Washington Post writer R. B. Brenner describes his thrilling adventures serving as a technical consultant on State of Play. The movie which stars Russell Crowe as bearish investigative reporter employed by "the Washington Globe, a down-on-its-luck 'second buy' in town, recently taken over by a media conglomerate," where he has Helen Mirren for a boss and Rachel McAdams as a blog-savvy novice to goggle with admiration over his death-defying journaistic feats and to tsk-tsk over his ethical lapses. Once upon a time, this was a 2003 British miniseries of the same title, which "portrays a Fleet Street world of newspapering that, though rollicking fun, is an ethical nightmare by American standards. Its ace reporter pays sources for information (an absolute no-no in the United States), surreptitiously videotapes a source in a hotel room (a firing offense, and a felony in several states) and generally behaves like a walking conflict of interest (and in a bedroom scene with the politician's wife, he does more than walk)." Brenner saw it as his job to guide the filmmaking team, which included Scottish director Kevin Macdonald (Touching the Void, The Last King of Scotland), in adapting the specifics to the American journalism milieu without costing the story any juice.

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