It’s not the best time to be a journalist right now. In fact, it sucks! But oddly enough, as the actual media workforce sputters, movies about journalists are in a boom time. This Thanksgiving, Matthew Rhys will play a reporter who befriends Mr. Rogers in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. Earlier this fall, Julia Stiles played a journo based on the writer Jessica Pressler in Hustlers, and a Netflix series based on another Pressler story is in the works from Shonda Rhimes. Meanwhile, in recent years, prestige flicks like Spotlight and The Post have valorized real-life muckrakers, and comedies like Trainwreck and Someone Great have carried on the grand tradition of writerly rom-com protagonists. Hollywood still loves a newshound.
From comedies to historical dramas to biopics to thrillers, movies are lousy with media types. So it is time to decide, once and for all (or until the next batch of press-based films comes out): Who is the best movie journalist? And who is the worst?
For the purposes of this ranking, I’ve selected a wide sampling of slightly more than 50 performances from 45 films.
A few notes about the selection: In most cases, I restricted the number of journalists per movie to one performance, but with films like All the President’s Men to consider, I made exceptions for teamwork, because otherwise it’d be weird. Also, there are a number of excellent films, like When Harry Met Sally and Heartburn, in which characters work in media, but their job isn’t very important to the plot; I’ve chosen not to include this type of character on this list. And I definitely missed some movies, because it’s impossible to watch everything. Feel free to yell at me about this on Twitter, but I’ll probably ignore you because I tried my freaking best!
Now, on to the scoring system. There are four categories, rated, in most cases, on a scale from 1 to 10:
- Does the character get their story? This one is simple: Does the journalist ultimately write or broadcast what they set out to?
- Are they competent? Sometimes movie journalists get very lucky on one story. This question looks at their larger skill set. Do they know how to report, or do they simply stumble into everything?
- Are they ethical? Are they mindful of journalistic ethics? Do they follow a moral code or do they make up sources, sleep with their subjects, or, ya know, sometimes kill people? Those last few things are pretty frowned upon in the industry.
- How believable is the journalist? Can you imagine this journalist functioning in a newsroom during the time period this was set? Does the actor look … journalist-y enough?
Plus, bonus points and extra demerits will be available based entirely on my capricious whims and petty grudges. On to the rankings!
45. Jake Gyllenhaal as Louis Bloom in Nightcrawler (2014)
Dan Gilroy’s Nightcrawler, a thriller about ambulance-chaser local news stringers, is both a nasty little caper and a movie that will make you seek a hug to assure yourself that the world isn’t actually as cold and sinister as it seemed for the 117-minute run time.
Does the character get their story? Yes, in a big way. Bloom is very adept at getting to crime scenes first and getting the footage out, it must be said. As the film progresses, he becomes unparalleled at what he does. 10/10, even though what he does is an eerie, voyeuristic distillation of humanity’s worst impulses.
Are they competent? Yes, Bloom is so successful at finding or creating compelling documentation for the masses that he becomes widely known as the most masterful reporter on his beat in the city. 10/10
Are they ethical? Bloom kills multiple people, including his protégé, to further his own career, in addition to committing a litany of smaller but still serious crimes including sexual coercion, vehicular assault, and theft. Minus-1,000/10 for all the murder.
How believable is the journalist? While all the murder stuff makes it pretty outlandish, the general amorality is, sadly, very plausible, and while the way the station Bloom caters to chases ratings feels exaggerated, it’s also convincing. 8/10
Total: minus-972/10 … once again, for all murder.
44. Meryl Streep as Susan Orlean in Adaptation (2002)
In real life, Orlean is a beloved magazine journalist and writer. In Adaptation, she is, too—but screenwriter Charlie Kaufman made some distinct choices to distinguish the character of Orlean from the real writer. And most of those choices turned fictional Orlean into one real piece of work.
Does the character get their story? Yes, she writes a well-received New Yorker article about orchids and then adapts it into a successful book called The Orchid Thief. 10/10
Are they competent? Her sparkling prose is recited by a fictionalized version of Kaufman (Nicolas Cage) as he struggles to adapt her book, so she’s proved to be an accomplished stylist. She is also clearly skilled at source-building and conducting interviews. 10/10
Are they ethical? She sleeps with her subject, takes illicit drugs from and with him, and then attempts to kill Kaufman and his brother after he discovers her misdeeds. She also leaves her sexual relationship and drug use out of the book, omitting the truth of her relationship with her source. minus-400/10
How believable is the journalist? Before she starts zooting flower powder and trying to murder, she’s extremely believable, and I’m pretty sure they actually filmed some of the scenes in the real New Yorker office! 10/10
Total: minus-370/10
43. Hayden Christensen as Stephen Glass in Shattered Glass (2003)
Glass was a real-life New Republic writer who got busted for fabricating stories and had to leave the profession in disgrace. Christensen plays him in this 2003 true-crime drama.
Does the character get their story? Glass initially files stories reporters dream of writing, like tell-alls about teenage hackers. But all these splashy stories are debunked by the movie’s end as completely made up, so you can’t feel too good about that. We’ll give him a 1/10.
Are they competent? No, because instead of reporting he just makes the stuff up. You’re not allowed to do that. It’s actually the main rule of journalism. 0/10
Are they ethical? As you might imagine, the whole “made-it-all-up” situation really dings him here. Glass also doesn’t fess up until he is forced to, and screws over his editors and colleagues all while complaining that they’re not on his side. minus-100/10
How believable is the journalist? Stephen Glass was a baby-faced 20-something when he pulled his fabulist stunts, and Christensen embodies his sniveling entitlement well. He’s slightly too beautiful in the face to completely nail it, but he comes close. 9/10.
Total: minus-90/40
42. Sally Field as Megan Carter, Absence of Malice (1981)
Field stars as Carter, a Miami Standard reporter who reports a story on a liquor wholesaler named Michael Gallagher (Paul Newman) based on false information and then proceeds to date him.
