Freedom of the Press and Remembering Robert Redford

On the surface, it feels inappropriate to write a dedication to Robert Redford that isn’t directly about him. However, a few days have passed, and with that, some consideration about his larger place in pop culture. Sure, he was an actor who starred in a lot of memorable films worthy of revisiting in the wake of his passing. His body of work continues to have a substantial place in the cinematic zeitgeist, and I would even argue that his work to create Sundance has greatly benefited decades’ worth of talent. His impact remains immense even if the final works in his catalog are, at best, modest character pieces. And yet, for any one film that I could emphasize, there is something more symbolic about Redford that has resonated over the past 24 hours. 

To understand what I’m referring to, I must first highlight the state of late-night television. On Sunday, the annual Emmy Awards were handed out, including a statue for The Late Show hosted by Stephen Colbert. While the recipient took the prize with humor, the accompanying standing ovation presented a larger message about where talk shows are in 2025. Even as the perceived “bigger” winners took to the stage throughout the night, nobody was matching the fervor of Colbert’s brief appearance. Even the fact that it was presented in the final 20 minutes of the broadcast suggested an importance not present in prior years.

Colbert’s win was political. Like a lot of public figures who share their opinions nowadays, The Late Show was an easy target because of how it criticized the federal government. Add in some controversy surrounding the ownership of CBS, and you begin to understand that we’re entering dark times.

Let me step back a minute. Entering suggests a motion towards, but at the time of The Emmys, or even The Late Show cancellation, it was becoming en vogue. Days prior, conservative commentator Charlie Kirk was murdered at Utah Valley. Already a controversial figure, the response was met with an alarming level of backlash – especially given the narrative of him fighting for free speech. Almost every day presents a new media figure who was fired for presenting minor criticisms, including things as banal as his passing being tragic, but it wasn't worth celebrating. The immediacy of these departures serves more as a jarring threat than any testament to their actual substance. 

On September 18, the day after Redford’s passing, the next wave of cancellations emerged against targets that had been zeroed in on since before Colbert’s fall. Along with threats to end the late-night careers of Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers, the president emphasized his recognized animosity towards Jimmy Kimmel. 

Whereas Colbert was given a chance to say goodbye, those who tuned in at 11:35 PM the exact same night were met with a Family Feud rerun. Any chance to hear Kimmel provide a final credo was practically guillotined. Despite the predicted reality, I sat in disbelief as a man I had known since middle school, when he was a local radio DJ, failed to appear on my TV. If anything spoke to the power of the president, it was watching his enemy’s list be executed from the public square simply for telling a few jokes that might not have painted the president in a good light.

This is upsetting for many reasons, let alone that there isn’t much pushback to protect these establishments. It’s being taken for granted that the president is the voice of reason here, that “ratings” and being “unfunny” are enough reasons to add his two cents and have more say than any studio executive. The level of censorship has gotten worse since the phrase “fake news” entered America’s lexicon in 2015, and it does feel like media literacy is at its worst in my lifetime. It is now accepted that disagreement is enough for violence, that any chance to use Kirk’s death as a wake-up call to reach across the aisle and work towards positive change has all but vanished in less than a week. It’s back to blaming the “other” and needing to seek revenge against the repulsive “other.” The momentum to keep similar deaths from happening has all but dissipated as people get caught up in scapegoating, as if situations like this exist in a us-versus-them binary.

More than that, I mourn the loss of a principle that I think every functioning democracy should have. Freedom of the press has long been essential to America’s identity. The ability for journalists to question the system that we all live under helps the public to make sense of the world. In an ideal situation, a journalist is an unbiased reporter who gives you the grounding to form an opinion. The facts present a picture that is unshakable, not to be questioned, and instead recognize that even within biased opinion, there is a unifying truth. Mind you, this is the ideal situation, and I recognize that even the best of reporters may have their faults. However, their larger impact relies on them having a professionalism that bestows trust and establishes that, yes, this is reality.

