Liz Garbus’ New York Times Documentary Gets May Premiere On Showtime – TCA
Showtime will premiere Liz Garbus’ documentary on The New York Times May 27, the network announced at today’s TCA winter press tour. With a working title of The Fourth Estate, the doc follows the newspaper and its journalists as they cover the first year of the Trump Administration.
“The Times is an odd and confounding muse for the current president,” said producer/director Garbus in a statement. “Trump craves the positive coverage of his hometown paper while simultaneously denigrating the ‘failing New York Times‘ on what seems to be a daily basis.
“We’ve been given unprecedented access to capture the challenges, triumphs and pitfalls of covering a president who has declared war on the free press, from the point of view of those on the front line – the White House correspondents, investigative journalists and editors at The New York Times. It’s the story of a lifetime, but what kind of story is it? Is it the story of a new era of the American presidency, or is it a reality show debacle? This series explores these questions as we take a front row seat to those writing the first draft of this moment in history.”
Garbus (What Happened, Miss Simone?) tells the Times‘ story through “access, on-the-scene filmmaking and exclusive sit-down interviews.”
The Fourth Estate is produced by RadicalMedia for Showtime with Jenny Carchman (Long Strange Trip) and Justin Wilkes (What Happened, Miss Simone?) serving as producers.
Showtime’s description of the new doc: “From the first time President Trump called The New York Times “highly inaccurate” in its coverage of his administration, through his false claim that the paper is “failing” and losing thousands of subscribers, to ultimately declaring the majority of the nation’s major news outlets “fake news,” a chief task for the Times, long considered the “newspaper of record,” has been to find the best way to accurately and honestly cover this new and unconventional president.
“With unprecedented access to the inner workings of the Times, including filming inside closed-door meetings, rare interviews with the editors and reporters who cover the President and the tumult around him, as well as an insider’s view of the Sulzberger family publisher transition, Garbus intimately chronicles the tenacious men and women in the trenches who are fighting for the freedom of the press and America’s right to know.”
The Fourth Estate premieres Sunday, May 27, at 8 pm ET/PT on Showtime.
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