Popular culture is known for constructing the image of the “journalist as [the] renegade”, the outsider . The profession, whether looking into it through reality or media, requires reporters to be “aloof observers, neutral participants in the surrounding world.” As we discussed in journalistic professionalism, the industry’s primary goal is to present unbiased, truthful stories to the public. Thus, it fitting to see that the job seeks after people who are “willing outsiders” of society and are capable of “enter[ing] an environment, collect[ing[ the facts, and writ[ing] an interesting, but detached story.”
However, this all comes with a price to pay for the reporter. Popular culture often portrays journalists of possessing flawed personal
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They are forced to balance masculinity, in order to achieve success in their field, with their femininity. Many female journalists hold onto a desire to remain and identify as a woman with “caring, maternal, sympathetic” traits. But most struggle to maintain this balance. No “matter how tough or independent” the sob sister is depicted to be, they end up leaving their profession to pursue family life and true love. For example, Bennett in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town is a female journalist who writes mocking stories of a small-town man who has inherited a fortune. But at the end of the film, she ends up falling in love with …show more content…
If they were to even appear in films are journalists, they were directed to the minority viewer audience. This made journalists of color “outsiders from within.” Journalists themselves were already outsiders of society. But the industry, holding up a white, male power structure inside the newsroom, further alienates journalists of color in society as a whole for their differences. Popular culture points to the sacrifices needed to be made from racial minorities to success in this white dominated industry. In the film Living Large, Terrence finds himself turning more and more white, as he becomes a reported presenting stories in a more “white”