begins to work on him after his secretary, Miss Taylor, pushes back, and it takes root when Nancy herself calls him on the phone. The suicides break him completely. By the end, he recognizes what he has done and steps down from his role. What makes Randall tragic rather than villainous is that the ethical instinct is clearly still alive in him, it's just been buried under years of doing the job. 

What stayed with me most, though, is a detail the film stages repeatedly. After each of the scenes where Randall pushes the story further, we see him washing his hands. It is not subtle, but it does not need to be. Randall knows what the story is built on. He knows how the information was obtained. And every time he presses forward, he goes through the motion of trying to clean himself off. The washing never takes. That image is, I think, the film's sharpest argument: if you build a newspaper on other people's suffering, no amount of circulation will wash it off.

What Journalists Owe

To the people we write about, we owe privacy at a minimum. Stalking, spying, and things like entering someone's home unwanted should not even enter a reporter's mind. We also cannot print information like addresses, medical details, anything personal that has nothing to do with the story, and that could put our subjects in danger. Everything Isopod and Kitty do in this film is a textbook example of what that line looks like when you cross it.

To readers, we owe the truth and nothing beyond it. That means keeping our own opinions out of the story. People are not reading the news to be told what to think; they are reading it to get the facts and reach their own conclusions. Our job is to present the reporting as clearly as we can and get out of the way.