Does the character get their story? Megan publishes a series of stories throughout the film, but the first one is based on fake documents she is fed by a prosecutor, which seriously damages an innocent man’s career. The second includes a detail about a religious woman getting an abortion that is not necessary to report for the public interest and results in the woman’s suicide. So, all of her stories are exclusively wrong or deeply flawed. 1/10
Are they competent? Oh my god, no—didn’t you read what I just wrote? She does admit to being incompetent, though, so we’ll give her a point for that. 1/10
Are they ethical? As the film’s title suggests, Carter isn’t malicious in her screwups, but that’s about all she has going for her as far as ethics are concerned. She writes a story based on false information, which she steals from a prosecutor’s office. Then she hooks up with the subject of her initial report. I do not know how Megan got hired by the Standard. minus-20/10
How believable is the journalist? Sally Field is definitely believable as a bad journalist. She looks the part in dowdy blouses and pencil skirts, and she’s perfectly fidgety and feckless. 8/10
Total: minus-10/40
41. Miranda Richardson as Rita Skeeter in the Harry Potter franchise (2005-11)
Skeeter is a sneaky gossip columnist who routinely pesters and defames Harry Potter throughout the books and movies.
Does the character get their story? Skeeter is often inaccurate and defamatory, but it must be said, she was the Daily Prophet’s most prominent war reporter for both the First and Second Wizarding Wars. And even though her biography of Dumbledore was nasty, it was based in many harsh truths. Say what you will about her, the woman can get a scoop. 7/10
Are they competent? Skeeter relies on her Quick-Quotes Quill—a very handy-seeming invention; good job, wizarding world—to do most of her work for her, and her stories are sensationalist. She is able to corner hostile sources, though, and she did publish a lot of information incredibly relevant to the wizarding world, so she’ll get a 7/10 despite her shortcuts.
Are they ethical? Not one bit. She forces answers out of people by using Veritaserum without consent, she spies on sources by transforming into a beetle, and her quill embellishes or straight-up fabricates quotes. Her interactions with Harry are also weirdly charged. Bad all around. minus-10/10
How believable is the journalist? Richardson embodies a malignant gossip columnist with believable, brittle bluster, although her hair is way too manicured for someone so harried. 8/10
Demerit: minus-10 for inadvertently furthering the agenda of the Dark Lord Voldemort!
Total: 2/40
40. Richard Gere as Ike Graham in Runaway Bride (1999)
Graham, a man known for his sexist USA Today newspaper columns who can also somehow afford to live on Central Park, writes a mean op-ed about Maggie Carpenter, a woman who repeatedly runs away from the altar. When Carpenter accuses him of slander and factual errors and Graham is fired, he goes to visit her.
Does the character get their story? No! He never writes the follow-up he comes to Maggie’s town to do. 0/10
Are they competent? No! He gets fired for failure to fact-check. 0/10
Are they ethical? No! He writes a cruel column about a private citizen in a national paper, then pays her to participate in a makeup story, then proposes to her. 0/10
How believable is the journalist? Even in the insular media universe concocted by this movie, it’s still odd that Ike’s ex-wife and her new husband are his bosses. But Gere nails the smarminess level of an op-ed columnist, so 4/10.
Total: 4/40
39. Dermot Mulroney as Michael O’Neal in My Best Friend’s Wedding (1997)
O’Neal is a sportswriter who is marrying a college student, whom he expects to forgo a career to accompany him to baseball games for work. I am not going to lie, I put him in this low position because expecting your 20-year-old bride to follow you around on sportswriting travels rather than getting a job is both a stunningly stupid plan for economic stability and pretty sexist.
Does the character get their story? He doesn’t really do much work in the movie but he does seem to regularly produce copy so 6/10, whatever.
Are they competent? No beat reporter at a midsized newspaper who demands to be the breadwinner in a single-income family could possibly be competent, sorry! Yes, even in the ’90s! 0/10.
Are they ethical? I don’t care. I’m not over the concept of a reporter insisting their spouse not have a job. Can we also talk about how this guy puts his ex-girlfriend’s finger in his mouth the night before his wedding? What is wrong with him? 5.5/10
How believable is the journalist? Again, no JOURNALIST would encourage their educated spouse (Michael seems to assume that his fiancé will simply drop out of college after the wedding) not to get a job so that they could travel with them on business, not even in 1997 when the industry was flush. There was no way Mulroney could salvage the madness. minus-10/10
Total: 1.5/40
38. Drew Barrymore as Josie Geller in Never Been Kissed (1999)
Barrymore plays a Chicago Sun-Times copy editor who is somehow assigned to go undercover at a high school for what appears to be an entire school year, at the direct behest of the paper’s publisher, a truly absurd allocation of resources and talent that defies all logic and the laws of the state of Illinois.
Does the character get their story? Geller initially gets scooped about an underage drinking scandal at the high school, even though her sole job as an undercover teenager was to get those kinds of stories. For some reason she doesn’t get pulled off the assignment and is given months to redeem herself, which she instead uses as an opportunity to write a personal essay about being a huge virgin. 0/10
Are they competent? Um, see above. 0/10
Are they ethical? Simply wanting to know what the teens are like these days doesn’t seem like a compelling excuse to commit what appears to be felony fraud. Catfishing a teacher by pretending to be jailbait was also a questionable move. 0/10.
How believable is the journalist? Nothing about this movie is even remotely believable, but I’ll give Barrymore a 2/10 for showcasing the deep social awkwardness many journalists are blighted with in our personal lives.
Total: 2/40
37. Burt Lancaster as J.J. Hunsecker in Sweet Smell of Success (1957)
Hunsecker is a dastardly newspaper columnist covering Broadway in this 1957 noir.
Does the character get their story? Yes, Hunsecker regularly puts out popular and influential columns about theater. It’s remarkable how powerful he is in this movie. People are scared of him, including a publicist. As someone who has received phone calls from screaming publicists before, this dynamic is a sight to behold. 8/10
Are they competent? He’s good at what he does, but what he does is write sleazy takedowns or paid-for puff pieces, so 3/10.
Are they ethical? The film’s plot revolves around his attempts to use his column to destroy the life of his sister’s boyfriend, so minus-10/10, no. (Hollywood’s distrust of the media goes back decades!!!)
