Henry Hackett, Michael Keaton the metro editor of The New York Sun, loves his job but the grind of long hours and low pay wears on him. He fears becoming like Bernie White, his editor-in-chief who puts the paper first at the expense of his family. Bernie reveals a diagnosis of prostate cancer and, with a sense of urgency, tries to track down his estranged daughter to reconcile before his time runs out.
Facing dire financial straits, the paper’s owner has Alicia Clark Glenn Close, Henry’s nemesis and the managing editor, impose unpopular cutbacks. Henry’s pregnant wife Martha Marisa Tomei, a fellow Sun journalist on leave, worries that he won’t be around to help raise their child. She urges him to consider a job at the prestigious New York Sentinel, a move that would mean more money, more respect, and fewer hours—yet also more distance.
That same morning, a hot story erupts: the murder of two white businessmen in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. A pair of African-American teenagers are arrested, but Henry and columnist Michael McDougal Spalding Gray grow skeptical after overhearing cops criticizing the arrest on the newsroom police scanner. The case pulls Henry in, and he becomes obsessed with digging deeper, pushing his staff to chase every lead.
As the pressure builds, a source tells Martha that the murdered bankers were involved in stealing money from a reputed New York mobster, which strengthens Henry’s conviction that the Brooklyn youths were wrongly accused. His dedication threatens his standing and his chances at the Sentinel when he cannot resist secretly obtaining information from the Sentinel newsroom while interviewing for the job.
Henry fights to extend the deadline to give the story more time, but Alicia refuses, citing the costs of overtime for the press workers and the delivery trucks. With time running out, Henry and Michael McDougal secure the help of a police detective to verify the suspects’ innocence — they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, and the truth seems within reach for a big, undeniable scoop.
Back at the Sun, Henry confronts Alicia, who resists stopping the presses to publish the truth. A tense, awkward fistfight follows, and Alicia ultimately fires Henry. After sharing a drink with McDougal at a journalist hangout, Alicia experiences a change of heart when McDougal tells her this would be the Sun’s first knowingly false story, and she begins to reconsider the direction the paper is taking.
Yet fate intervenes in a brutal way: before she can reach the presses, a stray bullet from a drunken city official who had come to confront McDougal strikes her leg. The incident shifts the momentum of the day, as the hospital becomes the new center of action and decision.
Meanwhile, Henry arrives home just as Martha is rushed to the hospital for an emergency cesarean section. Doctors prepare Martha for surgery, and in another part of the hospital, Alicia insists on contacting The Sun to change the front page before the doctors treat her own wounds. The next morning, Alicia lies in the hospital bed with a copy of The Sun showing the headline They Didn't Do It! Henry visits the nursery to see his newborn son, then goes to Martha’s room. As he lies beside her, a bedside radio crackles with the news that the two innocent youths have been released, thanks to The Sun’s exclusive scoop, marking a hard-won vindication born from journalistic tenacity and the high cost of truth.
