Intrepid Reporters in Live-Action Films.
- Billy Wilder's Ace in the Hole (1951) features Chuck Tatum, an intrepid reporter who's a Manipulative Bastard; he doesn't just go after the news, he creates them. When he hears about a man trapped in a collapsed cave, he deliberately prolongs his rescue by manipulating the local authorities, just so he can report on it.
- Alligator has Thomas Kemp, an obnoxious tabloid reporter whom policeman-protagonist David Madison heartily dislikes, but ends up being the one to prove that Madison's story about a giant killer alligator lurking in the sewers is true, at the cost of his own life.
- Balibo:
- Roger East was one of these, but currently is content to spend the rest of his days writing fluff news stories at a cushy job. However, over the course of the film he discovers his passion and becomes one of these all over again.
- The Balibo Five are a news crew who put their lives on the line to document the Indonesian invasion of East Timor, in the hopes of attracting the outside world's attention and help.
- In Bad Words, Jenny Widgeon, who helps the protagonist get into a kid's spelling bee specifically because she'd get a story out of it.
- Parodied by the character Margo in Big Trouble in Little China. She desperately wants to be an intrepid reporter but just doesn't have what it takes.
- The Bridge Curse: In 2020, the story of the Doomed University Students from 2016 are being investigated by a female reporter who wants to get to the bottom of their deaths after their bravery test on The Female Ghost Bridge.
- Robert Caulfield, Elliott Gould's character in Capricorn One. He uncovers the Government Conspiracy when his friend at NASA is Killed to Uphold the Masquerade.
- In The Case for Christ, Lee Strobel is a reporter with the Chicago Tribune who tries to disprove the resurrection of Jesus by investigating the historical evidence, but it's personal, not a job assignment.
- Lolly Parsons in The Cat's Meow, who uncovers the truth regarding Ince's death, and who assures Hearst his secret will be safe in exchange for a lifetime contract with the Hearst Corporation, thus laying the groundwork for her lengthy career as one of Hollywood's most powerful gossip columnists.
- Kimberly Wells and Richard Adams of The China Syndrome; Kimberly starts out as a reporter of lifestyle stories (Richard is more of a straight example of this trope), until they both witness the accident at the nuclear power plant, at which point she gradually becomes a straight example of this trope.
- Jerry Thompson, the reporter who tries to find out the meaning of "rosebud" in Citizen Kane. And Kane himself during his younger years.
- Deconstructed in Civil War. Lee, Joel, Jessie, and Sammy are journalists brave enough to risk their lives by going to the front lines to document the horrors of war, but are also deeply broken and traumatized people as a result of it. Many of the journalist characters we meet are either adrenaline junkies who live for the thrill of the battlefield or have become Conditioned to Accept Horror in order to cope with the immense amount of trauma they struggle with. And while none of the four protagonists are bad people, they're ultimately passive observers in a conflict they can't solve.
- Cloud Atlas: Luisa Rey.
- The Company You Keep: Ben Shepherd starts out missing the story of Sharon Solarz, a 30-year fugitive from justice, but when he finds out James Grant, the lawyer who turned down defending her, is really Nick Sloan, who was implicated in the same armed robbery, he starts pursuing all aspects of the story, including why Sloan is really on the run, and the fact he's trying to find his biological daughter.
- Ernie Souchak in Continental Divide, as portrayed by John Belushi. Judging by his vendetta against a Sleazy Politician, his tendency to pursue a story beyond what might be considered prudent or safe, and the snarky tone of his writing, he was likely based on real-life Chicago columnist Mike Royko.
- In Dark Heritage, Clint Harrison is the star investigative reporter for the paper. Once he gets his teeth into the mystery surrounding the murders near the Dansen mansion, he refuses to let go of it, despite the best of his editor to move him off it.
- The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961) is an apocalypse movie seen through the eyes of newspaper journalists working for the Daily Express. The protagonist is relegated to cub reporter duties because of his ongoing alcoholism, but he nevertheless digs up the story that the government is trying to suppress — that simultaneous nuclear tests have upset the tilt of the Earth. The ludicrous scientific premise is offset by the reality-based view of a newspaper at work, and it is rightly regarded as a classic sci-fi movie in Britain.
- In Defence of the Realm, after a story breaks about Dennis Markham, an MP, having an affair with a call girl who also supposedly had sex with a KGB agent, Vernon, Markham's friend, becomes this when he's convinced there's more to the story. Later, Vernon's colleague at the paper, Nick, who originally chased that story but starts to have second thoughts, becomes this as well when he decides to dig deeper. It doesn't end well for either of them.
- Woodward and Bernstein's characters (played by Will Ferrell and Bruce McCulloch) in the movie Dick were referred to by Richard Nixon (Dan Hedaya) as "liberal muckraking bastards". Also parodied, in that they're really just egocentric doofuses who kind of get lucky.