How believable is the journalist? Lancaster is very convincing as a conniving power broker, although his intimidating and cigar-chomping personality doesn’t lend itself to imagining him hunched over a typewriter. 2/10.
Total: 3/40
36. Amy Schumer as Amy Townsend in Trainwreck (2015)
Schumer’s Townsend is a hard-partying men’s magazine writer who falls in love with the subject of her story, a handsome sports doctor.
Does the character get their story? Yes, somehow it is published in Vanity Fair after Townsend is fired from her original job for almost sleeping with its 16-year-old intern. 10/10 I guess?
Are they competent? I repeat: Townsend is fired for almost sleeping with a 16-year-old intern. 0/10
Are they ethical? In addition to almost sleeping with said intern, Townsend sleeps with her story’s subject. minus-10/10
How believable is the journalist? I know a lot of journalists who live like Townsend—minus the sleeping with sources and nearly sleeping with 16-year-olds, thank God—so we’ll go with 4/10.
Total: 4/40
35. Meg Ryan as Annie Reed in Sleepless in Seattle (1993)
Reed is a Baltimore Sun reporter who becomes obsessed with a Seattle-based widower (Tom Hanks) even though she is engaged to Walter (Bill Pullman), a kind man she actually knows.
Does the character get their story? Even though Reed flies to Seattle to write about Sad Tom Hanks for the Sun, she never actually files anything about him. 0/10
Are they competent? Reed is good at navigating the internet for a person from the 1990s and is able to track down the identities of Sad Tom Hanks and his son shockingly quickly, so she does get 1/10 for investigation skills, but no other points because she clearly can’t hit deadlines.
Are they ethical? She hires a private investigator to trail the subjects of a personal interest story, which seems like overkill and also something you need to get permission from editors to do? She also thinks her story subject is her soulmate. So I suppose it’s best she never filed. minus-5/10
How believable is the journalist? Reed is a neurotic stress case who loves to snoop and make bad choices. Yes. 9/10
Total 5/40
34. Johnny Depp as Raoul Duke in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998)
Duke (Depp), a magazine writer, is sent to cover a motorcycle race in Las Vegas and does an absolutely inadvisable variety and quantity of drugs.
Does the character get their story? Duke does finally write up his adventures, and it is implied that the narration during the movie is excerpted from the story he files. It’s definitely not what he was assigned, though, so 5/10.
Are they competent? Considering he spends almost every waking moment drifting in and out of a hallucinatory, ranting state, no. 0/10
Are they ethical? Duke doesn’t appear to fabricate anything in his stories, but the gleeful and terrifying crime spree he goes on while ostensibly reporting gets him a minus-5/10.
How believable is the journalist? Duke would be impossible to believe, except that he was Hunter S. Thompson’s alter ego, and this is a dramatization of a thinly veiled memoir, so: 5.5/10
Total: 5.5/10
33. Katie Holmes as Heather Holloway in Thank You for Smoking (2005)
Holloway is a doe-eyed reporter for the fictional Washington Probe, working on a profile of tobacco lobbyist Nick Naylor (Aaron Eckhart) whilst sleeping with him.
Does the character get their story? She gets the juicy front-page profile she sets out to write. 10/10
Are they competent? Holloway is a great interviewer, but her primary reporting strategy appears to be seducing sources. 5/10
Are they ethical? Absolutely not; she immediately sleeps with the subject of her piece. minus-5/10
How believable is the journalist? Female journalists don’t sleep with their profile subjects! 0/10
Total: 10/40
32. Marcello Mastroianni as Marcello Rubini in La Dolce Vita (1960)
Gossip columnist Rubini spends his days and nights doing plenty to gossip about but not much actual writing. As a character, Rubini is iconic. As a fictional journalist, he’s remarkably bad at his job.
Does the character get their story? At one point, Rubini tells a friend he is “gathering material,” and at another he is working on a novel, but he is never shown publishing much of anything. 2/10
Are they competent? Rubini is not the most focused journalist, taking phone calls during a press junket and spending most of his time on various misadventures, so … no, not really. 3/10
Are they ethical? He pays his sources and (at least) attempts to sleep with a subject. (It’s ambiguous whether he succeeds.) 4/10
How believable is the journalist? Again, journalists don’t sleep with their subjects—I don’t know what we need to do to get screenwriters to realize this. But the opening scene when he stops his news helicopter to flirt feels all too real, and if a journalist were to sleep with a story subject ... it would be this guy. 5/10
Total: 14/40
31. William Alland as Jerry Thompson in Citizen Kane (1941)
After newspaper magnate Charles Foster Kane (Orson Welles) dies, Thompson goes looking for the meaning of his final word, “Rosebud.”
Does the character get their story? Nope. Thompson never figures it out. Considering Kane never told anyone about Rosebud, it’s not really Thompson’s fault, but the dude still completely whiffs on the assignment. 0/10
Are they competent? He does a lot of good reporting about Kane’s life, and, had he been tasked with a less-granular assignment, he likely would have succeeded, so: 5/10.
Are they ethical? He doesn’t go around breaking any major rules, but he also doesn’t really do much at all, so let’s settle in the middle: 5/10
How believable is the journalist? Thompson is so very much a framing device in this movie that you don’t even really get to see his face; he’s a terrific bridge between flashbacks, but too nondescript to be believable or not. 5/10
Total: 15/40
30. Will Ferrell as Ron Burgundy and Christina Applegate as Veronica Corningstone in Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004)
Ron Burgundy and Veronica Corningstone are San Diego news anchors who must learn to work together, despite Veronica’s status as a woman and Ron’s status as a sexist blowhard.
Does the character get their story? They don’t really get the story they set out to do about a baby panda being born at the zoo, but they do manage to divert attention to Ron’s rescue mission after Veronica is pushed into another bear cage. 4/10
Are they competent? Not at all, and yet they somehow end up as longtime coanchors! 5/10
Are they ethical? Ron relentlessly sexually harasses and disparges Veronica and she messes with his teleprompter, causing him to tell all of San Diego to fuck itself—but they do reconcile at the end, so: 4/10.
