Ace In The Hole
TCM, 10:00 p.m. ET
Made in 1951, this movie is jaw-droppingly prescient, and bitingly cynical, about the hunger by the media to exploit an individual tragedy and turn it into national theater. There’s a cave-in at a mine, and reporter Kirk Douglas sees his coverage of it as a way to work his way back to the journalistic big time. The reigning media at the time is radio – but swap out the radio mike for TV cameras, and Douglas for CNN or MSNBC or Fox News or any other 24-hour TV news operation, and you’ve got a very familiar, very modern tale.