Gangsters, reporters are plenty alike
In times of uncertainty, people look to bigger-than-life figures for inspiration. Who will it be?
In the depths of the Great Depression, Americans made folk heroes out of criminals and gangsters.
With his usual lack of historical perspective, Donald Trump is unintentionally grooming today’s journalists to inherit this role.
But the joke will be on the media-hating president because when America recognizes these folk heroes, it will be for bringing the light of truth — not the faux glitz of colorful crime.
First, consider the bad-guy folk hero. The 1930s bank robber John Dillinger’s hold on the public imagination was enhanced by being called Public Enemy No. 1. Many saw him as a Robin Hood figure, whose crimes hurt the institutions that had utterly failed the people.
Tucson still celebrates Dillinger Days with fanfare and fuss over a guy who reportedly said “Well, I’ll be damned” when the cops caught up with him there.
Like fellow Depression-era bank robbers Bonnie and Clyde, Dillinger became symbolic of striking back against a system that was rigged against average folks.
And now?
“The press might be, at this moment, a kind of anti-hero pushing back against institutions gone wrong,” says Kevin Sandler, associate professor and director of film and media studies at Arizona State University.
Reporters, whistleblowers, cellphone videographers and leakers stand up to the powerful for the sake of the downtrodden and the underdog.
And it isn’t just the mainstream media that serves as the people’s check on the excesses of power.
“The folk hero is the citizen journalist,” Sandler says.
❚ The person whose cellphone video captures police brutality.
❚ The worker who becomes a whistleblower.
❚ The insider who leaks critical information.
They provide the information we need when “established norms and unspoken trusts have been broken between those with power and those without power,” Sandler says.
But wait.
Journalists are not criminals.
Inheriting the mantle of folk hero from John Dillinger is no honor.
Yet in these topsy-turvy times, a reality-TV president portrays reporters as purveyors of deception, Sandler says.
Not only that, you have an entertainer like Sacha Baron Cohen posing as a journalist to ridicule politicians like Sarah Palin and Joe Arpaio, whose love of publicity is legendary.
But what Cohen does as a trickster is the sincerest flattery.
Obviously, he sees journalism as the profession best suited to reveal hidden truths. He just lacks the professional ethics to be a real reporter.
Meanwhile, Trump decries the media for “fake news,” calling it “corrupt” and suggesting media credentials should be on the line if they write something he doesn’t like.
He denounces leakers as traitors. He calls the news media the “enemy of the American people.”
Yes. The truth-tellers are taking a beating — and posers like Cohen don’t help the image.
Despite movies like “Spotlight” and “The Post,” reporters are not held up in popular media as folk heroes.
Not yet.
They have not yet captured the imagination of the public the way a flamboyant criminal like Dillinger did.
“But it’s early,” says Sandler.
The constant criticism from the political elite gives reporters, leakers and whistleblowers the aura of being the outsider that a folk hero needs.
Couple that with the deepening distrust of politics and politicians and you have the formula for creating the kind of against-the-odds hero Americans have always loved.
This time, it will be the intrepid reporter.