How believable is the journalist? The movie is a slapstick comedy, so nothing is meant to be believable—although Ferrell absolutely nails anchorman voice. 5/10
Total: 18/40
29. Tom Selleck as Peter Malloy in In & Out (1997)
Selleck’s Malloy is an entertainment reporter who spends at least a full week camped out in a small town in Indiana to profile Howard Brackett (Kevin Kline), who is notable only because he is briefly mentioned in an Oscars speech as both inspirational and gay.
Does the character get their story? He gets the initial story when he comes to Indiana along with the rest of the press, but it doesn’t appear that Malloy ever airs the more in-depth follow-up he’s working on. 3/10
Are they competent? He does succeed in getting a very closed-off subject to open up to him—but not on camera. It’s also weird that he’d spend this much time on a profile of someone who really isn’t famous at all. 4/10
Are they ethical? He smooches the subject of his story, which, as we have been over in this ranking many times before, is not cool. In this instance, it’s what appears to be a good-faith effort to help the subject understand their own sexuality, though, so: 6/10.
How believable is the journalist? Mostly believable, although Tom Selleck has that problem where he is way too Tom Selleck–y to be believable in a job that isn’t “being Tom Selleck.” 6/10
Total: 19/40
28. Tobey Maguire as Peter Parker in Spider-Man (2002)
Parker is bitten by a spider that gives him superpowers. He also works as a newspaper photographer.
Does the character get their story? He gets exclusive photographs of Spider-Man after his boss explicitly demands them, so, yes! 10/10
Are they competent? He doesn’t really demonstrate skills beyond getting the Spider-Man photos, and honestly, he gets those only because he is Spider-Man, so: 2/10.
Are they ethical? Staging photos of yourself and turning them in without identifying yourself as the person in the photo? Fireable offense down at the Daily Bugle, I’d reckon. 2/10
How believable is the journalist? Ehhh, Maguire always looks vaguely uncomfortable holding the camera, although the way he cowers when faced with his boss’s yelling is believable. 5.5/10
Total: 19.5/40
27. Kate Winslet as Bitsey Bloom in The Life of David Gale (2003)
Bloom is reporting on David Gale (Kevin Spacey), a professor on death row in Texas who just coincidentally happened to be a very prominent anti–death penalty advocate before his arrest. Just kidding, it’s not a coincidence at all. This movie is absolutely wild. The fact that Winslet’s character is named “Bitsey Bloom” is like the 47th weirdest thing about it.
Does the character get their story? She certainly writes a version of the story she sets out to write. But then there’s a last-minute twist about how she actually missed the truth, so 3/10.
Are they competent? In Bloom’s defense, the twist is very outlandish, and I did not see it coming. Then again, she does majorly screw up the story she works on the entire time by missing what really happened. That’s sort of an important part of the job. 3/10
Are they ethical? Yes, Bloom abides by the rules of journalism. 10/10
How believable is the journalist? As believable as one can be in a movie as outrageous as The Life of David Gale, which is to say: not very. 4/10
Total: 20/40
26. Kate Hudson as Andie Anderson in How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days (2003)
Anderson is an advice columnist for a women’s fashion magazine who longs to do hard news. Dejected, she decides to do her next column on how to get a man to break up with you, using a handsome ad man played by Matthew McConaughey as the “guy” she must lose. But because this is a rom-com, he made a bet that he could keep a girl for the same time period, so high jinks ensue.
Does the character get their story? Yes, she writes the “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days” column. However, instead of leading to a promotion, she ends up quitting over it, so 8/10.
Are they competent? She seems to file her “How-to” columns on time regularly, and by the end of the movie she’s snagged an interview with an outlet in D.C. But her claim that she can write only what she wants to write from there instead of … New York, the media capital of the world, isn’t very indicative of career savvy. 5/10
Are they ethical? Oh, really, really not at all. Not only does Anderson convince one of her coworkers to impersonate a therapist and give a man therapy (which is … definitely a crime) she has sex with the man as part of stunt journalism! 0/10
How believable is the journalist? “From now on, feel free to write about anything!” Anderson’s editor exclaims at the end. But then she backtracks that she means shoes, laser therapy, or “dressing for your body type”—depressing, but realistic for women’s magazines at that time. (Nowadays, Andie would have a much easier time covering politics.) 8/10
Total: 21/40
25. Gina Rodriguez as Jenny Young in Someone Great (2019)
Jenny gets her “dream job” at Rolling Stone and has to move to San Francisco, so she and her girls have one last night on the town in New York. This movie is the most Netflix of all the Netflix Originals—it’s not very memorable, but it’s extremely watchable, almost precision-engineered for someone with a mild to moderate hangover to throw on in the background.
Does the character get their story? She doesn’t really do any work since she hasn’t started her job yet, but she has landed her ideal gig, so let’s say 6/10.
Are they competent? Jenny thinks that Rolling Stone is based in San Francisco but the magazine is based in New York, where she lives already, so there’s no reason for her to upend her entire life and move. Mama, let’s research! 2/10
Are they ethical? She seems very rule-abiding, although she is very eager to use her critic guest list privileges to wantonly party, so 6/10.
How believable is the journalist? Believable, even though she’s slightly more chipper than any music journalist I’ve ever known. 8/10
Total: 22/40
24. Jim Carrey as Bruce Nolan in Bruce Almighty (2003)
Bruce is a TV reporter in Buffalo who is given God’s powers for a week after he loses a promotion to his rival and gets fired for freaking out on the air. (Then he blames God for everything, which gets the ball rolling.)
Does the character get their story? Bruce doesn’t achieve his dream of becoming an anchor, but he eventually settles into field reporting, so: 5/10.
Are they competent? He flips out on live television because he gets passed over for a promotion, which is completely immature behavior. He eventually goes back to the sort of light field reporting he is good at, though, and that’s at least worth something. 5/10
Are they ethical? For most of the film he uses his newfound powers to manipulate people, including getting his rival fired by having him spew gibberish on the air, so he’s not the most ethical, although he does regret his behavior. And honestly, Evan got his own movie after this. Evan was fine. 4/10
How believable is the journalist? He’s a great goofy local news anchor! 8.5/10
Total: 22.5/40
23. James Franco as Dave Skylark and Seth Rogen as Aaron Rapaport in The Interview (2014)
In a satire that provoked real-life conflict with North Korea, James Franco and Seth Rogen play a reporter and producer who are presented with the opportunity to interview Kim Jong Un.
