A timely reminder about the importance of a free press

RIP Robert Redford. Among the many reasons to have adored him is the sheer number of people who were drawn to journalism by seeing how devastatingly attractive and powerful an average beat reporter could be.

- ALAN RUSBRIDGER

Not just Redford, Dustin Hoffman, too.

And the growling, stunningly charismatic Jason Robards as Ben Bradlee, the unflinching Washington Post chief, who brought down Nixon in All the President’s Men. Who wouldn’t want a life in newspapering after seeing that?

You remember some of the glorious lines scripted by William Goldman. Bradlee: “I can’t do the reporting for my reporters, which means I have to trust them. And I hate trusting anybody. Run that baby!”

Or that moment when someone has the temerity to ask Bradlee what would happen if his boys got it wrong.

“Then it’s our asses.”

The 1976 Watergate film was about journalists as the good guys. Reporters (in real life, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein) forging contacts in underground car parks; wearing out shoe leather; hitting the phones; following their gut instinct; double-checking and double-sourcing every single fact.

I watched the film just as I, myself, was deciding on a career choice after university and I was certainly one of those beguiled by the vision of righteous crusaders rolling up their sleeves to target the corruption of power.

Fast forward nearly 50 years, and I’ll be settling down in front of the telly next Wednesday to watch another editor targeting the corruption of power in The Hack. Only this time, the editor is me - and the corrupted power is the press itself.

The great Toby Jones, who plays me, is no Jason Robards, but then I was no Ben Bradlee. Only in my dreams would I bellow “Run that baby!” at a cowering newsroom. My style, if you can call it that, was rather more muted, and Toby very skilfully avoids the screen cliches of rampaging editorial tyrants. You would not pick him to play Piers Morgan.

The other thing that distinguishes