Absence of Malice: Lessons for an Investigative Journalist

Good investigative journalists must have an abiding passion for finding the truth. They have the ethical duty to understand the motives of their sources, and understanding these motives is vital in any investigation. They should know how to distill accurate stories from masses of information, enable reluctant sources to talk and recognize assumptions, motives and biases. They should constantly exercise judgment in choosing what to report, whom to interview, whom not to trust, what to amplify, which data to omit, whether to run a story or ditch it if it affects individual lives, without serving public interest in any way. They shouldn’t be afraid of doing things differently from others, but it doesn’t mean they can break ethical rules doing so.

Absence of Malice is a 1981 film written by Kurt Luedtke and David Rayfiel and directed by Sydney Pollack. The movie is an indictment against journalists who don’t bother to check the facts so long as their attention-grabbing story doesn’t get them into trouble. It focuses on journalistic impropriety and accountability, and how the lack of understanding ethical issues can wreak havoc on somebody’s life. It tells the story of Megan Carter (Sally Field), an ambitious investigative reporter for the Miami Standard trying desperately to get a lead on the headline story of a local labor leader’s disappearance. Michael Gallagher (Paul Newman) is a Florida-based businessman and the son of the missing labor leader, but he knows nothing of his father’s shady deals. Elliot Rosen (Bob Balaban), the head of a federal task force investigating the case, knows that Gallagher is innocent. He purposely leaks the story to Megan by unethically leaving a file on his desk while walking out of a meeting with her. The Justice department reckons that  the story’s publication will compel Michael to make contact with his father’s mobster friends and turn him as a state’s evidence.

Megan falls for the bait, and without checking the veracity of the story by corroborating it with another source, she and her sleazy editor (Josef Sommer) decide to publish the story because there’s no chance Gallagher can sue for libel under the Absence of Malice rule for slander. The newspaper’s lawyer insists on Megan’s contacting Gallagher for comment if only to prove “absence of malice” on their part. So Megan makes some half-hearted attempts to reach Gallagher, but does not try to call again when she cannot reach him.

Suddenly thrust into the front page, Gallagher loses his clients and confronts Megan, but she refuses to divulge the identity of her sources.

The slanderous story ruins Michael’s reputation. Michael has an alibi in his childhood friend Teresa Perrone (Melinda Dillon), a devout Catholic, whom he accompanied to arrange her secret abortion at Atlanta, something her parents or the community would disapprove. Teresa is tormented that Michael should pay the penalty for being helpful, so she risks revealing the circumstances to Megan, thinking she would publish the story without revealing her identity just the same way she did earlier.

Megan, in her self-interest in making her story credible, fails to honor the faith bestowed on her; and the news leads to the tragic end of Teresa. Gallagher now comes forward but, in a fitful revenge, turns his enemies against each other.

First, he makes a deal with District Attorney James Quinn (Don Hood) promising support in the investigation if he is publicly cleared of all allegations. Then he lays a trail of clues suggesting a payoff link between himself and Quinn which flusters Rosen into putting illegal taps on his phones. Megan comes to know of this “deal” too. She once again prints this confidential information in the newspaper. The Department of Justice enters the scene now, and the Assistant Attorney General orders an informal inquiry. Megan refuses to provide her source of the Quinn-Gallagher link; Gallagher is cleared, but Rosen is indicted for his illegal investigation with a 30-days notice.

In the last scene U.S. Attorney General gets all the major players in one big conference room to talk under oath.

 



 
The story provides many questions to students for discussing ethical journalism. Was malice involved in Megan’s publishing the story, or was she merely doing her job? Even if there was no malice involved, did she have the right, both legally and morally, to print the accurate but untrue story?

The film raises many other ethical questions. Megan points out to Teressa that the information she gives would be on record, yet chooses to ignore her apprehensions merely to bring credibility to her story. Even if it is legally right to know where the man was during the time he was charged with committing a crime, did the public have a need to know this information, when such publicity could prove disastrous for vulnerable people?

Is it ethical for journalists to become romantically involved with their sources? It definitely isn’t, especially if you choose to use such encounters to elicit confidential information. In this case, of course, Megan empathizes with Gallagher, and her involvement starts only after her story is published. And they break up once she thinks Gallagher has connections with Quinn and she does not know the truth.

Somewhere in the movie is the pithy tagline that summarizes the story: “Suppose you picked up this morning’s newspaper and your life was a front page headline… And everything they said was accurate… But none of it was true.”