Going for the Big Scoop

"This is great! I must really be onto something hot if they're trying to kill me!"

— April O'Neil, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Some people are thrill seekers, nothing wrong or unusual with that. Still, even Bungee jumpers wear harnesses, and Great White photographers dive inside of titanium cages. Not so with the Intrepid Reporter. While Going for the Big Scoop they will ignore, nay, actively run towards danger to find whoever or whatever is causing it.

It's not that they're Too Dumb to Live — they knowingly choose to take these risks. Perhaps because they can handle the risks or they believe the story needs to be told to the masses. Or maybe it's merely because they have bills to pay.

Certain amount of Truth in Television; war correspondents have a bit of a reputation for being danger and adrenaline junkies. The School Newspaper Newshound can often do this in series combining high school students with high danger.

If they don't have main character status, they inevitably becomes Deadline News — but any character like this will be satisfied that even if you kill them, you Can't Stop the Signal. Often, the big break in the case may come from unconventional sources...

Compare Camera Fiend. See also Reckless Sidekick.

Note to those putting up examples: This trope is about reporters. Only reporters.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Diethard from Code Geass in Episode 4. "I want that camera right in his face!" Diethard is an interesting example of this trope, as his fascination with history in the making is a full-blown obsession, and leads him to switch sides several times. He also takes an active role in affecting events as they unfold, rather than simply observing and recording.
• In Finder Series, his insistence on playing amateur investigator is what gets freelance photographer Takaba Akihito into trouble over and over and over throughout the plot. Though in his defense, even when he isn't trying to get a scoop, he still gets into trouble due to other factors completely outside his control.
• Gundam:
  • This is what gets Kinue Crossroad killed in season 1 of Mobile Suit Gundam 00.
  • Fran Doll becomes a war reporter in ∀ Gundam and travels to battle zones to take photographs, at one point facing down a mobile suit that appears to be aiming at a child and threatening it by saying she'll publicize the atrocity. Shortly after this incident, she learns that Luzianna is suppressing her work by buying up the photos but not publishing them so the public won't realize how bad it's going, but she keeps taking her pictures after reuniting with Loran and company.
• Becky the information broker gets herself into trouble looking for exclusive info to sell several times in the first Gunsmith Cats series.
• Erika from Medabots is always on the hunt for a big scoop, even if that involves charging blindly into the Vice District of town. Despite her being, hmmm, 12.
• Kazumi Asakura from Negima! Magister Negi Magi. She actually manages to mostly avoid the whole Damsel in Distress aspect; the one time she gets captured by an enemy it has nothing to do with her attempts to get a story. She gradually loses this trait. Of course, this probably has something to do with invariably winding up keeping every big scoop a secret after finding out it would probably be a bad idea to get her teacher/longshot romantic interest fired. She's now more of The Trickster, with her Cute Ghost Girl best friend as a sidekick. (She can manage to look like an Expy of Mitsune while doing it.)
• Rooster Fighter: Ibokura is a ViewTuber who found a superpowerful rooster to be his goldmine to boost his channel and chases after him despite the danger of demons, because he can't stand his coworkers criticizing him for not doing his job. After being impressed by Morio and Keiju, he starts changing for the better.
• In Speed Grapher, had Tatsumi Saiga not snuck into a certain high-class club for the rich and wealthy from Tokyo, he would've never become the main character indeed.
• Announcer Sasagawa of Tomica Hyper Rescue Drive Head Kidou Kyuukyuu Keisatsu will always get right in the line of danger to cover a story, especially if it concerns Drive Head. This gets her into trouble when she rushes out during her vacation to cover a meteorite crash in the mountains.
• Yusuke Tozawa from Witchblade anime. Inspector Nakata abhors him and calls him "Hyena" for hunting after murder scenes, and as we can see in ep. 08 with displeased security guys, it's not the first time he asks for trouble.
• Mika of Yes! Pretty Cure 5 is only a middle school School Newspaper Newshound and already appears to have entirely suppressed her self-preservation instincts. Then again, it's not surprising that a character who is basically named "Mass Media-ka" would want to get a head start on her reporter tropes.
• In Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds, this trope got Carly Nagisa/Carmine killed and brought Back from the Dead to put her love interest Jack in a lose-lose situation of either killing her again or losing to her and joining her in her Lotus-Eater Machine hell.

