The News Media's Bad Press In Fiction

If you frequently watch stories that feature reporters or the news media, you may notice that they are rarely portrayed positively unless they're the protagonists. The reason boils down to the fact that in those cases, they aren't the protagonists, and can easily serve as a convenient obstacle for the protagonists or a straw man that the author can bash. The one thing these portrayals have in common is that the media doing its job(or what the author sees as its job) is never enough to solve the problems the heroes face.

In many stories, the heroes are the underdog in an uphill battle against a powerful enemy, and having the news media be on the antagonists' side only helps further that perception. By publishing stories that show the heroes in the worst possible light, the news media can help turn public opinion against the heroes, leaving them even more isolated in their quest against the enemy. The villains can show their power by commanding the media to do their bidding. In Persona 5, one of the members of a conspiracy that the Phantom Thieves fight late in the game is the president of a TV station, and is apparently the one responsible for skewing the coverage against the Phantom Thieves.

Other stories may not have the news media as a pawn of the antagonists, but instead make things difficult for the protagonists out of bias or a desire to get people to sell their publications. J. Jonah Jameson is a well-known example of this, since he makes no secret of his disdain for Spider-Man and publishes articles that paint the web-crawler as a criminal. JJJ isn't in league with any of Spider-Man's foes; he simply does what it does because it sells and he doesn't trust Spider-Man.

In other stories, the news media may cause problems without intending to do so. In Die Hard, a reporter's snooping around for news on the hero, John McClane, helps the terrorists realize that the children shown in the photo in John's office are also Holly's children, and that she, as John's wife, is a useful hostage. In these cases, any information that is publicly broadcast is more likely to benefit the antagonists than it is to benefit the heroes.

Related to this, when the news media do help the protagonists, it's usually the result of the publicly known facts being on the protagonists' side, which tends to happen when the protagonists' fortunes turn for the better, if not the end of the story. In these cases, the reporters are simply doing their jobs, and generally do not receive any praise from the narrative. After all, the protagonists were usually the ones to uncover those secrets, and pass them along to the news media.

There are even times when the protagonists use the media for their advantage, but the press is not always a willing ally. In My Hero Academia, Nezu and Aizawa hold a press conference after the attack on the training camp, and the press wastes no time in trying to make U.A. come off as badly as possible. The U.A. teachers put up with the blatantly opinionated questions, and use the media to broadcast false information about Bakugo's rescue operation, enabling the police and heroes to catch the League of Villains off guard. The results of this ruse are good, but it still involves the heroes manipulating the otherwise adversarial press to their advantage.

While there are exceptions, in many cases, the news media range from being a benign spectator to an active foe of the protagonists. Perhaps some of the cases can be attributed to the in-story news media being ignorant of many important facts, but this generally shows little faith in the media's ability to do their job and find the truth. Many professions have been portrayed negatively in various ways. Journalists are not the only ones whose profession is often portrayed in a less than positive light, but not many other professions are shown as being incapable of even doing their jobs.