In early 2017, Donald Trump was sworn in as President, and the Women’s March on Washington served as a scream for many of America’s frustrated and scared inhabitants. Amidst the fear and uncertainty, journalist Emily Ramshaw saw a possibility. She left her steady job with the Texas Tribune along with colleague Amanda Zamora and started The 19th*, an independent news organization named after the Nineteenth Amendment preventing discriminatory voting restrictions based on sex— the asterisk in their name signaling the omission of women of color in that same amendment. The 19th* is the first nonpartisan, nonprofit news organization in the United States, and Breaking the News—an on-the-ground documentary from the directing trio of Heather Courtney, Princess A. Hairston, and Chelsea Hernandez—details the highs and lows of their first few years of operation.
A key component of why Ramshaw wanted to start The 19th* can be summed up in this quote from her: “Seventy percent of policy and politics editors are men, almost all of them are white. These are the people deciding which stories are told, who is telling them, and whether they will be on the front page or back page, if they get there at all.” The filmmakers accompany this sentiment with a montage of archival clips of news footage of male anchors and reporters, or male journalists portrayed as the heroes of narrative features, such as All the President’s Men. But the journalistic spirit that runs through Breaking the News comes through strongest not in the conversation surrounding those who have dominated the journalism landscape in America for so long, but in its in-the-moment portrayal of the reporters working so hard to get their work—focusing on issues and people the majors outlets gloss over— seen, all while living in arguably the most challenging time in American history. Ramshaw and Zamora secured the funding for The 19th*, began fleshing out their staff, got ready to launch their website— and then the pandemic hit.
Much of Breaking the News zeroes in on a select number of The 19th*’s staff as they work out of their homes. Ramshaw is seen preparing for Zoom meetings with her young daughter clutching her legs. Florida-based Latina reporter Chabeli Carrazana struggles to stifle her barking dog as she conducts phone interviews. While this glimpse into the backgrounds and home lives of The 19th*’s staff is critical to understanding their work, the work itself frequently takes center stage. Politics and race reporter Errin Haines breaks the first national news story about the murder of Breonna Taylor at the hands of Louisville police. Non-binary reporter Kate Sosin, meanwhile, covers LGBTQ+ stories, especially the anti-trans legislation becoming more and more widespread across the country. And while a lot of Breaking the News looks outward at the country, it looks inward as well, with The 19th* struggling at the outset to be as inclusive as their goal states, something Sosin—for a while the only queer individual on staff who dealt with being misgendered— expresses frustration with.
As clear-eyed as Breaking the News is when it comes to interrogating both the triumphs and shortcomings of its subject, it fails to dive as deep as it could have and perhaps should have, such as with the aforementioned issues with a lack of queer reporters on staff. While it is impossible to capture the full breadth of an organization that is ever growing and evolving, these threads are wrapped up quite quickly to give the movie its neat ending. And once the mission of The 19th* and the backstories of each of the film’s individual subjects has been established, Breaking the News becomes repetitive in both form and content, tracing the research and publication of some of the 19th*’s hardest-hitting stories leading up to the 2020 Presidential election until the film reaches its aforementioned tidy endpoint. The passion and determination of each member of the 19th*’s staff is deeply felt beyond any of the film’s shortcomings, however. Breaking the News accomplishes what some of the best movies about journalists do: inspire viewers to take action, and confirm that beyond the social media clickbait, beyond the corporate entities that have the power to make or break outlets, beyond the pandemic shutdown that prompted many newspapers across the country to shutter and never reopen, there are still reporters with integrity out there unearthing the stories that need to be told.
Breaking the News had its world premiere at the 2023 Tribeca Film Festival on June 8. Runtime: 99 minutes.
Katie at the Movies 