Dean Wright is Global Editor, Ethics, Innovation and News Standards. Any opinions are his own.

It’s Oscar time, and I’m again reminded of the debt Hollywood and journalists owe each other. Journalists supply Hollywood with great stories and Hollywood sometimes makes us look cool—or at least worth a couple of hours of time and the price of a ticket.

Put aside the fact that a number of Hollywood movies literally are made from the pages of journalism --“Saturday Night Fever,” “Dog Day Afternoon” and “Adaptation,” to name only a few, were all based on magazine stories. We journalists are also the very characters that Hollywood screenwriters sometimes love.

In addition to sometimes bringing out our cool factor—although, really, what aspiring reporter could resist Robert Redford’s corduroy suits in “All the President’s Men”? -- Hollywood movies can illuminate the kind of ethical, moral and values issues that journalists have to deal with.

This year’s slate of Oscar nominees again includes a movie with journalism as its subject. “Frost/Nixon,” the film adaptation of the Broadway play about British journalist David Frost’s pursuit of the ultimate interview with disgraced former U.S. President Richard Nixon, is nominated for five Oscars.

So here is a completely arbitrary list of my top dozen movies about journalism that have something to say about the way we do our jobs--ethical or unethical, selfish or selfless. Aside from that, about the only thing they have in common is that they all were at least nominated for Oscars. I'll also acknowledge that most of the films are U.S.-oriented, like the Oscars. So I want to especially encourage feedback and suggestions for films from all parts of the world. (A word of warning: There will be plot spoilers.)

The envelope, please.

12: “Roman Holiday” (1953)—A journalist decides that there are things worth more than getting the story-- love and happiness, for example. Gregory Peck plays a struggling American reporter for a celebrity-oriented magazine in Rome assigned to cover a princess (Audrey Hepburn) on a state visit. The princess wants a taste of “real” life and escapes her handlers and falls into the arms of Peck, who sees the liaison as a chance to get an exclusive story and escape his down-at-the-heels lifestyle. Naturally, they fall in love and the princess sees just how much fun the common people can have. But Peck decides the exclusive story isn’t worth ruining his subject’s happiness as the princess reluctantly returns to her duties. Extra points for a bearded Eddie Albert’s portrayal of crazed photographer.

11: "Reds" (1981)--A journalist crosses the line from covering his subject to becoming part of the story. Warren Beatty is radical American journalist John Reed, who already writes from a strong point of view. He becomes more involved in leftist party politics, journeys to Russia to cover the 1917 Bolshevik revolution and becomes a semi-official voice for the cause, all the while engaged in a tempestuous love affair with fellow journalist Louise Bryant (Diane Keaton). Extra points for Jack Nicholson's lecherous but poetic role as Eugene O'Neill.

10: “The Year of Living Dangerously” (1982)—A journalist uses his relationships with a lover and colleagues to further his career before deciding that love really is more important. Mel Gibson is an Australian radio reporter sent to Indonesia in the 1960s as President Sukarno breaks with the West. Working with a dwarf photographer named Billy Kwan (a stunning Oscar turn by Linda Hunt), his career prospers and he falls in love with a British diplomat (Sigourney Weaver), who may or may not be using him. As he gets wind of a coup, he must decide between love and his career. Love wins.

9: "The Killing Fields" (1984)--A foreign correspondent learns he can't do his job without his courageous local colleagues and that life and friendship are more important than getting the story. Sam Waterston is New York Times correspondent Sydney Schanberg, stationed in Cambodia as the Khmer Rouge take over. His colleague, Cambodian journalist Dith Pran (Haing S. Ngor) sends his family to the U.S. as the Khmer Rouge move in, but Pran stays behind to work with Schanberg and falls victim to the brutal Khmer Rouge. Schanberg is wracked with guilt and works to ensure that Pran also gets credit for the award-winning journalism. After they were reunited, Pran worked in New York for The Times as a photographer and died last year.

8: “Broadcast News” (1987)—A trio of sad television journalists battle over the authenticity of news and learn that style often trumps substance. William Hurt is a handsome but glib and shallow newsman who’s not above staging shots and faking tears. Albert Brooks is his neurotic, by-the-book rival whose ethics, passion and knowledge are no match for Hurt’s hollow charm. Both men are after the romantic and professional attention of Holly Hunter’s producer, whose journalistic skill and success are equalled only by her private, self-destructive depression. Will the authentic journalist and authentic love win out? Don’t count on it.

7: “Citizen Kane” (1941)—It had to be here, didn’t it? A newspaperman’s youthful idealism turns to power-mad self interest. Orson Welles’ magnificent film about the fictional Charles Foster Kane (now who might that be?) tracks the rise and fall of a journalist who got into the business to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted and dies a lonely, loveless tycoon. A great moment in the idealistic phase, as Kane talks about his creed: “…It is my duty, and I’ll let you in on a little secret, it is also my pleasure—to see to it that decent, hard-working people of this community aren’t robbed blind by a pack of money-mad pirates just because they haven’t anybody to look after their interests.”

