The 17 Best Fictional Journalists on TV
They’re brave truth-tellers who bring you the news from a newsroom or behind an anchor desk. And they do so from …
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They’re brave truth-tellers who bring you the news from a newsroom or behind an anchor desk. And they do so from the privacy of homes that are likely much more luxurious than their real-life counterparts can afford. Yes, I’m talking about fictional journalists.
(A couple of rules: These people are included based on how good they are as characters rather than how skillful they are as journalists. Also, they must be fictional characters, leaving out real people like Jake Adelstein, the lead character on Tokyo Vice.)
Without further ado…
Murphy Brown – Murphy Brown
Candice Bergen spent ten years playing the sharp TV news reporter in this workplace sitcom that ran on CBS for ten seasons between 1988 and 1998 and then for a single revival season 20 years later.
Murphy was an intelligent and diligent broadcast journalist who had earned her place in the upper echelons of TV media.
The character and the show captured the zeitgeist in the early 1990s when Murphy became a single mother, drawing the real-life ire of then-Vice President Dan Quayle in a plotline that was later written into the show.
Carrie Bradshaw – Sex and the City and And Just Like That…
If you thought that journalists couldn’t live glamorous lives that are the envy of millions… you were right.
But that wasn’t the case for the fictional Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) in the original Sex and the City series, two movies, and two seasons so far of the And Just Like That… revival series.
Based on the author Candace Bushnell, Carrie wrote about her adventures in a New York newspaper. Her work was later adapted into a book collection. By the time of And Just Like That…, Carrie had tried her hand at podcasting.
Related: And Just Like That… Season 3: Everything We Know So Far
Mary Richards – The Mary Tyler Moore Show
In the seven-season series that ran in the 1970s, Mary Tyler Moore played Mary, a Minneapolis-based producer for a TV station in Minneapolis.
Praised at the time as a show that focused on a woman’s career rather than her romantic life, it was one of the most popular of its era. Its spinoff, Lou Grant, was specifically about that boss becoming a newspaper journalist.
It even inspired a statue in downtown Minneapolis of Mary throwing her hat.
Oscar Madison – The Odd Couple
The two men were both writers in every version of The Odd Couple, whether in movies, on TV, or stage.
However, one of them, Oscar Madison (Jack Klugman in the 1970 TV version), was a sports journalist, a slob compared to his neat-freak roommate Felix (Tony Randall.) Those clashing styles resulted in much of the show’s humor.
The most recent version of The Odd Couple on TV ran between 2015 and 2017 and starred Matthew Perry as Oscar.
Bill McNeal – NewsRadio
Related: 31 TV Couples Who Inspired Their Inner Comedian
This five-season series wasn’t nearly as popular as other NBC sitcoms from the 1990s, but it’s revered in some comedy circles.
One of the biggest reasons is Phil Hartman’s Bill McNeal character, an ornery news anchor.
Hartman’s death after the fourth season helped bring about the show’s end, but the episode paying tribute to Bill is one of NewsRadio’s most memorable moments.
Considering the sheer volume of programming, paying homage to a lead character in that manner is rarely experienced, which makes this historical episode so important.
Gus Haynes – The Wire
In the fifth and final season of The Wire, he introduced the Baltimore Sun’s newsroom, allowing creator David Simon to settle some scores from his journalist days.
The moral center of that plotline was Augustus “Gus” Haynes, played by Clark Johnson as a no-nonsense reporter who questions fabulist Scott (Tom McCarthy) and clashes with his bosses.
The newsroom plot was uneven, but Gus was the best part of it.
Related: Parks and Recreation’s Beloved Friendships Were Crucial to the Storytelling
Perd Hapley – Parks and Recreation
In its six-season run on NBC, Parks and Recreation built out a huge community of characters in the town of Pawnee, and one of the most lovable was local newsman Perd Hapley.
