With “September 5” hitting theaters, depicting the events of the Munich massacre at the 1972 Olympic Games and the scrappy team of ABC Sports journalists who covered it live, it may give you a hankering for a good old journalism movie. Shoe-leather reporting, ethics in journalism and teams of disciplined professionals coming together to shape the chaos of the world into something comprehensible — or perhaps trying and failing to do so — it seems to be a thing of the past. There’s a pleasure in reveling in this quest though, and it has always made for thrilling cinematic material. So here’s a list of our favorite movies about journalists, on streaming.

No list would be complete without Alan Pakula’s “All The President’s Men,” depicting Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) and Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) breaking the Watergate scandal. Wide polyester ties, huge rotary phones and a two-and-half hour running time that flies by, this is one of the greatest films of all time, full-stop. Rent it on Amazon.

“All the President’s Men” is the gold standard for newspaper reporting movies about real-life events, and many other films have followed in its footsteps, especially Tom McCarthy’s best picture-winning “Spotlight” (2015), about the Boston Globe reporters who broke the story on a Catholic Church sexual abuse scandal (stream it on Starz or rent on Amazon). Similarly, Maria Schrader’s 2022 film “She Said” followed the intrepid female journalists of the New York Times who reported out the Harvey Weinstein rape and sexual abuse allegations (Starz or rent on Amazon).

Steven Spielberg tackled his own newspaper thriller with the 2017 film “The Post” about the Washington Post publishing the Pentagon Papers, with an all-star cast (rent it on iTunes or Amazon). David Fincher’s “Zodiac” depicts the complex relationship that the reporters at the San Francisco Chronicle had with the "Zodiac Killer" in the 1970s, after he started sending them encoded notes (stream it in Paramount+ or rent).

But “September 5” is specifically about making TV news, live, on the fly, with an unpredictable and chaotic situation unfolding, with unprecedented access and technology to broadcast these events to the world. So, it does fit more in line with the TV journalism genre, with films such as Michael Mann’s 1999 masterpiece “The Insider,” about tobacco whistleblower Jeffrey Wigand (Russell Crowe) and his relationship with “60 Minutes” producer Lowell Bergman (Al Pacino). Rent it on iTunes and Amazon.

Or revisit the blackly comic media satire “Network” (1976), directed by Sidney Lumet and written by Paddy Chayefsky (rent it on iTunes or Amazon). Or George Clooney’s “Good Night, and Good Luck” (2005) in which David Strathairn stars as Edward R. Murrow taking on Joseph McCarthy (rent it on Amazon). The 1987 James L. Brooks film “Broadcast News” puts a rom-com spin on the live TV news beat, with a love triangle featuring Holly Hunter, Albert Brooks and William Hurt (stream it on Starz or rent on Amazon). Finally, Dan Gilroy’s 2014 thriller “Nightcrawler” stars Jake Gyllenhaal as an unhinged L.A. amateur who trolls the streets and police scanners looking for juicy events to capture and sell to TV stations. Stream it on Starz or rent on Amazon.

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