‘September 5’ Review: A Journalistic Thriller with No Guts
Tim Fehlbaum’s attempt at criticizing journalistic objectivity in ‘September 5’ is being afraid of engaging itself with the backdrop it presents.
In Discovering the News, Michael Schudson says, “Objectivity is a peculiar demand to make of institutions which, as business corporations, are dedicated first of all to economic survival. It is a peculiar demand to make of institutions which often, by tradition or explicit credo, are political organs. It is a peculiar demand to make of editors and reporters who have none of the professional apparatus which, for doctors or lawyers or scientists, is supposed to guarantee objectivity.”
The word " objectivity” has been the guiding principle of what people believe “good” and “honest” journalism should strive for: a total separation between our personal values and the facts of the story we present. A good journalist should not take sides. Instead, they should report the news as it is, in a timely manner, without any external commentary that could insinuate their subjectivity to the event at hand (which is what is reflected in Rasmus Kleis Nielsen’s essential “The One Thing Journalism Just Might Do For Democracy”). Yet, this ideal is impossible to attain.
When you point a camera at someone or something, it is intrinsically subjective. You are creating a narrative – or, in more apt journalistic terms, making a story – that will shape how an individual watching the news or reading the paper may perceive it. The camera cannot ‘objectively’ or ‘clinically’ represent something because it’s guided by a human being with their own personal feelings and perception of the world that’s invertedly translated by how they operate the lens. A frame is rife with meaning, particularly when extensive rushes get turned into two-minute news reports that represent the news through a specific thematic underpinning and narrative.
This is all depicted in Tim Fehlbaum’s September 5, a historical drama following the ABC Sports team’s coverage of the Munich Massacre at the 1972 Olympics. When the team presents an extreme close-up of a masked assailant of Black September standing on a balcony, with the title card “Terrorist Attack at the Olympics,” a story is being shaped by the news channel, and the public begins to perceive it in one specific direction. A shot and title like this is wholly significant, especially when broadcasting executive Roone Arledge (Peter Sarsgaard) says close to the film's beginning, "It’s not about politics. It’s about emotion.”
Emotion guides how this story is shaped, and there’s no purely ‘objective’ way to represent it when using this approach, especially when one can easily ramp up the emotional tension by performing one unethical, reckless action after the next. How a news story is edited and how new pieces of information are revealed have a goal, which isn’t to report the news purely but to tell a story around the news and give an emotional anchor for people to hold on to. If all the Israeli hostages had survived this massacre, the humanization of an athlete like David Berger (Rony Herman) by way of a Peter Jennings (Benjamin Walker) interview that occurred a few days before the massacre, alongside an interview with his father, pleading for his son’s safe return, would’ve meant something far more than a happy end in the eyes of the viewer.
But it did not happen this way. All of the hostages were killed. “They’re all gone,” chillingly said Jim McKay at the end of the live broadcast, the first in history to depict such an event in real-time. This sentence echoed throughout history because it confirmed the public’s worst fears and officially ended the ‘story’ the ABC Sports team was creating around it. They chose to deliberately push buttons instead of assessing the situation and sticking to what they knew was confirmed.
They chose to frame the event without contextualizing the broader Israeli/Palestinian conflict while ignoring Peter Jennings’ nuanced knowledge of Middle-Eastern relations and how one must not use “charged” terms to describe Arabs. They deliberately used an interview with one of the athletes (who moved from America to Israel to compete in the Olympic team after not making the cut in the U.S.) to create an emotional storyline around him and his father so that the audience watching begins to ‘know’ who these people are beyond their names. And, worst of all, they made the cardinal mistake of pre-emptively reporting that all the hostages were freed, trusting unconfirmed rumors based on a chaotic situation at the airport, then waiting for two independent sources to solidly confirm it.
Of course, they had to issue a correction that would’ve likely sank their entire credibility were it not for McKay diplomatically ending the narrative with his “Our worst fears have been realized tonight” statement. Vulturous people like Roone Arledge and Geoffrey Mason (John Magaro) only cared about the ratings and how this story was constructed ‘emotionally’ rather than the cold, hard facts and the human lives in danger. Schudson said it best. When people who only care about “economic survival” are in charge of ‘objectively’ covering the news, it is an impossible – and peculiar – demand to ask of them to do because it will never be achieved.
This is all depicted by Fehlbaum in 94 tightly edited, competently shot minutes. Yet, the Swiss filmmaker and co-writers Moritz Binder and Alex David seem so afraid to say anything about why these practices are bad that it quickly becomes an exercise in empty gestures. In doing so, Fehlbaum would have to engage with the broader context, which is how journalists choose to cover the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Of course, this may be a delicate subject matter to treat because there isn’t a single person with no strong feelings on the matter.