Comic Books

• There's a reason Lois Lane was called an "Intrepid Reporter"; it's because she had absolutely no instinct for self-preservation... at least, if she does, she never lets it get in the way of getting that Big Scoop. Especially amusing in the 1940s serials. She does have the world's most powerful being constantly looking out for her, but she did this before Superman came to Metropolis too. Having him around just let her have free rein to take even more crazy risks. Lampshaded in an episode from the DC Animated Universe. Mooks take Air Force One while Lois is aboard, she does something stupid and earns their ire, then they panic upon learning she's "That Lois Lane."
  Terrorist: Lane? Lois Lane? The one Superman always saves?
  Lois: 'Fraid so.
  • Furthermore, during the year of Superman being depowered (in the Crisis Crossover 52) Clark Kent starts doing the same thing, by jumping out of a window to get the attention of the mysterious superhero Supernova. Lois is both aghast at what he's doing and annoyed at being reminded who inspired those stunts.
• Batman has his own Lois Lane in the form of Vicki Vale, a reporter for the Gotham Gazette, who in the '50s pretty much was "Lois but ginger". And with far less staying power. More modern depictions have even acknowledged the similarities to Lois by having Vicki jealous of Lois's greater success.
• In The Spirit remake (the comic book, not the film), he rescues a reporter from horrible danger. They have to run fast and hard to escape the mooks pursuing them...who always seem to have a heads-up. Meanwhile, The Spirit is freaking out because the reporter keeps talking all weird and dramatically. Turns out the reporter had a hidden audio broadcast device which the mooks, and thankfully the police, were listening in on. The reporter then totally 'dumps on' The Spirit in an interview with others a few days later, lying and claiming she did all the work.
• Although April O'Neil is not a reporter in the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comics, the Intrepid Reporter role was eventually filled by Lauren Stanton, who, as a writer for "The Bullet", investigates gangland activity in New York. In her debut appearance, she is seen infiltrating a nightclub in order to spy on the underworld's movers and shakers, and later on, she attempts to report on a deal between groups.
• So you see this plane come down. You go to help. They shoot you. You get out of the hospital and decide to investigate. So they leave you unconscious in a burning building and sabotage the firetrucks. After getting out of the hospital again, what do you do? Well if you're Tintin, then obviously you have to go check out their creepy isle citadel from which no one ever returns and from which strange monster howls come from.
• Transmetropolitan, Spider Jerusalem. He will do anything to himself and the rest of the world for The Truth. "Sometimes I think that if I let my brain know what my gut was propelling me into, it'd chuck itself out my ear."

