Went to see Civil War today.

A lot can be said about the movie, good and bad.

But I’m writing about what struck me as a fascinating surprise about this controversial movie.

At its heart, it is about Journalism.

Not politics but journalism.

And what struck me, almost shocked me, is that it’s a closeup of old fashioned objective journalism.

We follow photo journalists and a reporter through a war torn America. And they make it quite clear, they are interested in capturing what they see. Period. They rarely even offer opinions. You get that they do lean, but they spend no time on it.

In this world of opinion based journalism, it is jarring.

If I were still teaching it would be interesting to see what my journalism students would think.

I could review the movie and say more about scenes involving the journalists, but that is for another time.

I had heard about the movie being a takedown of Trump, right or left wing propaganda, and reviewers who thought it was brilliant or silly.

What I didn’t expect was this almost antiquated up and close and personal focus on objective journalism.