However, Steven Spielberg offered a nuanced examination of a disillusioned Mossad agent in the aftermath of the massacre in 2005’s Munich, which questioned how Avner’s beliefs progressively clashed with the truth. It wasn’t afraid to challenge audiences and offer a perspective that dared speak out against the ‘moral duty’ of revenge and how it only worsened tensions between Israel and Palestine. Its allegorical conclusion signaled that no side will ever attain peace – and look at what’s happening now. Not much has changed.
In September 5, Fehlbaum is deathly afraid to challenge audiences or to engage with what he presents on screen. Because in doing so, he will undoubtedly encounter backlash from one side or the other. Understandably, Fehlbaum may think it’s a losing battle, especially in the polarizing context of the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, in which this movie is being released. But there’s no greater cowardice in the timed geopolitical context of September 5’s release than to say nothing and only present the journalists doing immoral actions without ever saying why what we are watching is problematic.
It is bad because it creates a narrative that’s probably not as simple as the journalists illustrate it. They do not want to contextualize the story, which is their choice, but that inaction brings consequences. What are they? I could tell you off the top of my head that exploiting the hostages by using bits of archival interviews to humanize them creates empathy for the viewers to attach themselves to their individual stories while branding the perpetrators as nameless, faceless “terrorists” will also create a perception with the viewers. The question being asked by the Sports team is not, “What are we calling the Black September members?” It’s point blank: “What should we refer to Arabs as?”
Jennings, ever the voice of reason, says, “You need to understand how sensitive this situation is. Do you realize what is at stake here? This is no longer the Olympics…” and “We have to be very careful about everything we say on air. We have a journalistic responsibility.”
Now that is interesting. What is the “journalistic responsibility” of not using a charged term to describe Arabs? How does using “terrorists” affect how their reporting is ultimately shaped, and how will the audience watching the report assimilate the information? Conversely, what do we want our viewers to get when we humanize the hostages to create an emotional arc in the reporting and give this incredibly harrowing, real-life situation tangible stakes for “good television”? These questions are rife to be explored and discussed in a thrilling fashion, yet are never answered or even beginning to be glossed over because Felhbaum doesn’t have the moral courage to take a stand.
Not a stance, but a stand. A simple opinion. What do all of these questions mean for the journalists? How are they able to reckon with this exploitation? How can Geoff sleep at night after what he did? Does Roone care about the human toll of such a massacre, or is it solely about “emotion,” which will prop up ratings? Surely, there’s a deeper itch waiting to be scratched, which would lead into the most compelling journalistic thriller of the year, if not the decade. The technical aspects of the film are marvelous, Lorenz Dangel’s score is pulsating and adds a note-perfect rhythm to the tension. Performances from Magaro, Sarsgaard, Leonie Benesch, and Ben Chaplin are also all phenomenal, with the latter playing Marvin Bader, who attempts to convince Roone to come to his senses and not trivialize such an event on screen for “emotion.”
This could’ve made for a thrilling, David Mamet-esque rivalry between two journalistic forces. One (Jennings/Bader) attempting to show rationality and exercise caution at covering this event live, while the other (Mason/Arledge) ignore their warnings and do everything they can to shape a story and recklessly endanger lives in the process (they weren’t aware that, by filming the event and attempting to get shots of the police and Black September members, the militant group was also watching the report inside the apartment where they held the athletes hostage). But since Felhbaum is afraid to meaningfully engage with the material at hand and showcase this fracture within the newsroom, all we get are a bunch of scenes that appear to say something but accomplish nothing at all.
The Munich massacre is not a random event. Yet Fehlbaum never justifies why he needed to use such a context to make the film. Criticizing journalistic objectivity could’ve been done in a completely different backdrop than the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. When one uses such a charged setting that will bring about strong feelings on all fronts to make the movie, it has to meaningfully engage with at least what it presents to make it feel worthwhile. Yes, you’re likely going to alienate viewers. Yes, you’re likely going to cause controversy. But you’re also likely going to create a dialogue that will transcend the silver screen and challenge audience perceptions on the “ethics” of journalism and how this applies to covering a decades-old conflict when depicting a specific event within it.
Because if you only artificially ramp up the tension with fast-paced editing, walking and talking, and a thunderous score to make it look like this film is doing something but isn’t developing any of your ideas, you’re not actually doing anything. Journalism is a complex, multifaceted field whose sole notion of ‘objectivity’ is constantly challenged through scholarly discourse (Schudson’s texts and Kleis Nielsen’s rebuttals rank high amongst the most critical academic research on “objectivity”) and will perpetually continue until the end of time. Criticizing it is gutsy, because it opens our eyes to how this profession is based on a failed and unattainable journalistic ideal. Showcasing the fallacies of the profession in September 5 and not saying a damn thing about why this quest for ‘emotion’ does a disservice to what we refer to as ‘good’ journalism is, in the year of our lord 2024, gutless and unacceptable.