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Article snippet: The newsroom crackles with verisimilitude, its rotary phones, staccato typewriters and a veil of cigarette smoke evoking a bygone grittiness. At its heart are a wisecracking editor and matriarchal publisher. “The Post,” starring Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep, may conjure up newspaper dramas like “Deadline — U.S.A.,” the 1952 film noir about crusading journalists that starred Humphrey Bogart and Ethel Barrymore. But those movies were pure fiction. “The Post,” set at The Washington Post as it covered the Vietnam War and the Nixon administration, is billed as a docudrama. Just how accurate is this “All the President’s Men” prequel? Here’s a primer separating fact and fiction. THE BACKGROUND: The film revolves around the Pentagon Papers, the government’s 7,000-page, 47-volume secret history of the Vietnam War. The documents were leaked to The New York Times, and though the film focuses on The Post and its publisher, Katharine Graham, it was The Times that spent three months reviewing the papers, then publishing articles about them beginning June 13, 1971. The Times defied a Nixon administration warning to stop but abided by a preliminary injunction granted June 15. Leaping into the gap, The Post’s version began appearing on June 18. On June 30, the United States Supreme Court voted 6-to-3 to lift the injunction against both papers, ruling that the government failed to justify prior restraint on publication. THE SETTING: While “The Post” is a stark reminder of what a com... Link to the full article to read more