Fan Works

• The reporters in Aeon Natum Engel are unambitious and do what the government tells them to do. Why they don't go searching for hidden conspiracies? Because it's stupid in their situation, where creating chaos by revealing a new enemy when humanity got its hands full and more with existing enemies is the last thing anybody needs, including the reporters.
• Ben 10: Unlimited: The same day that Ben meets Lois Lane, Bizarro comes to fight Superman while Metallo comes to kill Lois Lane as Revenge by Proxy. Lois, true to her nature, doesn't get out when she has the chance and instead tells Ben that she's going to the scene of the fight to get the story. Ben is completely shocked at her lack of self-preservation, and (the second she's out of sight) turns into Upgrade so he can help protect her.
• Mia Fey: Ace Attorney – The Fool's Turnabout: Ohya's Establishing Character Moment features her drunkenly arguing with the cops about how they won't let her pass. She's soon shown to be a highly unprofessional reporter whose credentials are questionable at best.
• What the Cat Dragged In: Nadja Chamack attempts to interview an akuma about their plans. Naturally, this results in Peacemonger trapping her in one of his suits of armor.
• Arrow: Rebirth: After hearing about an imminent threat to Amnesty Bay, Susan Willaims promptly has her cameraman set up and does a special bulletin report right in front of where the action will take place.
• When your entire city is invaded by creatures from another reality, there is suddenly a distinct lack of places that could be defined as "safe." Even so Hiroaki Ishida and his camera crew risk their lives to warn Japan and the rest of the world about what is happening in The Teacher of All Things.
• Ayla Césaire's desire and tendency to do this is the subject of many a Fandom-Specific Plot. Often, this is shown to have destructive consequences and paint her more as an Immoral Journalist.
  • Cheshire: This works in Alya's favor when her persistence in chasing after akuma means that she's able to capture footage of Misterbug and Pegasus attacking Cheshire right after she'd helped them defeat Newscaster. This gives Team Miraculous their questionable reputation.
  • Feralnette AU:
    • Alya's desire to secure 'exclusive content' for her Ladyblog leads her into direct conflict with Ladybug when she posts one of Lila's claims and attracts a crowd of gawkers -- and Hawkmoth's attention — to what was meant to be a nice event for children. When she accidentally reveals that she knows about Lila's 'lying disease', Ladybug calls her out on her Skewed Priorities and blacklists the Ladyblog until she proves she's capable of researching her claims.
    • Alya then escalates her behavior, having dramatically missed the point of Ladybug's ultimatum and convincing herself that the best way to prove herself is by gathering live footage. Felix confronts her over this, coming to the conclusion that Alya is dead set not just on 'proving herself', but on 'proving' that Ladybug was wrong, not her.
    • It's also shown that Alya sees nothing wrong with filming others without their permission, and takes for granted the notion that "Ladybug always saves the day", even complaining when those rescues don't take the form she prefers.
  • In Leave for Mendeleiev, Alya fixates on exposing Ladybug's Secret Identity, reasoning that most American superheroes don't bother with one, so Ladybug shouldn't have one, either. Unlike Canon, she and Marinette aren't friends or even classmates, so Marinette takes the threat she poses much more seriously, along with the danger she's putting herself into.
  • The One to Make It Stay has Marlena gently rebuke her daughter for constantly putting her life on the line chasing akumas. There's also how one of the 'big scoops' she posts involves some very selective editing, causing no end of problems for the heroes...
  • Scarlet Lady: Even though she didn't get the Ladybug Miraculous in this AU, Marinette still went to the site of the first akuma battle of the comic because Alya embraced her inner Lois Lane and showed up to try and get footage/interviews. Even though Marinette is surprisingly capable at keeping her friends out of trouble and helping Chat Noir defeat the akumas, she still ends up yelling at Alya to stop putting herself in danger. Alya never learns.
  • Two Letters: Alya's tendency to do this works against her when she investigates the new Ladybug. Circumstances lead her to show up to an akuma fight disguised as Chat Noir, hoping to provoke a reaction from Ladybug that will expose her deceptive nature. She failed to consider that she didn't have any Miraculous powers or protection; when the akuma targets her, she's forced to scream for help. The new Ladybug shields her, then exaggerates the extent of her injuries afterwards while begging the public to remember that her Secret Identity has to remain secret, and asking them not to get involved with akumas "just to get clips for social media". As a result, the public assumes that Alya was attempting to unmask their new heroine for the sake of an 'exclusive scoop' on her Ladyblog, completely tanking her reputation.
  • Villain Of Your Own Story:
    • AU Alya landed herself in hot water at her old school when she posted some 'juicy exclusives' on her blog without fact-checking them first. Those tidbits turned out to be Malicious Slander, and her family was ultimately forced to move to try and give her a fresh start. Sadly, Alya insisted the problem lay with her sources, not herself.
    • This mentality of believing it's best to throw herself into the thick of things also contributed to her decision to become this world's version of Hawk Moth after finding the Butterfly Brooch. Nooroo's Super-Empowering wasn't direct enough for her tastes, and she decided to 'pretend' to be a supervillain in order to lure out heroes with more hands-on powers, intending to steal their Miraculi and use them for her own heroic debut.
• The events of Exoteric are kicked off by Tokuda Taneo concluding that All Might has secretly chosen one of the students at U.A. as his successor... and zeroing in on the wrong suspect: Ojiro Mashirao. This makes Mashirao's life significantly more complicated thanks to the media firestorm that follows.
• In the Role Swap AU lines i can't erase., Ada came to Raccoon City specifically looking for one of these. After meeting the Kendos at the gun shop, her priorities shift.
• Spider-Ninja: April O'Neil is known in the journalism community as completely fearless, to the point that Nick Fury respects her (though that could also be because of the thing that happened between them that they refuse to discuss). In Chapter 31 of the fic, she tags along with a (reluctant) Agent Coulson and helps SHIELD discover the existence of Bebop and Rocksteady. She even says the trope quote near the end of the chapter. In Chapter 40, she says that she was on the scene when the Abomination's rampage through Harlem.
• In the Star Trek: The Original Series fanfic Insontis, a tabloid reporter kidnaps the de-aged Kirk, heedless of the fact that 1) he was in the company of a Starfleet officer, and 2) his other guard is an extremely protective Vulcan.

Film — Animated

• BoBoiBoy: The Movie: Ravi J. Jambul gets a live report on a high-speed chase by jumping onto the roof of the robbers' vehicle and interviewing them. As his catchphrase for the introduction of his program goes, "Wherever there's trouble, I'm surely there!"
• Although she's clearly inspired by Lois Lane, Roxanne Ritchi in Megamind doesn't seem to Go For The Big Scoop so much as Get Dragged Into The Big Scoop since the titular supervillain keeps kidnapping her and using her as a hostage to bait his arch-nemesis.
• Daphne in Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island. Freaky things are happening that threaten herself and her friends, but at least this makes great material for her talk show! Until the footage gets lost in quicksand.

