A film by Heather Courtney, Princess A. Hairston & Chelsea Hernandez
Who decides which stories get told?
As journalism comes under mounting political pressure and corporate and billionaire control over news platforms deepens, the power to decide which stories get told — and who gets to tell them — has never mattered more. The award-winning documentary Breaking the News follows one newsroom’s effort to navigate these accelerating pressures.
The film takes us inside the launch of The 19th* — the acclaimed independent digital newsroom start-up founded by women in 2020 to cover the intersection of gender, politics, policy, and power. The outlet is named for the constitutional amendment guaranteeing women’s suffrage, with an asterisk acknowledging the women of color excluded from the amendment’s original promise.
Breaking the News approaches the problem of mainstream news blind spots not with slogans or shallow nods to representation for its own sake, but by staying close to the journalists themselves — reporters doing the everyday work of covering the news in a media culture long shaped by elite institutional norms and deeply gendered power structures. The film tracks these journalists as they cover some of the defining stories of recent years — including police violence, the pandemic, anti-trans legislation, and the overturning of Roe v. Wade — while also confronting internal newsroom tensions around race, gender, class, and professional norms.
What emerges is not a story about how inclusivity will magically “fix” the media, but a clear-eyed examination of how power and inequality are embedded in the very systems that shape public understanding.
Viewed against today’s political and media landscape, Breaking the News feels less like a snapshot from the past than a case study in what’s at stake right now — a moment when corporate and oligarchic media control is deepening, local news outlets are disappearing, attacks on women’s and LGBTQ+ rights are intensifying, and holding powerful interests and institutions to account is becoming more and more difficult.
The result is an invaluable teaching tool for examining how corporate media power operates and why struggles over who gets to speak and be heard remain central to democratic life.
HEATHER COURTNEY (she/her) | DIRECTOR/PRODUCER/CINEMATOGRAPHER
Heather is an Emmy-winning filmmaker, and a Guggenheim, Sundance, and Fulbright fellow. Her film WHERE SOLDIERS COME FROM won an Emmy, an Independent Spirit Award, and a SXSW Jury Award. Her films have been funded by Ford Foundation/Just Films, MacArthur, Sundance Doc Fund, and ITVS, and have broadcast nationally on PBS, including POV, Independent Lens and America ReFramed, and streamed on Netflix and the Washington Post. Her short documentary FOR THE RECORD recently premiered at the Big Sky Documentary Film Fest, and she is currently in post-production on the ITVS, Ford, and IDA-funded feature BREAKING THE NEWS. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and her 14-year-old rescue pit Meeps.
PRINCESS A. HAIRSTON (she/her) | DIRECTOR/PRODUCER/CINEMATOGRAPHER
Princess A. Hairston is a director, producer, and Emmy-nominated editor based in NYC. Princess recently wrapped several doc series to be released in 2023. She edited THIS WORLD IS NOT MY OWN, which recently had its World Premiere at SXSW. Her work can be seen on LULARICH, PIER KIDS, FRESH DRESSED and the Emmy-nominated series CAPTURE W/ MARK SELIGER. She is a recipient of the Pano x Ablecine 2023 Cinematographer’s Lab, a 2020 nominee for the Lynn Shelton Of A Certain Age grant, a 2018 Winner of the NYTVF + WEtv Producer Pitch, and a 2018 recipient of the Karen Schmeer Editing Fellowship. Princess is an inclusion activist within the film industry advocating for BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and disabled individuals to be a part of storytelling in key positions for documentary films. She is a member of the Alliance of Documentary Editors, ACROSS THE CUT, BIPOC Doc Editors, and Brown Girls Doc Mafia.
CHELSEA HERNANDEZ (she/her) | DIRECTOR/PRODUCER/CINEMATOGRAPHER
Chelsea Hernandez is an Emmy-nominated Mexican-American Director and Producer based in Texas. Named as DOC NYC’s 2021 40 Under 40 Class, she is a 2021 Telly Award Winner for her feature documentary BUILDING THE AMERICAN DREAM (SXSW 2019) which was also nominated for a National Emmy® the same year. Chelsea’s producing work spans over 15 years in television and film including PBS special, FIXING THE FUTURE, hosted by NPR's David Brancaccio and directed by Ellen Spiro; UNITED TACOS OF AMERICA (El Rey Network series); and THAT ANIMAL RESCUE SHOW executive produced by Richard Linklater (CBS All-Access). Chelsea co-directed/produced the short documentary, AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE (2018 SXSW Texas Short Jury Winner, Field of Vision, Firelight Media). Chelsea is an 8-time Emmy-nominated editor and producer in the Texas region for her work on PBS’ ARTS IN CONTEXT docuseries. BREAKING THE NEWS is her second feature documentary. She is a WarnerMedia 150 Artist for a fiction film in development. Chelsea is a former fellow of Firelight Media Doc Lab, BAVC, Tribeca All Access and NALIP Latino Media Market. She is also a founding member of Tejanas in Film, a collective that aims to empower Latina filmmakers who identify as Tejanas.
Tribeca Film Festival Official Selection 2023
DC Dox Film Festival 2023
Middlebury New Filmmakers Festival Official Selection 2023
Montclair Film Festival Official Selection 2023
“Breaking the News is an immersive, crowd-pleasing, candid portrait of a start-up [news agency] experiencing growing pains, roadblocks, and ultimately success in changing the paradigm and business model for news. … One of those rare films that, like Citizenfour, might be seen as a major landmark in cinéma vérité documentaries about journalism.”
—John Fink, The Film Stage
“A scrappy group of women and LGBTQ+ journalists buck the white male-dominated status quo, banding together to launch The 19th*, a digital news startup aiming to combat misinformation. A story of an America in flux, and the voices often left out of the narrative, the documentary Breaking the News shows change doesn’t come easy.”
—PBS, Independent Lens
“This high-stakes documentary … looks poised to join the pantheon of great newsroom docs.”
—International Documentary Association