6: “Frost/Nixon” (2008)—Journalists and politicians can’t live without each other and sometimes do the right things for the wrong reasons. In a gripping piece of drama and history, television journalist David Frost (Michael Sheen) seeks to save his career by landing an exclusive interview with former President Richard Nixon (Frank Langella). Frost wants to get the scoop and make news by forcing the disgraced president to confess. Nixon wants a platform to clear his name -–and the $600,000 fee. The truth wins.

5: “The Insider” (1999)—Corporate self-interest clashes with public-service journalism—and people in the middle get hurt. Al Pacino plays an aggressive television producer who wants to tell the story of whistleblower Jeffrey Wigand’s (Russell Crowe) revelation that the tobacco industry not only knew their product was dangerous, but deliberately tried to increase its addictiveness. When Pacino’s corporate bosses become nervous, Crowe loses his job, his wife and almost everything but his self-respect. Extra points for Christopher Plummer’s complex portrayal of Mike Wallace.

4: “Ace in the Hole” (1951)—A journalist who will do anything—and I mean anything—to get the story and revive a career. Once called one of the most cynical movies ever made, this is certainly one of the most cynical portrayals of a journalist. Kirk Douglas is Chuck Tatum, a down-on-his-luck former big-city journalist who stumbles on a story of a man trapped in a cave in New Mexico. Tatum takes charge and prolongs the rescue effort to milk the story for all the headlines it will take to get him back to the big time. (“Bad news sells best. Cause good news is no news.”) All the while, Tatum is romancing the trapped man’s wife, a blowsy Jan Sterling (“I don’t go to church. Kneeling bags my nylons.”).

3: “Network” (1976)—The line between news and entertainment blurs to invisibility. Released the same year as “All the President’s Men” (below), “Network” portrays journalists in a decidedly less positive way. Longtime network journalist and now ratings-challenged anchor Howard Beale (Peter Finch) has an on-air breakdown after learning he will be fired and promises to kill himself on the air. His struggling network decides to encourage his implosion after Beale’s antics begin to catch on, billing him as the “Mad Prophet of the Air Waves.” Beale’s famous line is, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it any more,” but the more telling one is: “ But, man, you’re never going to get any truth from us. We’ll tell you anything you want to hear; we lie like hell.”

2: “All the President’s Men” (1976)—Hard-working journalists put their reputations on the line in pursuit of public good. As earnest in its portrayal of journalists as its Oscar-rival “Network” was cynical, Alan Pakula’s film focuses on journalists as investigating, crusading watchdogs. A search of the script fails to turn up any references to “ethics”, “ethical” or “unethical,” but few films about journalists portray reporters—played memorably by Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford—as more dedicated to not just getting the story, but getting it right. And I still get nervous in lonely parking garages.

1: “Good Night, and Good Luck” (2005)—A tough choice for No. 1, but for me no film does a better of job of telling the story of journalists who act courageously and responsibly, fighting powerful corporate pressure to take on injustice. Perpetually wreathed in the tobacco smoke that killed him far too young, storied journalist Edward R. Murrow (David Strathairn) and his producer Fred Friendly (George Clooney) challenge and eventually triumph over Red-baiting Senator Joseph McCarthy. And extra points for Frank Langella (“Frost/Nixon”) and his nuanced portrayal of CBS chief Bill Paley.

So what do you think? What are your favorite journalism movies? What would be on your list of films journalists should either pay attention to or ignore? And again, I'd especially like to see suggestions for films made outside the U.S. Let the fray begin.

Few would bet against “Slumdog Millionaire” winning Best Picture at the Academy Awards on February 22.

The rags-to-riches tale of a young man from a Mumbai slum winning a TV game show swept the BAFTA film awards and the Golden Globes this year.

With ten Oscar nominations in hand, the big question is how many of the golden trophies will Danny Boyle’s film end up with.

Is it really better than “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”? And the three other films in the fray for Best Picture?

Which film will walk away with the coveted honour on Sunday? And why?

– Eric Auchard is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own –

Outsourcing, Indian-style, is challenged as never before by an erosion in business confidence that makes corporate spending, even to generate quick cost-savings, harder to justify.

“No New Investment” is the order of the day; cost avoidance, the mantra; zero percent, the growth target in the current era of uncertainty.

Software service providers emerged out of the 2000-2002 technology spending bust with sales growing up to 50 percent a year as they won over companies to contract out inefficient operations instead of managing them in-house.

But shocks to the world economy seen over the past 18 months are triggering reassessments of corporate growth expectations, cost considerations and operational accountability. It’s no longer safe to assume that the logic that drove outsourcing in the past will drive it again, once the economy picks up.

Here are reasons why the industry will find it difficult to repeat its past performance in the tough times ahead.

