Shady Characters and Determined Truth Seekers: How Films Shape the Public Image of Journalism

Digital disinformation and AI-generated content are transforming the way we perceive and evaluate information. In cooperation with HKA – Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences and supported by the ZKM as an educational partner, the symposium “The Fabrication of Truth” provides a platform to highlight current challenges and explore new perspectives.

The symposium is part of the project “Reality Check: Fake or Fact in the Age of Generative AI”, initiated by HKA’s Institute for Intelligent Interaction and Immersive Experience and funded by the Carl Zeiss Foundation. Its aim is to raise awareness—especially among young people—of the challenges posed by fake news, deepfakes, and digital manipulation.

In feature films, journalistic media are often used as a dramaturgical tool to discredit the protagonist and to reinforce the negative perception of that character within the depicted society. For the audience, who usually already have a better understanding of the character’s true nature and the actual course of events, this in turn increases their sympathy for the hero. Exemplary cases include films such as Spider-Man, with its biased editor-in-chief of The Daily Bugle, or the Harry Potter series, in which the leading daily newspaper, The Daily Prophet—personified by star reporter Rita Skeeter—is portrayed as untrustworthy, partisan, manipulative, sensationalist, and loyal to the regime.
But real events from the world of journalism are also frequently adapted for film due to their high dramatic conflict potential—such as the Relotius scandal at Der Spiegel, in which an ordinary freelance journalist exposes the sloppy and poorly researched work of a celebrated reporter, ultimately finding himself up against the entire system. This film exemplifies, par excellence, the struggle between the pressures of journalistic success and the demands of thorough, serious reporting—two forces that often appear to be in conflict with each other.
Journalism in film often serves as a metaphor for the battle between good and evil in an uncertain world, in which people—very much in line with Paul Watzlawick’s thinking—must constantly distinguish between information, disinformation, and confusion, often ambiguously and diffusely, within the hermeneutic process of reception.
This can be explained through systems theory, which views journalism as a functional system of society. Within this system, the binary code information/non-information determines what is perceived and transmitted as relevant information. Time and again, we see individual actors attempting to reshape reality to make their story more exciting and thus more economically exploitable.
This lecture attempts to offer a typology of the press landscape as depicted in film and illustrates how editors and journalists navigate truth and falsehood amid the tensions of informational value, enlightenment, and ratings.