Does the character get their story? They do manage to air the interview with Kim, overcoming a series of hurdles to do so, and Skylark writes a book about the experience at the end. I’m knocking off a point, though, because they tried to combine doing the story with an assassination attempt. 9/10
Are they competent? Skylark is ultimately able to ask Kim tough questions, and Rapaport keeps the interview going. Although they have a background in silly celebrity gossip, they rise to the opportunity to do hard news. 8/10.
Are they ethical? They agree to assassinate their subject. Even though he is a dictator who’s done horrible things, I’m pretty sure you can’t do that. 1.5/10
How believable is the journalist? Franco captures a vapid gossip anchor well, and Rogen is great when he plays schlubby media types (he’ll appear much further up this list for another journalist role), but it’s also very hard to watch this movie without just seeing it as Franco and Rogen goofing around. 4.5/10
Total: 23/40
22. Nanako Matsushima as Reiko Asakawa in Ringu (1998)
Asakawa is a reporter working on a story on an urban legend about a video which will kill you a week after you watch it.
Does the character get their story? No, she gets sidetracked by a vengeful ghost bent on killing her and her family. She does do most of the reporting legwork, though! 4/10
Are they competent? She’s clearly a skilled reporter, but she does make a copy of a tape known for killing everyone who watches it, which is a pretty major mistake. 2/10
Are they ethical? As far as journalism goes, yes, 10/10. However, she does decide to essentially murder her dad to save her son, which is a minus-2 demerit.
How believable is the journalist? Yeah, Matsushima sells it. 10/10
Total: 24/40
21. Renée Zellweger as Bridget Jones in Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001)
Bridget Jones becomes a cable television journalist after leaving the publishing industry.
Does the character get their story? Yes, she manages to nail an exclusive interview, although she does need help securing it from her love interest, Mark Darcy. 9/10
Are they competent? Not at the beginning, when she accidentally sticks her butt into the camera, but she does improve a bit by the end. Since she manages to snag her big interview only because of a love connection, though, it’s 4/10.
Are they ethical? She doesn’t seem to give journalistic ethics any thought, but appears to treat her interview subjects with respect. An improvement relative to the rest of the journos on this list. 7/10
How believable is the journalist? Bridget made a lot more sense working in the publishing world than making a career change into journalism as a 30-something. 5/10
Total: 25/40
20. Matthew Rhys as Lloyd Vogel in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019)
Rhys plays an emotionally damaged Esquire features writer who gets assigned a mini profile of Mr. Rogers (Tom Hanks) to rehabilitate his image.
Does the character get their story? He gets assigned a 400-word puff piece on Mr. Rogers and turns it in a 10,000-word feature about himself—and somehow it turns into a cover story. So yes, although I have to knock a couple of points off for ignoring the assignment. 7/10
Are they competent? Vogel is shown to be a National Magazine Award winner and a very coddled longform reporter, suggesting that he is at least seen by his peers and superiors as competent. He asks Mr. Rogers some tough questions, too—but he also storms out of an interview, which isn’t very professional. 6/10
Are they ethical? Yeah, he seems fairly ethical as a journalist, although the movie suggests that he can be cruel to subjects who don’t necessarily deserve it, so 6/10.
How believable is the journalist? Rhys is a terrific actor, and he’s great here as a man going through some emotional soul-searching. There are some odd little choices in the script about the way he reports, though. Who in their right mind would choose to take a phone call with a source by going out onto a noisy balcony? And it’s just impolite to show a reporter being rewarded for going 9,600 words over his limit! 6.5/10
Total: 25.5/40
19. Peter Finch as Howard Beale in Network (1976)
Beale is a longtime news anchor who is initially let go for low ratings, but has a short second career as a “prophet” once he announces that he’s “mad as hell and not going to take it anymore!”
Does the character get their story? I mean, he does get to tell the world how he really feels, but he also ends up assassinated by his own network because his ratings were too low, so I’m gonna say no. 3/10
Are they competent? For most of his career, yes. For the portion covered in the film, he doesn’t report the news so much as he rants about the world. 3/10.
Are they ethical? He’s driven into a dire mental health crisis because he’s so ethical, so Beale can only get a 10/10 here.
How believable is the journalist? Finch, bug-eyed and pissed off and unkempt, won the Best Actor Oscar posthumously for this role—and he deserved it. 10/10
Total: 26/40
18. Jeremy Renner as Gary Webb in Kill the Messenger (2014)
Kill the Messenger is a dramatization of the fall of investigative journalist Gary Webb, whose “Dark Alliance” series for The San Jose Mercury News linked the crack cocaine trade in the United States with the CIA-backed Contra group in Nicaragua.
Does the character get their story? Yes—at first, and partially, and to his ultimate ruin. Webb publishes “Dark Alliance” to immediate acclaim, but he is not able to continue the series once other journalists begin to reinvestigate his story, poking holes and accusing Webb of flawed or outright wrong reporting. 4/10
Are they competent? Webb is shown to be especially adept at getting tricky sources to speak with him, and he was part of a Pulitzer Prize–winning team covering an earthquake earlier in his career, before the “Dark Alliance” story. He does, however, rely on a single unreliable source to tell him when court dates are, and shows up late. 7/10
Are they ethical? In real life, Webb’s journalism was the subject of intense debate, and many major news organizations poured resources into debunking his sourcing and the way his story was presented. Kill the Messenger takes Webb’s side, suggesting that his treatment at the hands of the media unfairly destroyed his career. While there are many legitimate critiques of the way the “Dark Alliance” series was presented and written, Webb was scrupulous and diligent in its reporting. 8/10
How believable is the journalist? Renner realistically schlumps himself up to play Webb. A little mustache goes a long way (although Renner remained slightly too jacked). 7.5/10
Total: 26.5/40
17. Holly Hunter as Jane Craig, William Hurt as Tom Grunick, and Albert Brooks as Aaron Altman in Broadcast News (1987)
The love triangle at the center of Broadcast News is successful producer Jane, vapid but charming anchor Tom, and talented but sweaty reporter Aaron, who all work at the same network. It’s hard to consider them separately, so I’m taking them as an aggregate.