CUTTING BACK ON COST-CUTTING: The paradox at the moment is that spending on services meant to cut costs and save money is itself being squeezed.

Technology Partners International (TPI), a research firm that has tracked the outsourcing industry for 20 years, reported this week that total contract volumes fell 22 percent in the fourth quarter from a year ago.

Just how bad things could get this year is only likely to emerge as corporate customers nail down their 2009 spending plans to vendors in the next two to three months.

“The worst of the IT (information technology) spending slowdown likely remains in front of us as we start the clock on slashed 2009 budgets,” Goldman Sachs warned in a report on the software industry earlier this month.

The conventional wisdom is that companies will eventually need to cost-cut their way out of the economic morass. But as the software services industry has matured over this decade, Goldman analysts say the sector has become more cyclically dependent on overall IT spending, reducing the chances it will be an early winner in any corporate recovery.

Tata Consultancy Services, the largest of the Indian software service providers, estimates that budgets for IT outsourcing will fall between 5 and 20 percent during 2009. Market forecasters predict more declines in store for 2010.

KEY CUSTOMERS IN TROUBLE. One problem is that the $40 billion-a-year industry’s fortunes are heavily linked to the financial sector. Indeed outsourcing started out 30 years ago as a way to help banks automate tangled back-office operations.

But while it grew more diverse in the 1990s, branching into telecom, manufacturing, retail and other industries; banks, brokerages and insurers are still the biggest slice of the market at 20 percent of overall sales, Goldman Sachs estimates.

The finance sector is not just in trouble, it is experiencing a meltdown like no other since the 1970s or perhaps even the 1930s — long before outsourcing itself was invented. And while the credit crisis has left many institutions needing to slash costs, we are seeing a wholesale contraction of the market that will lead to steep reductions in overall demand. Whole parts of the business will disappear and not be replaced.

Moreover, the financial industry’s reliance on governments for bailouts has curtailed the autonomy of bosses. Governments are likely to be dubious should big banks and insurers seek to offshore financial jobs, especially in countries with mounting unemployment. Outsourcers may have to get used to having fewer, and more conservative, financial services customers.

GROWING COMPETITION. Even if volumes hold up, Indian software services may find their market share eroded. After all, Indian firms no longer lay claim to the sort of exclusive cost advantages — lowest cost technical labour — they did.

In recent years, the industry has expanded into other offshore regions such as Southeast Asia, Central Europe and Latin America but promises to handle sensitive work “near-shore” or onsite when customers demand or labour politics require.

Big computer services firms IBM, Hewlett-Packard and Accenture got in on the act by expanding into India or by acquiring offshore companies themselves.

Accenture now has more staff in India than in the United States. Because these firms are agnostic about whether they offer their services offshore or near-shore, they look better placed to navigate global labour politics than Indian rivals.

TRUSTWORTHINESS. Adding to the sector’s troubles is the massive corporate fraud uncovered recently at Satyam Computer Services Ltd, India’s fourth largest software services provider. The scandal has Satyam customers scrambling to find alternative providers.

Other offshore services providers report stepped-up scrutiny from clients of their own corporate governance and financial viability. It has also revived questions about the trustworthiness of Indian accounts and the adequacy of corporate controls.

That’s a big black eye for an industry that sells risk management and corporate governance services as a major client offering. It may raise the risk premium investors require for holding these stocks.

PRICE PRESSURES. Rising competition isn’t the only threat to offshore outsourcers’ margins.

Many of the more profitable, longer-term contracts worth tens or hundreds of millions of dollars are being put on hold as companies scramble to reassess their business strategies.

Customers want more control over projects and are demanding fixed-price deals that are more likely than not to limit margin growth. Infosys, Tata and others say they are doing their best to make up for price cuts by driving greater sales volumes.

The trend is disguised by the long-term nature of many existing software services contracts. Recent reports suggest many customers are scaling back or cancelling long-term “mega-deals” until they can get a handle on the impact of economic decline on their own businesses.

The industry is subsisting on short-term, quick-fix contracts aimed at cutting operational costs as fast as possible. These price-sensitive deals are what software services firms had been trying to move away from in favour of higher-value projects to create new businesses for customers, not just manage existing software or customer services.

There is a big cultural change underway in global corporations that may be less friendly to outsourcing. Fallout from the financial crisis is likely to mean far greater pressure on chief executives to run a tighter ship. There’s likely to be less merger activity, less headlong expansion and less resulting need to consolidate organizations using external services.

Chief executives are sure to be more closely scrutinized for the operational choices they make, instead of farming out responsibility to lower level technical managers in order to focus on deal-making.

Inevitably there is a lack of control involved in contracting business operations out around the globe. This more constrained environment could be less favourable for outsourcing than downturns of the past.

– Eric Auchard is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own. At the time of publication Eric Auchard did not own any direct investments in securities mentioned in this article. He may be an owner indirectly as an investor in a fund.