- In Die Hard 2, Richard ‘Dick’ Thornburg is as reckless a Jerkass as ever, Samantha Coleman is a refreshing change of pace. Although she initially annoys McClane with her questions, she helps John chase the villains in her news helicopter. The fact she is getting a spectacular exclusive of McClane stopping Colonel Stuart doesn't hurt either as something she legitimately earned.
- The Fighting Seabees: Constance is a correspondent who doesn't shy away from visiting war zones.
- Veronica Quaife in The Fly (1986) is a journalist for a science magazine who, in the opening scenes, takes up the offer of awkward scientist Seth Brundle to visit his lab to see "something that will change the world and life as we know it" — which turns out to be a teleportation device. They end up working out a deal for her to exclusively chronicle his refinement of the device for a book, and from there become romantically involved; unfortunately her editor/ex-lover tries to meddle with this by threatening to break the story first, and when the scientist misunderstands that relationship, it sets the stage for a most Tragic Mistake on his part...
- In The Firechasers, Toby Collins is a beautiful, persistent reporter who, with press photographer Jim Maxwell, is always the first on the scene of a series of fires ravaging London. One after another, the infernos rage out of control before the fire service arrives. Toby believes an arsonist is to blame, but without any proof she has no story to write.
- Johnny Jones, Alfred Hitchcock's titular Foreign Correspondent.
- The classic example: All versions of The Front Page, namely the 1931 version, the 1974 version, and the 1941 version titled His Girl Friday. All of them feature Hildy Johnson as an Intrepid Reporter who wants to leave the business to get married but is pulled back in by a sensational story involving an escaped murderer.
- Christy Colleran and John L. Sullivan IV in Switching Channels are the TV version in this loose remake (Colleran is the Hildy Johnson character).
- Heatwave: The protagonist Kate Dean is an investigative reporter and community activist who, in addition to protesting the construction of the Eden Project, is looking into the shady dealing of the project's developers. For this, they plan to eliminate her.
- Amy Archer in The Hudsucker Proxy is the reporter who gets close to the hero by pretending to be a woman from his home town, and getting a job as his secretary so she can write stories about him. However, she ends up falling in love with him.
- Human Cargo (1936): Patrick "Packy" Campbell and Bonnie Brewster are reporters who team up to expose a ring of human smugglers.
- In The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1, Cressida and her crew of filmmakers defect from the Capitol to document and show what is happening in the rebellion.
- Nick Nolte and Julia Roberts play two competing protagonists who both fit this trope in I Love Trouble.
- In My Country: Langston is shown as this, being ardent to reveal the brutalities of the Apartheid regime to the world and becoming an angry black man constantly exasperated by anti-African racism abroad and in America, especially when his editors choose to not put his article on the front page and dismissing the victims for being Africans.
- Judge Dredd. Reporter Vartis Hammond is trying to find the reason for the rise in street crime. He discovers the existence of the Janus Project and is murdered in order to keep the secret.
- Kong: Skull Island: Mason Weaver is an investigative "anti-war" photographer who gets down in the trenches of dangerous places when there's a story worth telling and truths to expose. She catches wind of a mission to Skull Island after 3 sources tell her the same thing about it. Sensing there is more to it than she's being told, she maneuvers her way onto the expedition team with the intention of exposing the secret operation she believes is taking place under the guise of a geological mapping mission. Though her Vietnam photos are already good enough to be considered for the cover of Time Magazine, she doesn't mind the idea of more awards and notoriety. It doesn't take long for everyone to realize that her instincts were spot on.
- The Lennon Report, showing what the trauma team who worked on John Lennon says really did happen on December 8, 1980
, includes WABC's Alan Weiss as one of these. A hit and run accident on his motorcycle landed him in Roosevelt Hospital with a shattered hip — right outside Lennon's room in the ED. He spends the entire film trying to confirm that it's Lennon in there and get word to his assignment editor — at one point dragging himself down the hall to get to a phone. Weiss confirms this all really happened and there were moments when the film felt like a documentary. - Mariana in Man on Fire. Not only is she a reporter, but she is also romantically involved with a police inspector. Her actions in the film go far beyond those recommended for a reporter who intends to live through the day without being killed by those she exposes.
- 'Scoop' Foley in The Man They Could Not Hang. He is johnny-on-the-spot when Dr. Savaard is arrested for murder, arriving at his house even before the police arrive; is the first to work out that someone is murdering the jurors from Savaard's trial; and even forces his way into the Nasty Party where Savaard is planning to eliminate the remaining people he feels wronged him.
- Florence in Mystery of the Wax Museum, who proceeds headfirst into danger to get a story; ignoring the advice of her editor, her best friend, and the police.
- The Night Flier: Richard Dees is the main reporter for a Lurid Tales of Doom-type magazine who uses a lot of dirty tactics to get stories, often breaking laws to investigate crime scenes. He's not above screwing his colleague over either. His sole motivation throughout the movie is to get his name back on the front cover.
- In Nothing but the Night, Joan Foster is a tabloid journalist who is contacted by Anna Harb in an attempt to gain access to her daughter. After Dr. Haynes is murdered and Anna goes on the run, Joan stays on the story and follows it to Scotland; determined to see it through to the very end.
