Endangered

In the last several years, thanks in part to the previous administration, this country has witnessed the decline of countless, previously inalienable, human rights.  Immigration rights, women’s rights, trans rights, the list goes on and on.  Endangered, the documentary from Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady (and executive produced by Ronan Farrow), which made its debut at this year’s Tribeca Festival, hones in on one such eroding freedom which ostensibly is baked into the constitution—freedom of the press.  Given impressive access to prominent journalists at key moments in our nation’s recent history, the film is blistering in its moral outrage but frustratingly limited in its scope.

The movie focuses on four journalists over the course of 2020 and 2021.  There’s Patricia Campos, a reporter for Folha de Sao Paulo in Brazil, who’s covering campaign rallies for the populist president Jair Balsonaro; Carl Juste, a photographer for the Miami Herald, capturing the chaos as police violently shut down a Black Lives Matter protest; Oliver Laughland, a reporter for The Guardian, who’s visiting the states to interview Trump supporters on the eve of the 2020 election; and Sashenka Gutierrez, a Mexico City reporter documenting her country’s ongoing campaign of violence against women.

The film, through the eyes of these reporters, looks at different subcultures in the war on journalism, though there is some thematic overlap among the four.  They all, in various ways, encounter the issues associated with the Covid-19 pandemic. Gutierrez interviews hospital staff who admit that the mortality rate is much higher than is being admitted to the public; Campos meets favela residents who refuse to wear masks—why should they, when nobody they know is sick?; Laughlin interviews Trumpers who are skeptical of the Covid-related deaths being reported, and on and on.  Each reporter also encounters public leaders who decry ‘fake news’ and actively work to discredit the press.

More or less, though, each reporter has their own thematically distinct throughline in the film, and oftentimes end up becoming part of the story themselves. Bolsonaro wages war on the press and on Campos specifically, accusing her of trading her “hole” for information, which leads her to sue him for slander. At one point, Juste has to provide a timestamp from one of his photos in order to counter the misleading timeline and narrative that are being disseminated by local officials. Laughland repeatedly encounters conservative republicans who relish the decline of free speech and of their local newspapers. As one woman alarmingly puts it, “I’m not gonna buy a newspaper that doesn’t reflect my views.” Gutierrez meets with multiple women who have been assaulted, and at one point finds herself the victim of a violent altercation with local police.

The film roughly follows the format of this synopsis, as it shifts perspective between each of the four journalists throughout.  The filmmakers clearly had a trove of material with which to work, and struck gold in being embedded with these reporters.  The sheer amount of firsthand material on display here is quite something, as the audience is invited to share the journalists’ experiences along with them.  And there is a definite sense of propulsion here, as the momentum never quite lets up.  Just as a segment threatens to become stale, the film moves on to the next one.  The lack of talking heads also keeps it from feeling too didactic.  Save for some voiceover narration from the journalists, much of this is about showing rather than telling.

Unfortunately, however, it soon becomes clear how limited the filmmakers’ scope is.  The movie quickly cycles between each journalist’s viewpoint, displaying their firsthand accounts.  Repeatedly, the crimes against journalism and free speech are cataloged.  And…that’s it.  Documentaries like this are always tricky because, even though they’re intended to illuminate and educate, the likelihood of someone from across the aisle watching these is slim.  As such, anyone watching this film likely already shares the filmmakers’ point of view.  With that in mind, what is a film like Endangered capable of accomplishing? And what does it actually achieve? The gulf between those two signposts is unfortunately vast with this film.  In my estimation, the successful documentaries are the ones that provide new information or a call to action.  Classic films such as An Inconvenient Truth don’t just highlight what we already know; they also use that information to start a thoughtful discourse and plot a roadmap for the future.  Now that we know what the problem is, how do we move forward? What are some possible solutions?

Endangered’s fatal mistake is that it’s content only to illuminate what’s happening, not to educate. While I did find myself having a greater understanding of the degree to which journalists are embattled, the film makes literally no effort to discuss what should be done next.  At one point, Juste, faced with a hedge fund takeover of his newspaper, makes an offhand remark about passing the torch to the next generation of journalists, and his hope for the future.  This is what the movie desperately needed more of.  As it stands, the movie feels maddeningly incomplete.  Had the film contained interviews with academics and politicians actively discussing how to protect the fourth estate, this would’ve been a very different (and much more successful) documentary. 

Ultimately, this is a very difficult film to recommend.  The filmmakers’ storytelling style is kinetic, and the film is fitfully insightful.  Laughlin’s interview with Enrique Tarrior, chairman of the Proud Boys, is one such highlight.  But in all, the whole adds up to significantly less than the sum of its parts, as the filmmakers mystifyingly choose to stay in the realm of navel-gazing.  This is a topic that continues to remain incredibly timely, with the preponderance of ‘news deserts’ (areas in which there is only one local newspaper, or none at all). And it’s a film that begs for critical analysis, for a discussion of future goals.  Had this been a short film, the limited focus might’ve been excusable.  As it stands, the film will leave you frustrated and angry, not because of the subject matter, but because of the filmmakers’ questionable decision-making.