Does the character get their story? Tom gets his big story about sexual harassment—but he conducts the interview in a manipulative way—while Aaron resigns, so we’ll give this an even 5/10.
Are they competent? Jane’s at least a 9/10, but Albert and Tom are 5s at best, so we’ll give the group a 6/10.
Are they ethical? Jane and Albert are both fiercely idealistic and would rather die than compromise their journalistic ethics, while Tom is happy to stage his own tears to appear more sympathetic. We’ll do a 6/10 for the group.
How believable is the journalist? Broadcast News is one of the most realistic movies about journalism on this list, from the horrible outfits to the layoffs to the adrenaline rushes when stories go well. 10/10
Total: 27/40
16. Julia Stiles as Elizabeth in Hustlers (2019)
Elizabeth is a magazine writer who convinces Ramona (Jennifer Lopez) and Destiny (Constance Wu) to tell her about a crime ring they operated.
Does the character get their story? Yes, her article about Destiny and Ramona is published toward the end of the film. 10/10
Are they competent? She has a friendly interview style that allows the women to open up to her. 8.5/10
Are they ethical? Yeah. She seems to genuinely care about telling the story honestly and is respectful of her sources. 10/10
How believable is the journalist? Stiles, with her upwardly mobile life and empathy, is very believable as a successful magazine journalist. 10/10
Demerit: Hustlers mainly uses Elizabeth as a framing device, and even though she is based on a real-life excellent journalist and Stiles does what she can, I must give a minus-10 because she’s the least interesting part of the film.
Total: 28.5/40
15. Tom Hanks as Ben Bradlee in The Post (2017)
We’ve entered the part of this list where a lot of the entries will be celebratory biopics about heroic, crusading real-life reporters, so the scores are gonna get pretty high. In The Post, which is basically a straight hagiography of everyone involved, Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham must decide whether to publish the Pentagon Papers. Hanks costars as Bradlee, leading the team of journalists behind the story.
Does the character get their story? They actually already have the story for most of the movie—the plot is really about the struggle to get it published. 10/10
Are they competent? Yes, it is Ben Bradlee and the team who ran the Pentagon Papers at the Post. 10/10
Are they ethical? This movie makes all the newspaper people involved look like plausible candidates for canonization. 10/10
How believable is the journalist? I mean, it’s based pretty faithfully on the truth. But there’s no way that the truth of how this all unfolded could be quite so flattering to the Post staff, so I’m knocking off a point. 9/10
Demerit: minus-10 points for being boring
Total: 29/40
14. Jane Fonda as Kimberly Wells in The China Syndrome (1979)
Wells is on location at a nuclear plant doing a run-of-the-mill story when she and her cameraman capture footage showing a terrifying industrial accident.
Does the character get their story? At the absolute last minute, she is able to expose the corporate malfeasance putting the entire state (and possibly the whole country) at risk. Unfortunately, she hems and haws over pursuing the story for a large portion of the movie, so: 7/10
Are they competent? Yes, she’s good on camera and proves to be an adept investigator. 8.5/10
Are they ethical? Not as ethical as her cameraman Richard (Michael Douglas), who has to steal the footage after the network tries to bury it and egg her into continuing to pursue the story. She does ultimately do the right thing, though, so 7/10.
How believable is the journalist? The way that Wells spends most of the movie fighting to be taken seriously and trying to convince the network execs that she can do real journalism is certainly realistic. It’s a bit hard to fathom why they don’t cut away from her after she’s sobbing on live TV, though. 7/10
Total: 29.5/40
13. Russell Crowe and Rachel McAdams as Cal McAffrey and Della Frye in State of Play (2009)
Cal is a grizzled reporter type and Della is an up-and-coming blogger at the same D.C.-based newspaper. When a congressional aide is murdered right as her boss is about to grill a military contracting company, the pair investigate.
Does the character(s) get their story? Yes, they do. Though let’s also note: Cal gives Della the first byline, which is nice—but he also writes the whole thing, which is kinda fucked, and he never discloses that he is best friends with the person who ends up being the story’s central figure, which seems like something one should have to disclose. 7/10
Are they competent? The whole movie is essentially Della and Cal running around and doing on-the-ground reporting, including one of those classic “door slams in their faces” montages. I do have to knock a few points off for Cal’s boneheaded decisions to involve his friend, who quickly emerges as a figure of note in the story, in the reporting process. 8/10
Are they ethical? Well, they do surreptitiously tape a source and then allow him to get punched by one of the story’s subjects, Representative Collins (Ben Affleck), who is also a good friend of Cal’s. And then Cal almost gets hoodwinked by Collins, who was trying to use him to cover up his crimes. Not so great. Della follows the rules, though, so we’ll split the difference. 5/10
How believable is the journalist? Cal’s slobby desk is a familiar sight, and McAdams—who appears on this list several times—has an earnestness that fits well with the vibe of someone who is nosy for a living. 10/10
Total: 30/40
12. Jake Gyllenhaal as Robert Graysmith in Zodiac (2007)
Another journalist named Paul Avery (Robert Downey Jr.) originally sets out to discover the identity of a serial killer who calls himself the Zodiac, but cartoonist Graysmith becomes completely obsessed with the case.
Does the character get their story? The Zodiac Killer’s identity remains one of the most famous unsolved crimes in the United States, so Graysmith was not able to crack the case, although he did write a bestselling book called Zodiac about it. 6/10
Are they competent? At investigating the Zodiac killer, Graysmith turns out to be incredibly competent. He does get fired from his job as the newspaper’s cartoonist, though, so: 5/10
Are they ethical? Graysmith is frequently described as a Boy Scout for his by-the-book habits. 10/10
How believable is the journalist? Gyllenhaal went so far as to videotape Graysmith to study his mannerisms, and nails his journey from earnest cartoonist to paranoid investigator. 10/10
Total: 31/40
11. Jesse Eisenberg as David Lipsky in The End of the Tour (2015)
Based on a true story, Lipsky trails writer David Foster Wallace (Jason Segel) around for a profile just as Foster Wallace’s literary stardom has turned into celebrity.