Film — Live-Action

• Obnoxious tabloid reporter Thomas Kemp in the monster-movie Alligator. He goes snooping around the sewer looking for "Ramon", the titular mankiller. They meet, and Kemp's recovered Apocalyptic Log photographs force the authorities to finally take the problem seriously.
• This was the role of Vicki Vale in Burton's Batman (1989). She did such things as taking a flash picture while armed goons were removing Batman's mask, fer Alfred's sake! It did serve as a handy distraction when Batman was about to be unmasked...
• In Die Hard 2, reporter Samantha Coleman helps John chase the villains making their getaway in her news helicopter. Yes, she is revealed as a genuinely nice lady who genuinely wants to help, but the fact she is getting a spectacular exclusive of McClane stopping the villains at some personal risk is some incentive too.
• Godzilla (1998): Cameraman "Animal" Palotti reacts to Godzilla arriving in Manhattan by grabbing his camera and chasing after the monster even as his wife is screaming at him to come back and everyone else is running very fast in the opposite direction. He ends up being the first person to get close-up footage of the kaiju after almost getting stepped on.
• The protagonist of Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth is Joey Summerskill, a reporter who sees her big break when she witnesses the effects of the Lament Configuration on a hospital patient and gets wrapped up Pinhead's plot.
• The Night Flier: Richard Dees is a scummy tabloid reporter who continues to investigate a series of murders at country airports even when it seems increasingly likely that the killer is a monster of some sort. The vampire finally murders him after noting that coming face to face with a real monster is the culmination of Dees's existence.
• Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window is stuck in his apartment with a broken leg because he is an intrepid photojournalist who got too close to the action and got injured as a result. He doesn't let that stop him from being an intrepid journalist during the rest of the film, as he spies on his neighbor and eventually develops the idea that the man may have murdered his wife.
• Polly Perkins does this annoyingly often in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004).
• Superman Returns: Lois Lane. To the extent of bringing her four-year-old son to investigate a potentially dangerous lead, without telling anyone where she went.
• Ned "Scotty" Scott in The Thing from Another World, who spends most of the movie wanting to send out a news story about the Thing and get a picture of it.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014): April is willing to put herself into dangerous situations to get the story she needs to boost her career. Unfortunately, this means she has very little self-preservation and doesn't always think things through (for instance, it doesn't occur to her that maybe going into a subway tunnel when everyone is trying to get out of it is probably not the best idea. Or that four massive turtles would probably not be very happy with her taking their picture).
• Under Fire: All three of the reporters in the movie, especially Russell, a photojournalist, are trying to track down Rafael, the leader of the rebels in the Nicaraguan Civil War. It turns out he's really dead, but Russell ends up faking a photo for the rebels to make it look as if he's really alive.
• Whiskey Tango Foxtrot: All the reporters in the film are risking their lives for the big scoop.

Literature

• The Color of Distance: Analin in Through Alien Eyes isn't totally reckless, but she's so accustomed to dangerous stories that as she prepares to investigate this one she has her belongings stored elsewhere, including pillows so they won't get slashed, and goes on the run. She's got a touch of satisfaction when she finds out she's being followed.
• Discworld: In classic Intrepid Reporter tradition, William de Worde from The Truth recklessly joined an apparent suicide-jumper on a high ledge to conduct an interview. The usual Big Damn Heroes scene to follow is subverted, in that the jumper was only faking to get a free meal out of the City Watch, and wound up carrying William down after the newbie reporter nearly fainted and fell to his death.
• Susan Rodriguez is like this in the first few The Dresden Files novels. She knows the supernatural exists and is obsessed with finding out about it and getting the truth out, to the point that she lets it override her common sense (and Harry's desperate warnings) to get the job done. Eventually, she pushes it too far, attends a vampire party that she should have stayed far away from, and ends up becoming a Red Court Vampire Refugee constantly having to suppress the urge to kill. And no, she is not Cursed with Awesome; true Red Court vamps are inhuman monsters, and the bloodlust is strong enough that she sometimes can't control it at all. Susan comes close to be a deconstruction of the trope, whether or not Butcher intended it that way, and it goes on beyond the incident at the vampire party, eventually Susan's recklessness and failure to look at the world realistically gets her killed under ghastly circumstances. Over the course of the books, we see Susan repeat the same basic error over and over, with tragic results.
• Good Omens: The woman only known as Red (and various synonyms for the color) is an amazing wartime reporter, always being on the spot when conflict breaks out even if there was no indication of it earlier. Of course, Red is actually War of The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse fame.
• Star Wars Legends: Denn Dur, a Sullustan from the MedStar Duology, explicitly goes running for trouble to report on, although he complains about doing so and is very cynical about hero types. In Coruscant Nights he's not really a reporter anymore, but he still does it, because his True Companions are usually there, although he complains even more, since he's not even getting paid now.
• While My Pretty One Sleeps: Prior to her disappearance, Ethel had been researching the New York fashion scene for a magazine article she was writing, but she had also approached publisher Jack Campbell about a potential deal for a book exposing an "explosive" scandal about the fashion industry she'd uncovered during her research, one too big to simply summarise in an article. After Ethel's body is found, Neeve and Jack wonder if someone in the fashion industry killed Ethel to prevent her from revealing the scandal, especially given Ethel wasn't exactly subtle about her investigations, sometimes even bragging to people's faces that she'd dug up dirt on them. Ethel was indeed murdered because she intended to write an expose on Anthony della Salva's famous Pacific Reef look, revealing that he stole the design (she may also have been close to figuring out he killed the true designer).
• In the Xandri Corelel novel Tone of Voice, three reporters sneak onto the planet Song to report on what was supposed to be a classified mission. They're quickly caught and placed into custody, but they still manage to sneak off by themselves, even going for a boat ride at one point. Their boat is surrounded by Disharmonies, who bite one of them in half before help can arrive. Later it turns out that they accidentally led the Last Hope for Humanity onto Song, resulting in a bloody battle to save the planet's inhabitants.

