The story of 1970s TV reporter Christine Chubbuck who commited suicide live on the air. Christine is an unblinking yet also understated character study of an unstable woman with a consuming professional drive, who hits a wall as her 30th birthday approaches and sees no way around it.
Played out against the unfolding of Richard Nixon's fall from grace on the national political stage, the film juxtaposes that dramatic news fodder with the mind-numbing items Christine is forced to cover on her community-interest beat — strawberry festivals, egg production, zoning disputes. Even when she tries to get her teeth into a story, micromanaging every segment with backup from her supportive cameraperson, Jean, her irascible producer, Mike, yawns.
With ratings in the toilet and advertising down, Mike delivers a new mandate calling for juicier stories: "If it bleeds, it leads." But Christine fights him every step of the way, refusing to sensationalize work that she approaches with integrity. Her eventual attempts to compromise, by uncovering some grit in sunshiny Sarasota, are unimpressive. But when word trickles down that station owner Bob Anderson is looking to poach talent for a new network in Baltimore, a top-30 market, Christine's bids to play the game become more manic.
