The Fourth Estate

The thing about newsrooms is that they’re full of characters, and always have been, even before Twitter made us count them. The Fourth Estate gets that and shows the people behind the bylines, the podcasts, and the tweets. ... You might see, yes, how hard they try, but also why--and even, amid their obvious exhaustion, how much fun they have doing it.

Although it is filled with sort of pulse-quickening journalistic jujitsu one expects--the deadlines, the doggedness, the scoops, the backlash--it is also refreshingly human in scope, stopping more than once to observe the emotional toll on these journalists who are working themselves to the bone.

Will prove equally satisfying to media and political junkies.

It all can be quite thrilling: a peek behind the scenes of how things actually go down when news breaks. Garbus also gets across how hard these reporters are working and how often. .... By the time the series wraps up, it does not feel complete. Articles from the first hour start to connect with new stories surfacing in the fourth, as reporters speculate that something big is around the corner. They don’t think the story is over yet, and indeed, it isn’t.

Admittedly, the work of journalism isn't always especially camera-friendly, but it's still enlightening to watch reporters assigned to the then-fledgling Russia group work sources, engaging in one-sided conversations as they seek to clarify matters like talking on background versus being entirely off the record.

Regardless of its flaws, The Fourth Estate is the equivalent of mainlining pure political-news heroin, a fascinating fly-on-the-wall look at the frantic and unenviable lifestyle of those genuinely doing their best to provide honest and aggressive journalism in the face of a government intent on muzzling it.

Because The Fourth Estate is less a documentary about the Times than a document of the struggle to report on Trump, it is--though smart and gripping--a frustrating heap of unfinished business.

Tthis emphasis on the fret and care that goes into every word in every story, especially those that shift the conversation and attract the ire of the president, can also drag the energy down. ... Nevertheless, when The Fourth Estate hits its stride, it provides quite an education about the challenges facing every news outlet, concretized in one of America’s top publications.

This is the opposite of a thesis film; it’s a lively existential you-are-there diary of the pulse of The New York Times. Maybe the other episodes will expand its scope, but I couldn’t help but wish that what we were seeing [in the opener] had more of a topical-philosophical edge--that it showed us the Times editors wrestling, for example, with the thorny issue of how to deal with Trump’s lies, and hammering out a policy about it.

A lopsided new docuseries offers a limited but thrilling window into the paper of record.