Live-Action TV

• Community parodies this when Annie becomes the ace newshound for Greendale, investigating why the Dean only texted white students when an event was canceled. Jeff, as the editor, orders her to stop.
• CSI: NY: Mac's stepson, young news blogger Reed Garrett, pursues the Cabbie Killer so doggedly that he ends up getting kidnapped by the guy and barely survives getting his throat slashed.
• Doctor Who: In "Partners in Crime", Penny Carter, science correspondent for the Observer, hides in the Adipose Industries building after hours to find out the secret behind their suspiciously effective diet pills. For her trouble, she is captured and tied to a chair twice, the second after the Doctor freed her and told her to Get Out!
• Damien Day from Drop the Dead Donkey probably counts. (He's also willing to endanger, or at least frighten other people for a story). He was later revealed to be a virgin who channeled his sexual drive into his work but then had a brief fling with a similarly inclined female reporter which was built around having sex in dangerous places.
  • He also always carried a bloodstained teddy bear in his briefcase, in case there weren't any sufficiently shocking images available at the disaster scene.
  • At one disaster scene he wanted to film with a crying child, but the only child in the vicinity was perfectly happy. So Damien slapped him.
  • His cameraman suffers greatly for this; Damien at one point asks another member of the office to call his cameraman's wife after he's been hurt, noting that "she tends to get hysterical when she hears my voice on the phone."
• In Lois & Clark, though, Lois Lane starts to learn a few seasons in. A few days before her wedding to Clark, she starts freaking out because "anytime we're happy, something terrible happens!" Naturally, on the day of the wedding she's kidnapped by Lex Luthor and replaced with a clone. Oh, and then she gets amnesia for a few episodes and believes herself to be a character from her secret romance novel, and Luthor to be "Kent", her love. Should've taken that honeymoon a little early after all. Or just not investigated that "one little story..."
• Played for Laughs in The Mary Tyler Moore Show when Lou gets the idea of having a cameraman ride along in a police car to film an arrest as it happens. And then nothing on that patrol route happens for days.
• In Person of Interest, one of the numbers has this as her calling in life. While her main story is HR, she also has an obsession with chasing the Man in the Suit, which makes it rather hard for Reese to protect her without exposing himself.
• Daniel in Sex Traffic. He makes the not-so-smart move of trying to film a transaction taking place, despite the obviously evil guys standing right next to him. Naturally, he gets beat up for the trouble.
• Jake Sisko in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is a fiction writer at heart, but gets a job with the Federation News Service, which isn't always convenient for his dad the leading public figure. Jake also chooses to stay behind and cover the Dominion occupation of the station in spite of the risk. Although hampered by the Dominion refusing to transmit his stories, he still investigates and conducts interviews, at one point asking Kira and Odo some legitimate but uncomfortable questions.
• Thunderbirds: In "Terror in New York City", TV journalist Ned Cook is determined to cover the event of the Empire State Building being moved. Even when the operation goes wrong and the ground starts cracking up under his feet, he stays where he is, until he falls through the ground, and has to be rescued in a very difficult operation.
• Voyagers!, "Jack's Back": Nellie Bly tries to find Jack the Ripper so she can get the story on him.
• A deconstruction appears in season 5 of The Wire - a reporter angling for a Pulitzer tries to act this role, along with making up sources and just plain lying, to get the perfect angle on a serial killer story. We know he never did anything remotely brave, and his personal communications with the "killer" are entirely fictitious... but everyone else seems to buy it.

Radio

• The War of the Worlds (1938) radio broadcast featured reporter Carl Phillips who paints a word picture for listeners of the strange cylinder that landed in Grovers Mill, New Jersey, the scary alien that creeps out of it, and the death ray that sweeps over the crowd and sets people on fire. His broadcast is suddenly cut off when he gets too close to the action.
  PHILLIPS: Now the whole field’s caught fire. (EXPLOSION) The woods...the barns...the gas tanks of automobiles...it’s spreading everywhere. It’s coming this way. About twenty yards to my right...
  (CRASH OF MICROPHONE … THEN DEAD SILENCE)
  ANNOUNCER: Ladies and gentlemen, due to circumstances beyond our control, we are unable to continue the broadcast from Grovers Mill. Evidently there’s some difficulty with our field transmission.
  Later...
  ANNOUNCER TWO: Ladies and gentlemen, here is a bulletin from Trenton. It is a brief statement informing us that the charred body of Carl Phillips has been identified in a Trenton hospital.

Roleplay

• As with canon, J. Theano has this characterization in Dino Attack RPG, wherein he eagerly flies a news helicopter into heated dogfights between T-1 Typhoon helicopters and Mutant Pterosaurs during numerous battles, such as the battle for the power station (which, in itself, is a reference to Theano's appearance in the original toyline) and even the Final Battle.