Does the character get their story? Not at first—the profile for which Lipsky spent a week with Wallace to write was never published. But Lipsky eventually writes the definitive book on Wallace, relying on the transcripts of their conversations during that week, so 7/10.
Are they competent? Even thought Lipsky is self-conscious about how his career stacks up to Wallace’s celebrity-writer status, he is shown to be a gainfully employed and well-respected magazine journalist, so his biggest issue is confidence, not competence. And he’s clearly a great interviewer. 8/10
Are they ethical? Yes, he is very ethical in general, although he falters by becoming far too friendly with Wallace and staying at his house. 6.5/10
How believable is the journalist? I’m not sure an actor has ever resembled a certain type of journalist more than Eisenberg, who stammers and hems and haws and looks like he’s perpetually on the verge of spilling ink all over himself. 10/10
Total: 31.5/40
10a. Patrick Fugit as William Miller in Almost Famous (2000)
Aspiring journalist and teenager Miller trails the rock band Stillwater in this semiautobiographical Cameron Crowe movie.
Does the character get their story? Yes, he does ultimately get the story, although it is initially rejected because band leader Russell lies to the Rolling Stone fact checker and says William falsified his first draft. William needs his mom’s help to convince Russell to participate and verify the story. Points for writing a great story; slight deduction for the mom thing. 8/10
Are they competent? Yes, he’s a journalistic prodigy, good enough to gain the attention of a national magazine while he’s still a teenager. He does, however, falter at meeting deadlines and delivering his first cover story on time, so 8/10
Are they ethical? “You cannot make friends with the rock stars,” Lester Bangs (Philip Seymour Hoffman) counsels Miller. Miller doesn’t listen. But apart from the friendliness, he’s pretty ethical, so 6/10
How believable is the journalist? This is Crowe’s most plainly autobiographical film, as he was a teenage journalism prodigy who profiled bands for Rolling Stone in the ’70s, and William Miller is deliberately modeled after him. 10/10
Total: 32/40
10b. Michael Nyqvist as Mikael Blomkvist in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2009)
Blomkvist starts this series as a disgraced indie magazine publisher and redeems himself through hacker-assisted journalism.
Does the character get their story? Yes, and he is able to basically completely rejuvenate a career maligned by scandal by writing a story from prison. 10/10
Are they competent? Blomkvist is a good investigator, but he does rely a lot on his research assistant, Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace), who’s the one doing a large amount of the legwork. We’ll give Blomkvist a 7/10
Are they ethical? Yes, mostly—he doesn’t deserve to lose the libel case that causes him to go to prison—but he shouldn’t be sleeping with his freakin’ research assistant. 7/10
How believable is the journalist? He looks exactly how I’d imagine an ornery independent financial magazine owner in Scandinavia to look. The least-believable thing is that he’d ever take on a partner. 8/10
Total: 32/40
9. Cary Grant as Walter Burns and Rosalind Russell as Hildy Johnson in His Girl Friday
Recently divorced Morning Post reporters and editors Hildy (Russell) and Walter (Grant) tackle one last crime scoop together.
Does the character get their story? Yes, they manage to uncover the truth and help set an innocent man free. (Although Hildy doesn’t actually file the story before the movie ends.) 10/10
Are they competent? They’re resourceful tabloid journalists, and they reminisce about other times they went to great lengths to get their stories. They even hide a source within their office furniture. 10/10
Are they ethical? That one’s dicier. They seem to have a very casual relationship with breaking the law—Hildy offhandedly mentions stealing a stomach from the coroner’s office—and Walter gets his ex-wife’s future mother-in-law arrested to get her out of the way of getting the story. 4/10
How believable is the journalist? The banter is obviously way too snappy to be real, but the way His Girl Friday nails the excitement of actually making news captures the most romantic part of the job. 7/10
Total: 31/40
8. Denzel Washington as Gray Grantham in The Pelican Brief
Grantham is a Washington Herald reporter who gets pulled on to a story about a plot to assassinate Supreme Court justices and soon becomes the target of assassination himself, along with Darby Shaw (Julia Roberts), a law student whose theory on the people behind the killings has put her in danger too. Grantham is also preposterously handsome.
Does the character get their story? Yes! Even though people are trying to kill him and his source, Grantham publishes. 10/10
Are they competent? Yes. Shaw reaches out to Grantham because of his sterling reputation, and he is calm and clever while newsgathering. Shaw does do a lot of legwork for him, though, so I’ll knock off two points for his bounty of unpaid assistance. 8/10
Are they ethical? Grantham is very by-the-book and also, notably, does NOT sleep with his hot and vulnerable source. 10/10
How believable is the journalist? Yes, however—a journalist that renowned and handsome would’ve been a celebrity of sorts in the ’90s, yet he seems to move through the world unrecognized. 6/10
Total: 34/40
7. Courteney Cox as Gale Weathers in the Scream Franchise
Gale is a brash tabloid reporter who first appears in Scream after writing a book arguing that the wrong person was arrested for the murder of Sidney Prescott’s mother. (Turns out she’s right.) She then chases the story of the real killers throughout the series.
Does the character get their story? Hell yes Gale Weathers gets her stories! She publishes multiple nonfiction books detailing the killing sprees that occur in the series, despite frequently being a target of the murderers. She is basically the mother of the True Crime drama, nearly 20 years before Serial launched. 10/10
Are they competent? Yes, she’s dogged and skeptical and willing to stay on a story even when her coworkers are murdered. 10/10
Are they ethical? This is Gale’s weak point; even though she gains more of a conscience throughout the series, she does some shady shit, like planting a video camera at a teen house party. 3/10
How believable is the journalist? The unbelievability of the sheer number of serial killers she manages to encounter aside, Gale’s personality is imminently believable, and Cox plays her with delightfully slimy charm. 10/10
Bonus: plus-2 points for not dying
Total: 35/40
6. Warren Beatty and Diane Keaton as John Reed and Louise Bryant in Reds (1981)
Beatty and Keaton play real-life married journalists and left-wing activists in an impossibly long movie that is somehow great despite devoting about an hour of its running time to big union infighting between the IWW and AFL.