An anchor of Ya Heard? With Perd, Hapley (Jay Jackson) was a friendly and familiar face, occasionally awkward but always enduring.
The show’s writers gradually revealed more of Perd’s backstory, even revealing that he was once a film critic.
Kermit the Frog – Sesame Street
Not many Muppets were regulars on both The Muppet Show and Sesame Street, but Kermit was, and on the latter, he long appeared in his guise as a TV journalist.
Related: The Best Shows for Kids That Had No Disney or Nickelodeon Ties
Kermit would appear for news segments and usually interview one other character.
Following Jim Henson’s death in 1990, new segments with Kermit reporting were mostly phased out.
Kent Brockman – The Simpsons
The town-wide ensemble on Parks and Rec has often been compared to that of The Simpsons, and Springfield had its own funny news anchor.
That was Kent Brockman (voiced by Harry Shearer), a Simpsons mainstay for more than 30 years.
A more arrogant version of Perd, Brockman coined the phrase, “I, for one, welcome our new [blank] overlords.”
Tom Jumbo-Grumbo – Bojack Horseman
Netflix’s Bojack Horseman is another show with a wide, animated ensemble, many of whom are animals.
One of the most memorable was Tom Jumbo-Grumbo, a whale news anchor voiced by former ESPN and MSNBC host Keith Olbermann.
Related: 13 Shows That Changed the Landscape of Television
In the show’s tradition of animal humor, Tom’s network was even presented as “MSNBSea.”
Clark Kent and Lois Lane – Superman & Lois
In just about all of the many different incarnations of the Superman mythology, Superman’s alter egos, Clark Kent and Lois Lane, have worked together at the newspaper The Daily Planet.
Most recently, on Superman & Lois, the two (played by Tyler Hoechlin and Elizabeth Tulloch) met at the newspaper.
Vivian Kent – Inventing Anna
Speaking of journalists named Kent… the Netflix series Inventing Anna told the true story of con artist Anna Delvey (Julia Garner) and how she scammed New York high society.
On the show, Anna Chlumsky played Vivien, the journalist interviewing Anna and working on the story while pregnant.
The character was loosely based on the real-life writer Jessica Pressler.
Related: TV’s Presidential Nightmares: Characters You Hope Never Run
Danny Concannon – The West Wing
Aaron Sorkin’s NBC series about a fictional White House, which started in 1999 and continued through 2005, also featured a hard-driving White House correspondent.
That was Danny (Timothy Busfield), who sought to uncover damning information about the Bartlet White House while later romancing the very press secretary (Allison Janney’s CJ Gregg) with whom he had previously tangled.
Aaron Sorkin also featured numerous journalists in his other shows, Sports Night and The Newsroom.
Related: 13 TV Politicians Who NEED to Run for President
Herb Welch – Saturday Night Live
One of Bill Hader’s most memorable characters on SNL was Herb, the elderly local news reporter.
He’s a character who is often prone to trailing off, bickering with his colleagues on air, or hitting interview subjects with his microphone.
Alex Levy – The Morning Show
On this series, the first big prestige entry on Apple TV+, Jennifer Aniston plays Alex, the network TV legend and anchor of the titular Morning Show.
A woman who is just as comfortable dealing with backstage machinations as with hosting the show, Alex most memorably tangled with her former co-anchor and sometime lover, Mitch Kessler, in the show’s first season.
Alex may not be Aniston’s most iconic TV character for as long as Friends exists, but she’s still the beating heart of that show.
Will McAvoy – The Newsroom
Jeff Daniels’ news anchor character on Aaron Sorkin’s show was on a “mission to civilize.” That mission was only sometimes successful, but Will was certainly the most powerful character on that short-lived HBO series.
Sure, he tended to pontificate, something he shares with most of Sorkin’s leading men. But he was also right more often than not about the news of the day.
With so many years of television programming behind us, there are probably more journalists you remember.
Why don’t you drop down into the comments and share your favorites?
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