Richard R. Ness filmography of journalism in the movies lists some 2,166 US-, and around eighty UK-produced films made between the early years of the silent cinema and 1996. In many of these films journalism is present only as a bit player, part of the backdrop to a story which is not really ‘about’ journalism, but in which journalists are involved to a greater or less extent. In some – the many Superman movies, for example, in which Clark Kent's mild-mannered reporter is the mask behind which a superhero resides – a character's journalistic status is a convenient plot device, a vehicle for a particular kind of narrative (in Superman's case, one in which breaking news is an opportunity for displays of heroism and action-packed battles between Good and Evil). The prevalence of journalism in these contexts reflects the extent to which our contemporary societies are, in so many respects, ‘mediated’. News media are the ever-present backdrop to both private and public life, part of the cultural furniture and ambient noise of our society. Cinema reflects this.

In many films, however, the journalist, and his or her profession and its outputs, has been the star of the show, the fulcrum around which the story revolves. These are films in which journalism is unquestionably the subject of the work; the source of the dramatic tensions and narrative structures which fuel the plot; the focus of the dilemmas and challenges driving the characters.