Toys

• LEGO:
  • Pippin Reed (also known as Gail Storm) from LEGO Adventurers, who traveled the world with Johnny Thunder and Dr. Kilroy, braving booby trap-filled temples and dodging criminals and thieves just to get a good story for World Magazine.
  • J. Theano from LEGO Dino Attack, a reporter from the WDNO radio news station who braves a mutant dinosaur apocalypse to provide the latest scoop on D.I.N.O. Attack's battle against the prehistoric threat.
  • LEGO Alien Conquest has Lotta Brix, who goes straight into the middle of an alien invasion to get the latest scoop. This leads to her abduction, of course, but she continues giving news reports even as she is brought aboard the mothership.

Video Games

• Atlus:
  • Raidou Kuzunoha vs. The Soulless Army: The game's Intrepid Reporter, Tae "Kichou" Asakura. The monster Red Cape has been spotted in an abandoned factory? You wrote yourself that it "leaves behind nothing but a bloody corpse"? You have a problem with fainting under pressure or when extremely startled (and surely you must know this fact about yourself...)? You wear high heels, which, as you know, are not conducive to running for your life? Sure, no problem, you're gonna go all by yourself! Thankfully, she seems to have learned her lesson from that experience and asks someone to go with her next time she's working on a dangerous scoop. Hooray for Character Development!
  • Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne with Hijiri, an occult journalist who sets his sights on Hikawa, whom he accuses of leading a fanatical cult obsessed with the end of the world into a massacre against an opposing cult. This ends up getting him caught up in the apocalypse, and he STILL insists on getting his scoop. At least unlike most examples, he managed to have the sense to stay in the nice, SAFE little save points after the city wrapped itself around a big ball of light - until Isamu manages to piss him off enough that he goes crazy. It probably doesn't hurt matters that Hijiri actually did die in the Conception; the Hijiri you encounter in the Vortex World is actually Hijiri's soul in a manikin body.
• In Alpha Protocol, Mike can contact Scarlet Lake with various stories about Halbech Inc. One initially wonders how she is able to survive doing this when the company is shown to not be above killing to protect their bottom line. It makes sense once it is realized that she was never actually going to print any of the stories she received as she was on their payroll from the beginning. It also doesn't hurt that her other job as a Professional Killer makes her a bit of a hard target regardless.
• Circus Electrique: Amelia is completely willing to brave the streets of Steampunk London in the midst of a Vicious outbreak with only her Loyal Animal Companion Leonidas by her side. Her uncle convinces her to take some of his performers along with her for protection, but she's not thrilled about it.
• Criminal Case: Grimsborough: Rachel Priest is at this for most of the Financial Center arc, digging around to find any major dirt on Alden Greene. Unfortunately, she dug too deep, and this gets her murdered.
• Dead Rising's Frank West, who takes time out to shoot photos of the zombies trying to gnaw on his arm. In fact, he came to the zombie-overrun mall the game takes place in by choice, so he could cover the story up close.
• Detective Pikachu: Meiko doesn't let a rampaging Charizard convince her to run away when she's interested in getting the latest report.
• Enemy Front: The Intrepid Reporter protagonist, Robert Hawkins, starts off as a volunteer who travels into the heart of Germany-occupied Poland in the middle of the World War, in order to get the latest news.
• EXTRAPOWER: Attack of Darkforce: What does Rinko do to pursue the case of kidnapped athletes for her magazine? Track down and approach Kojiro, an Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy in the middle of busting dojos, who thankfully isn't the one behind it but no less a dangerous situation to charge into. She follows with the hero team even after they start fighting against man-sized alien dragonflies, creatures of the shadow world, or Half-Human Hybrid karate criminals to keep on the story.
• Discussed by Piper in Fallout 4, who believes that a reporter shouldn't consider themselves a success until they've rattled the cages enough for someone else to threaten their life. In that regard, she considers herself to be very successful.
• Madison Paige in Heavy Rain routinely walks into highly dangerous situations alone while investigating the Origami killer. However, in each case, she has the ability to escape from them on her own if the player makes the right movies.
• Kylie Koopa from Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time goes to great lengths to gather information regarding the Shroob Invasion which is then published in a book titled Fungicide: The Epic Battle for the Mushroom Kingdom.
• Mass Effect:
  • Just before the launch of Mass Effect 3, Emily Wong livetweets the Reaper invasion of Earth. This would generally constitute Going For The Big Scoop, but she displays plenty of common sense in avoiding the actual Reapers and trying to stay alive. It doesn't work - her shuttle takes a hit, wounding her and killing her team. Then she decides to ram a Reaper.
  • Played straighter with Diana Allers, who could have embedded with any number of Alliance ships, but she specifically chooses the Normandy, which would promise to always be in the Reapers' crosshairs and whose predecessor was destroyed by Collectors just a couple years prior. And it pays off, as she gets front-row seats to such galactic community-shaking events as the cure of the genophage and peace between the quarians and geth.
• Peret em Heru: For the Prisoners: Mizumi is a downplayed example; while he doesn't rush headlong into danger, he's more than happy to accompany the tour group into the ruins despite the dangers because this gives him the chance to take some exclusive pictures, and potentially be the first to break the story. His more reckless tendencies actually lie elsewhere.
• Lotta Hart does it all the time in the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney saga. Her photos are usually both the making and the breaking of the case against the defendant of whatever case she's gotten sucked into. Her photos that Phoenix uses for evidence are usually blurry, at odd angles, or out of focus, which makes Phoenix's cases much more difficult for him, and makes one wonder how Lotta can still be making a living as a photographer.
• Ben Bertolucci of Resident Evil 2 is another subversion. He came to Raccoon City to get the dirt on what's happening to the town, but once he learns that it's falling apart under a small-scale Zombie Apocalypse and he's trapped there, he gives up on chasing the story, locks himself in a jail cell, and refuses to leave until everything blows over. Or blows up, which he doesn't live to see anyway.
• Likewise, Ran Hibiki of the Rival Schools games is more than happy to get herself and her friends mixed up in an evil student's plot to take over the local schools, if it means uncovering the truth gets her a story on the front page of Taiyo High's newspaper.
• Robot Alchemic Drive gives us the borderline-suicidal Mika Banhara, who in a few levels decides to get a close-up of two Humongous Mecha fighting. If she dies, it's a Nonstandard Game Over. It's worse when she's in a van and seems to intentionally park underfoot. If you're feeling mean, possibly because you keep having to retry the level, you can pick up that news van and toss it across the city.
• Space Channel 5 is all about reporters going after the big scoop and saving the galaxy.
• Mary Jane Watson is frequently guilty of this in Spider-Man (PS4), resulting in several stealth missions in which she has to sneak around armed mooks while photographing and stealing evidence of their bosses' schemes. Her insistence on throwing herself into danger contributed to her and Peter's breakup prior to the start of the game but when they get back together, she justifies it by saying it's because she feels guilty about leaving him to do all the work saving New York.
• Aya Shameimaru from Touhou Project is known to act like this. In fact, she has her own spin-off game series whose premise is entirely that she intentionally pisses off the bosses of all the other games in order to take pictures of their bullet patterns and supposedly interview them. She can get away with it because she's no slouch herself when it comes to fighting.
• In Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, reporter Elena Fisher and her cameraman Jeff pursue Lazarevic, a rogue general with an entire army under his command, into a war zone by themselves, resulting in Jeff getting killed. Though Elena is armed and fairly competent with a gun, bringing some cops or security guards with them probably would have been a good idea.