Does the character get their story? Bryant ditches a dentist husband to become a successful reporter, while Reed writes Ten Days That Shook the World, still one of the best books ever about the Bolshevik Revolution. 10/10
Are they competent? By the end of the film, Bryant has established herself as an independent journalist after struggling to gain recognition in her partner’s shadow. Reed is shown to be a great journalist, but he abandons reporting in favor of activism, so: 6/10
Are they ethical? Reed and Bryant are both obsessed with writing their way to a more just society and advocating for workers. That’s very good. 10/10
How believable is the journalist? It’s surprising that Keaton hasn’t played a journalist more frequently, because she has the right nervous energy and intensity. Beatty, meanwhile, seems like he’d be too handsome for it to work, but he gives Reed a flighty charm that keeps the movie from morphing into a hagiography. It works. 10/10
Total: 36/40
5. Rosamund Pike as Marie Colvin in A Private War (2018)
Pike plays real-life war correspondent Colvin in this underrated biopic.
Does the character get their story? Yes, she gets hundreds of them, living fearlessly as a longtime war correspondent. 10/10
Are they competent? Extremely, although she is shown to disregard her own personal safety. 8/10
Are they ethical? Yes, she is a rigorous and scrupulous journalist. 10/10
How believable is the journalist? Pike does terrific character work, transforming herself into Colvin’s angular, haunted, tough cookie. 10/10
Total: 38/40
4. Mark Ruffalo as Michael Rezendes, Rachel McAdams as Sacha Pfeiffer, etc., in Spotlight (2015)
The Boston Globe’s “Spotlight” team begins investigating child sexual abuse within the local Catholic Church and discovers systemic crimes far beyond what they imagined.
Does the character get their story? Yep. 10/10
Are they competent? You don’t get on the Spotlight team in the first place unless you’ve demonstrated serious investigative chops, and each member of the team approaches the sensitive nature of the investigation carefully. Rezendes’s doggedness, in particular, is a rare source of humor in the film but also genuinely commendable. 10/10
Are they ethical? Yep. 10/10
How believable is the journalist? The frump and anxiety levels are calibrated perfectly. Also, since this movie, Ruffalo has become a sort of activist in his own right. He so believably played a man who speaks truth to power in Spotlight that it convinced him that he is a man who speaks truth to power in real life. That’s saying something. 10/10
Total: 40/40
3. Seth Rogen as Fred Flarsky, Long Shot (2019)
Flarsky is a reporter for a left-leaning outlet who quits in protest after a corporate takeover. Afterward, he goes to work as a speechwriter for Secretary of State Charlotte Field (Charlize Theron).
Does the character get their story? Before going to work as a speechwriter, Flarsky is a talented investigative journalist. We get a taste of his determination to land scoops when we see him go undercover—and get a tattoo, and jump out of a second-story window—to expose American Nazis. 10/10
Are they competent? In general, Flarsky is good at his job, and writes attention-grabbing headlines. 10/10
Are they ethical? Hell yes. Flarsky would even rather quit his job than work for an immoral boss. 10/10
How believable is the journalist? Flarsky is perhaps the single most believable journalist on this list, from his stupid neon windbreaker (which my colleague Andrew Gruttadaro has admitted to owning) to the way he looks and acts. I have heard a rumor that Rogen based his performance partly on the journalist Ashley Feinberg and I choose to both believe and spread this rumor—Flarsky is Ashley. 20/10.
Total: 50/40
2. Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman as Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein in All the President’s Men (1976)
Two Washington Post reporters bring down a presidency. A classic for a reason.
Does the character get their story? Yes, they break the Watergate scandal and spur Nixon’s resignation. This is the most iconic story-getting of all time. 50/10
Are they competent? Breaking this story is shown as a significant leap forward for the reporters, but then again, it’d be a significant leap forward for any journalist. 10/10
Are they ethical? Yes. Although in real life the methods Woodward and Bernstein used might raise eyebrows today, in the film they are very upstanding. 10/10
How believable is the journalist? Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman are objectively too hot to be journalists in this movie, but their performances otherwise hew to real-life events, so: 8/10
Total: 78/40
1. Dr. Haing S. Ngor as Dith Pran and Sam Waterston as Sydney Schanberg in The Killing Fields (1984)
Bringing up the front of the pack is another true-life journalism-hero story, but this one stands out because it has an extraordinary additional layer. It’s the story of real-life foreign correspondent Schanberg and his translator and freelance photographer Pran. The Killing Fields traces their two very different routes out of Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge’s genocide.
Does the character get their story? Their journalism within Cambodia during the film is interrupted by Year Zero, but they are reunited at the film’s end, with the suggestion that they’ll work together again. (And in real life, they did.) So: 7/10
Are they competent? They are both extremely resourceful and skilled, working together to send wartime dispatches until Schanberg evacuates and Pran flees. 10/10
Are they ethical? Yes, they behave as ethically as they can throughout the film, although survival is certainly a far more important concern. 10/10
How believable is the journalist? This is where this movie gets the highest marks. Waterston is great as Schanberg, but Ngor is incredible as Pran, partly because the actor also survived the Khmer Rouge and had to escape the labor camps to Thailand, so he had real-life experience to draw on. Ngor, who was a practicing gynecologist before Year Zero, lost his wife during childbirth while in the camps but managed to survive by eating bugs and crawling across the border into a refugee camp. Then he was discovered during casting for this film, and even though he had no acting experience he crushed it! Ngor won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for this role—the second Asian actor to win an Oscar—and went on to work regularly in Hollywood. He kept working regularly for the next decade, but then he was murdered outside his home in Los Angeles in 1996. Three teenagers associated with a gang were arrested, although many people suspect that he was assassinated for drawing attention to the Khmer Rouge regime’s crimes against humanity. His life was absolutely tragic, and his performance as Dith Pran should be way more recognized than it is. 1,000/10 for Dr. Haing S. Ngor!
Total: 1,027/40
