Citizen Kane Scene 8 Summary

  • Charles Kane walks into The Inquirer office as a young 25-year-old man with his best friend, Mr. Leland.
  • He meets the paper's editor, Mr. Carter, and introduces himself. Meanwhile, Mr. Bernstein comes stumbling in and knocks a bunch of stuff over.
  • We see someone bring a bed frame into Mr. Carter's office, and Kane informs Carter that he plans on sleeping at the newspaper office regularly.
  • Before you know it, Charles and his buddies are driving Mr. Carter bonkers. Mr. Carter likes to run an old-fashioned newspaper that only reports on confirmed facts.
  • But Kane wants to run a paper that prints any rumor or gossip it can find because that's what people want to read.
  • Mr. Carter leaves in a huff. Back in the office, Charles Kane says he wants his paper to be as important to New York as the electricity and water supplies.
  • Kane wants to make a declaration of his paper's core values, which include telling the news honestly.
  • Leland points out that Kane is starting an awful lot of sentences with "I," meaning that he's a tad egotistical.
  • When they're done printing Kane's declaration, Leland says he'd like to have it.