Web Animation

• Pokémon Generations: In "The Scoop", Gabby and Ty sneak into Mossdeep's Space Center to investigate the destruction of the asteroid containing Deoxys.

Web Comics

• You know, that thing where Yamara found out what the most outrageous (if not most dangerous) sort of monster is...

Western Animation

• Michael Collins' Girlfriend, Charlie of Ghost Force is a big fan of the titular team and will sometimes show up to record their battles for her blog. Coincidentally, she has a big crush on Krush (Mike's secret identity).
• Alya from Miraculous Ladybug runs the Ladyblog, the main news source on everything related to the titular heroine, so she tries to get footage of every battle she can — which, of course, means putting herself in danger for the sake of her scoop. One time, she even kept filming while an akuma was kidnapping her, and tried to interview said akuma, to boot! Ladybug, who is great friends with Alya in her civilian identity, finds this thoroughly exasperating.
• Lois Lane in the Golden Age Superman cartoon shorts. Always. She's not much different in the DC Animated Universe either.
  • Deconstructed in Superman: Doomsday, in which Lois' grief at the death of Superman sees her begin to turn this tendency to Death Seeker levels; Perry White notes darkly at one point that she's still throwing herself recklessly into dangerous situations, but Superman isn't around to pull her chestnuts out of the fire anymore.
• Ann Gora from SWAT Kats. She and her cameraman are always dangerously close to the action, just to get their scoop.
• April O'Neil in the 1987 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon and the comic that spun off of it. Vernon Fenwick also does this frequently, as he's usually trying to out-scoop April.
• The Spectacular Spider-Man:
  • Peter Parker is viewed by some as a photographer version of this, as the sixteen-year-old regularly manages to get pictures of Spider-Man's battles while also hiding himself well enough to stay out of danger. Jameson (though he hates to admit it) admires the kid's skills enough that he gives him an exclusive contract to photograph for the Bugle. Of course, if Jameson ever learned how Peter gets all of those pictures...
  • Foswell is a reporter at the Bugle, and a coworker of Peter. Despite being fairly soft-spoken and an often-overlooked character of this series, he's shown to have numerous Offscreen Moments Of Awesome when it comes to investigating organized crime, such as investigating L. Thompson Lincoln (and accidentally telling Spider-Man who the "Big Man" is), and going undercover to further look into gangs in NYC. He's so good at the latter that he was once interrogated by Spider-Man (someone who sees Foswell at least once a week) and the web-slinger never realized who he was.
• Ultimate Spider-Man: This cartoon reimagines Mary Jane Watson as an up-and-coming Intrepid Reporter, with the episode "Exclusive" being dedicated to her accidentally ending up on the scene of a fight between the Hulk, Spider-Man, and an energy monster. Despite Spider-Man trying to get her to escape, multiple times, she stays and keeps filming. She even tries to get an interview from Hulk when the battle appeared to be over (he politely (for him) declined).