I recognize that Colbert and Kimmel aren’t necessarily the primary figures we should be turning to for accuracy. However, criticism is just as important as reporting, as it allows for a larger sense of perspective to emerge. While I stopped watching The Late Show in part because I found the humor a bit grating, I accepted that others enjoyed it and found something else to watch that hour. It would be like eradicating broccoli from the planet just because one person hates it. The concept is absurd, and yet this is where the dominoes have fallen. As the institutional newspapers have largely downsized or folded, it has become harder to find out about reality… at least without enough money to get through dozens of paywalls.

Redford’s public image exists in contrast to everything that I have discussed. Like any celebrity, it’s hard not to highlight the various achievements throughout his career. There’s no doubt that his most iconic films will be brought up, and retrospectives will quickly fill people’s nights. However, there is something greater that emerged in my reflection on Redford’s career. He was a figure of hope that actually symbolized the ability to produce change worthy of celebrating.

The obvious answer will always be All the President’s Men (1976): a movie that has long been the gold standard for journalistic integrity on film. As someone who grew up buying newspapers with dreams of one day being on those pages, it’s been hard to ignore the impact of the real-life Woodward and Bernstein, whose ability to “trust the process” through some grueling hurdles and the risk of larger ostracization led to significant political change. If any figures symbolize the importance of freedom of the press, it’s them. The fact that the adaptation did an effective job of showing the process in tedious detail speaks to how tough the job description remains.

Even if I found the commentary from Redford’s The Candidate (1972) to be more compelling, it’s hard to not be a journalism student without some opinion on All the President’s Men. You almost need one, and that’s a testament to everyone involved. It’s the way that long nights of phone calls and tough conversations with your editor-in-chief can amount to something greater. One setback doesn’t mean failure is imminent. The presentation of information will sell your audience on what truly matters. There is the truth, and then there’s the art of persuasion.

Alongside Sundance, I think that the actor’s relationship with this film remains one of the things that immediately jumped to mind. Like his independent film festival, there’s the recognition of what freedom of expression can ultimately produce. There’s an incredible diversity of art that has united the masses. It has never been about disagreement, but just acceptance that part of America’s brilliance is the right to share what matters to you. Sure, not everything that Redford was attached to could be seen as fueling this narrative, but enough was. He even found ways to explore the ethics of game shows in the phenomenal Quiz Show (1994) and the way that presentation can subliminally impact the viewers’ response.

The more that I thought about those characters, the more I realized why they resonated with me. It went beyond charisma or good storytelling. They were figures who had a passion for truth and wanted genuine answers. Not in the modern conspiracist sense, but in the direction that ran rampant in New Hollywood by asking sincere questions about the larger system. Even something as perceptively trivial as Ordinary People (1980) deconstructed the nuclear family and created commentary around how we relate to our own relatives. Nobody was perfect, and yet there was a way to see past the flaws and recognize the shared humanity.

Without getting too far into the conversation, my biggest takeaway from the Kirk situation was less fixating on the controversy, but more the importance of our contributions. He was 31, younger than me, and scrutinized for comments he made in his short life. It was the type of language that would cause dissenters to call you a “piece of shit” for citing his animosity verbatim. Still, in between the mass exodus of opposition, it was hard to not recognize the mortality on display and how – regardless of the larger context – he was now a symbol of the unfulfilled life. People should live longer than their 30s. 

The suddenness is the most haunting part of the equation, and I think it has made me hyperaware of recognizing the ways that people will talk about me. As the first major death since Kirk’s, it was hard not to recognize how much Redford meant to me in two lanes. As an independent film fan, Sundance remains one of the most invaluable festivals in existence. Every year presents new creators that I hope to follow for years. 

