Assignment Paris

The Associated Press has no honor.  Yes, this is a segue from the previous entry into this entry about another, much lesser known movie that illustrates the deterioration of both Hollywood and "journalism"--as "patriotism" in the broadest and most noble sense of the word becomes a dirty word for "journalists".

See the entry earlier this week about the way the despicable Associated Press treated a story on marine and army enliesments.   What was the main story there?  Right, the main stroy was the number of Americans that HAVE enlisted over the past year, as we have endeavored to INCREASE the size of the military. 

Was that the story for the AP?  Of course not.  As I said, the AP has no nonor--even "journalistic" honor.  The AP ignored the number of people who have enlisted  They pretty much ignored the overall quality of those enlistments (burying any of that stuff well down in the story).  For the despicable AP, it was all about agenda.  So the story was that convicted felons enlisting rose from 208 to 350 in the marines and from 249 to 511 in the army--pretty much meaningless numbers.  Oh, you could justify putting them in a story on enlistments.  To make those numbers, and the increase in same, THE story merely illustrates that the Associated Press has no honor (see "The Bridge on the River Kwai" if you want to see what I mean by "honor", or "The Great Escape" if you want to see what I mean by "patriotism" in the noble, broad sense of the wordl). 

That brings us to the unknown, 1950's movie, "Assignment Paris".  It is a good little movie, although hardly special enough to go out of your way to see it.  But it shows how both "journalists" and Hollywood have descended into anti-miitary, and even anti-American bastions of little or no worth. 

The HERO of "Assignment Paris" is a JOURNALIST fighting the Evil Empire of the Soviet Union (in this case, the manifestation of that Empire in a puppet regime in Hungary).   It is almost a culture shock to see movies like this in 2007 (on Turner Classic Movies), as journalists regard it as their JOB to expose real evil, and not solely to expose the evils committed by the United States of America.

In "Assignment Paris", the journalist hero sets out to take down the evil men running Hungary, who have conducted a show trial of an American journaist as a spy (and then executed him).  I should emphasize that this is NOT a "Red menace" propaganda movie.  The men runnning Hungary are depicted as evil men, but they WERE.  There is no outrageous exaggeration, and even statements in the movie that everything is not "black and white".  In the 1950's, of course, Hungarians would revolt against their Soviet imposed leaders, and take on Soviet tanks with little more than their bare hands. 

Back then, most journalists considered themselves ON OUR SIDE (albeit NOT "spies" for the U.S. government)   Most journalists did not regard it as their primary jjob to questioin every action the U.S. was taking in the world (not that it is part of their job to cover up evil we commit, but it is absurd to regard uncovering such evil as their MAIN job).

It is useful to see movies like "Assignment Paris" to see how far both "journalism" and Hollywood have fallen.  I do think "Assignment Paris" is pretty accurate as to the ATTITUDES of most in the 1950's (correct attitudes:  the Soviet Union WAS evil).  Sure, the media "exposed" McCarthy and Red baiting.  But the USA was not regarded as a major source of evil in the world. 

How things have changed!!!  (NOT for the better).