Real Life

• This played out exactly in real life with Current TV's intrepid reporters, Laura Ling (bonus points for the L.L. initials) and Euna Lee, who were pursuing the big scoop when they were taken prisoner by North Korea. Luckily, the US Government brought them home.
  • Lisa Ling once visited a prison in El Salvador working on a documentary about the notorious MS-13 gang and how they dominated the prison system down there. Interviewing one of the veteranos locked up and knowing herself, her crew, and the few prison guards brave enough to accompany her into the prison that was virtually under complete control of the gang, Lisa asked the gang member how she knew they would be kept safe and not possibly be taken hostage. The gang member basically smirked, and replied, "You don't."
• A much sadder example: the attack on the World Trade Center on 9/11. Reporters and cameramen were going in CLOSER to the towers before they fell to get better shots. Surprisingly, freelance photojournalist Bill Biggart was the only working journalist to be killed in the attacks, though six broadcast TV engineers were killed in the collapsing towers, and one photojournalist happened to be aboard American Airlines Flight 11.
• Inverted with Herbert Morrison, a radio reporter who in 1937 went to file ^note recording on special discs, not a live report what he thought was just going to be a routine story about the first arrival of a new German airship in New Jersey and ended up seeing the Hindenburg crash barely a few dozen feet in front of him. His live coverage of the disaster (which is where most references to Oh, the Humanity! are coming from) switches rapidly from almost-bored matter-of-factness to pure shock to genuinely distraught horror in an instant and is all the more affecting for it. Minutes later, having taken a brief break and discovered survivors, he is almost back to normal.
• Speaking of Badass Broadcasters, CNN's Anderson Cooper has a habit of a) hearing about some sort of disaster, war zone, or other crisis where people are dying, and b) getting on a plane to go there as soon as humanly possible. This man spends a lot of time running around in a bulletproof vest, and has spent the last two decades reporting from every major disaster area, civil uprising, flat-out war, or humanitarian crisis on the planet. He got his start in journalism by obtaining a faked press pass and sneaking into Burma to cover the civil revolution, for God's sake! He was also nearly decapitated by a flying street sign during Hurricane Katrina, reported from Baghdad with bombs exploding behind him, got punched repeatedly on the streets of Cairo, and at one point reported on the Egyptian revolution during the Arab Spring from an undisclosed location because he might be killed if anti-revolutionaries found out where he was; as well as regularly land in places where being openly gay like he is can land you in serious trouble with the laws, even ended up in prison or be sentenced to death.
• Edward R. Murrow, although there were others, made sure he got on a London rooftop to cover the action of the Battle of Britain in World War II for his radio network even as the bombs were falling around him.
• NBC News' Chief Foreign Correspondent Richard Engel has spent most of his life since the mid-90s living in the Middle East and spends even more time in a bulletproof vest than Anderson Cooper. Freshly graduated from Stanford, he took off for Cairo with nothing more than $2000 (not even a basic knowledge of Arabic!) and a yearning to "ride the train of history" in the very front seat. Since then he has repeatedly worked as a military embed, got himself into Iraq in 2002 under the Saddam regime (with questionable legality), and was the last American correspondent left in Baghdad for the duration of Operation Iraqi Freedom. He is, with excellent reason, widely considered the foremost expert journalist on Middle East affairs in all of the news business. Not without reason has he been called "NBC News’s widely recognized, highly respected, globe-trotting, bullet-dodging dreamboat."
  Rachel Maddow: One of the seams of our modern world runs through Iraq. That means that when our world starts to fall apart at the seams, it usually means that Iraq is one of the first places to start unraveling. And when that happens, one thing you can set your watch by is that NBC`s Richard Engel will be there in the middle of it so he can show the world what it looks like and sounds like from the middle of the unraveling.
• Amid rising tensions and increasing demonstrations in East Berlin (and East Germany as a whole), Tom Brokaw proposed hosting NBC Nightly News in Berlin for a couple of days. His risk-taking paid off; he was possibly the first Western journalist to learn that East Germany was going to allow movement through the Berlin Wall and had unparalleled live coverage of the first East Germans to freely cross the wall into West Berlin in over 25 years.
• Xuan Kejiong of Shanghai Media Group also has a level of notoriety as a tireless reporter chasing after the biggest disasters across the metropolis. There is even a saying that if you see him with a cameraman and a microphone, start running.
• It's become something of a Memetic Mutation that if Jim Cantore of The Weather Channel shows up in your town, you'd better run for the hills because disaster is not far behind. The Weather Channel themselves have leaned into this joke, putting out a commercial in 2011 depicting Cantore on vacation, causing holiday-goers to flee.

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