I've read this idea in several reviews and I fully disagree: He knew exactly who he was; he didn't like it a lot and from his very childhood he tried to do something about it. But, on the other hand, he was great doing what the networks and the public wanted, and he never tried nor pretended to be or pass as a philosopher or a great whatever.
If pigs had wings the sh*t of this world would be perfectly shared
While I like Tom and don't think he's a bad person, he is a fake. He basically admitted as much to Holly Hunter early in the movie, telling her how half the time he doesn't get the news he's talking about.
shareI agree. He does get the picture, he tries to do something about it which is close to nothing, but at the same time he has the ability to go with the flow in the understanding that what he's doing is what the public and the network want. So, he just takes advantage of something that happened long before he got there, he knows is sort of wrong but not illegal. So, without being the paradigma of TV-journalism, a fake he isn´t. He does well what he can do, and a lot of people like it; it is something that Aaron, a very talented and high standards journalist, also wants o do but fails to achieve.
At the end, my view is that TV news stuff is always an uneven mix of quality and style and it has to be that way. After all, the audience is just a 250 million pair of eyes and ears.
If pigs had wings the sh*t of this world would be perfectly shared
the point about Tom is that there was a tradition of being the keeper of the public trust, a sense of duty that great newsmen like Eward R Murrow, Walter Cronkite, Eric Sevareid and the media corporations that used their talents represented. Things have obviously changed and Tom (and upper management) are indifferent regarding the change in a sense of responsiblity toward journalistic integrity renders bottom line shallow ethically compassless success like Tom. Things are so so much worse now it is a joke. Thankfully with the proliferation of media outlets there are at least some places where the journalistic ethos is still front and center.
shareI like Tom. He is a "salesman" and he knows that in some cases, subtle manipulation can get the job done, even if it isn't really the ethical thing to do ("I got promoted for things like that"). But on the other hand, he didn't accept the Managing Editor job because as he said in his speech near the end of the movie, he knew that there were people better qualified to control the content...and if not "We'd be in trouble."
He was ambitious, very good at the superficial performance things associated with anchoring, and aware of his limitations.
I also like Tom...and he made it big in the Corporate World of back stabbing, kiss a--, and two faced associates...
Arron was a cheap gutter snip and a Woody Allen clone, what a whiner, and weak character this guy was. Did he ever talk about ANYthing but himself?
That lady (Jane Craig) was the troll from hell.. she is the original fish wife.
She should have married that guy with the terrible wig, Arron.