- Henry Hackett in The Paper is an intrepid editor, while McDougal is an intrepid columnist. Henry's wife Martha is the more conventional example of this trope.
- The Parallax View: Frady and Carter are both investigative journalists who willingly go to any lengths in uncovering the truth, even at great personal risk. Unfortunately, both get killed for it.
- Chris in Pay It Forward smells a big story when hearing about the concept of paying it forward. He interviews several people and travels from L.A. to Las Vegas in order to get to the bottom of that movement.
- This trope dates at least as far back as 1928 and The Power of the Press, in which a very young Douglas Fairbanks Jr. plays a cub reporter who finds himself investigating a murder mystery and a corrupt mayoral candidate.
- In Posse (1975), Hellman, the editor (and only reporter) of the Tesoto Despatch, is the only one to see through Nightingale's carefully stage managed heroics and detect the overwhelming political ambition that lies behind them.
- In Roman Holiday, the male lead is a news reporter trying to get the big story.
- Runaway: This is taken to such extremes in this movie that it seems like the news media has the right to barge onto crime scenes and actively impede police operations. A local reporter keeps demanding that she be allowed firstline coverage of every incident involving a Killer Robot, and her cameraman follows Sgt. Ramsay inside a house where a robot is keeping a baby captive. None of the other police officers make an effort to stop them.
- Gale Weathers in the Scream films starts out as the host of a sleazy tabloid news program in the vein of Hard Copy, with all the attendant jerkass paparazzi attitude, but as the series goes on, it becomes clear that she is, in fact, a legitimate journalist, even if her motives are rather self-serving. Her True Crime book Wrongly Accused: The Maureen Prescott Murder, about the murder case one year prior that hangs over the events of the first film, turns out to have been correct in its central thesis that the man convicted for the murder, Cotton Weary, didn't actually do it and that the real killer is still out there, and she helps capture the real killer once people start dying again. In the second film, she's considered the definitive authority on the first film's killing spree thanks to both her first-hand experience and her book The Woodsboro Murders, which gets adapted into a movie called Stab. If what we see of Stab is any indication, however, it's clear that she got a few things wrong or took some Artistic License; she later admits that she embellished how brutal at least one of the deaths really was.
- In Second Tour, miss Pove is a political journalist who is determined to find some dirt about a candidate for President of the French Republic.
- In Shark Week, Reagan is an investigative journalist whose exposé on Tiburon's son led to his bungled arrest and death. This is an Informed Ability, however, as we only see her as a captive on the island.
- In Sharktopus, Stacy actively seeks out the Sharktopus so she can cover the story. Her insistence to get up close and personal with the monster eventually gets both her and her cameraman killed.
- In Shattered Glass, Stephen Glass views himself as an intrepid reporter and would love nothing more than for everyone else to think of him as one as well. He's nothing of the kind. However, Adam Penenberg, the journalist who exposed Glass, very much is. Chuck Lane is another genuine example, his thorough investigation of the story Penenberg pokes holes in is what ultimately brings Stephen down.
- Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004). Polly Perkins, who isn't above sabotaging Sky Captain's plane to get a scoop, causing him to spend six months in a Manchurian death camp.
- Unless she was lying to get what she thought was the truth out of him. And he might have lied in turn out of spite.
- In State of Siege, Carlos Ducas is one of the reporters who figures out Philip Michael Santore's actual relationship with the government, and his real duties. He's also rather skeptical of what the government says about Santore's kidnapping, and interviews all sides about it.
- In the various Superman films, including the serial, Clark Kent, Lois Lane and sometimes Jimmy Olsen reprise their comic book counterparts' intrepidness.
- Torchy Blane, the character who inspired Lois Lane, from the Torchy series of nine 1930s films. Played (primarily) by Glenda Farrell, who studied real female news professionals to make her portrayal true to life.
- Totally Killer: Chris's dad is a celebrated Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist whose first scene in 2023 shows him reporting a hurricane without even bothering to wear a coat with a hood, even though he's in his seventies at the time. Constantly being unfavorably compared to his dad has done a lot to warp Chris.
- Under Fire: All three of the main characters fit this trope - Russell, a photojournalist, Alex, a TV reporter (later anchor), and Claire, a radio reporter, and we see other examples as well throughout the course of the movie.
- One of the most amazing scenes in We Were Soldiers is when war correspondent Joe Galloway voluntarily jumps aboard a helicopter which is taking soldiers into a combat zone where they are likely to be wiped out in short order. During the next day's fighting, Galloway tries to take photographs in the middle of a hail of bullets, after which Sgt. Plumley hands him an M-16 and warns him that there is "no such thing" as a non-combatant under the circumstances. This actually happened in real life.note Joe Galloway: You got room for one more?
"Snakeshitt" Crandall: If you're crazy enough, hop in.- In contrast, a myriad of reporters show up after the fighting is over and try to conduct interviews. No one gives them the time of day.
- Matilda Jeffries in Zoolander is a humorous example, and somewhat lampshaded by Derek when he tries to confront her.
