In films and on the small screen, journalists are portrayed as heroes or villains. In The Hack they are both. Does this reflect the diminished, benighted standing journalists hold in society today or is it a step forward in showing the complexities of the work?

A repost from 9 October 2025

It may be both. The seven-part series recently released on the streaming service, Stan, is about the phone hacking scandal in the United Kingdom. It has a stellar cast, (David Tennant and Toby Jones) and was written by Jack Thorne, who recently won an Emmy for his work on Adolescence.

Before looking at The Hack, it is useful to set it in the context of how journalists and journalism are portrayed in film and on television. A lot is the first point to make about it, as the 100,000 items in the Image of the Journalist in Popular Culture database attest.

Early on, journalists were portrayed as lovable rogues in films like The Front Page (1931) and His Girl Friday (1940) but the journalist as hero or villain becomes prominent soon after. In 1952, Humphrey Bogart played a newspaper editor determined to expose a gangster’s crimes in Deadline USA, while in Ace in the Hole (1951) Kirk Douglas plays a reporter who ensures the rescue of a man trapped in a........

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