The 2017 biographical film about Katharine Graham starring Meryl Streep is The Post. Streep plays Graham, the publisher of The Washington Post during the newspaper’s decision to publish the Pentagon Papers.
Directed by Steven Spielberg, the film is set mainly in 1971, when the Post obtained portions of a classified government study about U.S. involvement in Vietnam and French Indochina. The documents challenged official statements about the war and created a major legal and ethical crisis for the newspaper.
The story also follows editor Ben Bradlee, played by Tom Hanks, and the journalists who worked to publish the material. Graham faced pressure from advisers, lawyers, investors, and the prospect of serious consequences, making her decision central to the film’s account of press freedom.
The Post is sometimes confused with All the President’s Men, which dramatizes the later Watergate investigation at the same newspaper. Spotlight concerns the Boston Globe’s investigation of abuse in the Catholic Church, while The Paper is a separate newspaper comedy-drama.