Similarly, All the President’s Men may have pigeonhole him as “the journalism actor.” I say this because a lot of his work shares that nobility. It was especially true in 2011 when I was invited to a journalism convention in Hollywood. Our hotel was right behind Grauman’s Chinese Theater and across the street from large banners promoting Jimmy Kimmel Live. It was a chance to network with different colleges and attend panels that introduced attendees to the future of the medium.

This was all topped by an exclusive screening of Redford’s latest film, The Conspirator (2011), which focused on the trial following the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Like everything else, it was about the perspectives and facts being presented, asking questions around ethics and trust. 

Everything concluded with a Q&A with Redford, which was the real draw of attending the conference. Given that it was a ballroom packed with journalism students, you can guess the type of questions and answers that were on display that afternoon. He spoke sincerely about the importance of reporting the truth and why it was essential to do the hard work.

My immediate memory of Redford upon his passing wasn’t the time I went to Sundance in 2014 and he gave a speech detailing his disappointment with All Is Lost (2013) not getting Oscar nominated. It was that day when he inspired a room of young reporters to keep working towards something greater. As we networked in the lobby while handing out our school papers, I walked around picking up the various publications. At one point among the crowded air, I found myself face to face with the man himself. Had I been sharper, I would’ve said something more to him. Instead, we kept walking, and by the time that I processed everything, we had moved on with our lives.

But it was less the novelty of meeting an Oscar-winning actor just shy of the current venue of several more. It was the fact that everyone here shared the passion that he had portrayed decades ago. I am sure more than a few people I met were influenced by All the President’s Men to be a reporter who would go on to make a difference. 

While I could never call myself a meaningful journalist (I retired the term in 2015), it was a career that I had long held a passion for. I’d look at other students in my journalism class and admire how they put in the extra work to cover these complicated exposés and present something richer than the basic movie reviews that I ended up contributing. There was a world I saw taking risks, and those people remain mythic in my mind, as keeping that newsroom feel alive even as newsstands disappeared and whatever reporting that could be found went online and produced at a quicker rate than once a day.

The irony of reminiscing on journalism is that even in 2010, it felt like the industry was changing to the point that nobody knew where it would go. I believe there was a brief window when the online transition made sense, but by 2015 and the rise of “fake news,’ it was clear that the efforts to capture the Woodward and Bernstein shine in films like Spotlight (2015) were quaint. Even if I flocked to them with the familiar affection, I was aware that the narrative was changing. A decade later, freedom of the press feels closer to an old wives' tale than something feasible… and I hate it.

A lot of political fallout can be tied back to freedom of the press not being seen as trustworthy, that there’s no center anymore to how the public perceives the world. For every reporter still out there doing what’s essential, many more struggle to have the same sustainability. You almost need to do it more out of passion than any belief that you are going to crack the next Watergate, which, even then, seems like it will get you deported nowadays, regardless of how groundbreaking the actuality may be… if people choose to believe you.

What does Redford have to do with current events? I don’t think he’s responsible for Kimmel’s cancellation or anybody’s demise. However, it’s been bleak. It’s hard to want to get up and look at the world when the president is actively insulting anyone who disagrees with him. The average targets are reporters whom he guilt-trips out of asking any question that suggests nuance (or, for some reason, the production of his ballroom). There’s so much that’s overbearing and difficult to take because you want to believe somebody will have the power to stand up and restore that balance of power. 

I don’t know who it is, but Redford’s passing reminds me of how he came to fame with that exact narrative. He stood up for what he believed in and, even in fiction, told stories that inspired the potential for change. In a time when that largely means bending over in a pew and claiming the nonexistent “other” is out to get you, it’s hard to know what will break the cycle and produce something new. Still, I want to believe somebody my age saw All the President’s Men and still sees the hope of putting in the good fight. It may be harder to achieve, but I will be grateful to Redford for allowing so many to have their say. In an ideal world, those characters are still out there inspiring some hope in America’s future. I don’t know how or where, but so long as we help each other, the answer will come eventually.