And Now The Fake News (Best Fake News Reporters)

Canadian-born/scotch-drinking/cigar-smoking/gun-shooting Robin Scherbatsky (Cobie Smulders) started on Manhattan’s low rated Metro News 1 as a public interest reporter, where she accidentally fell into horse shit during a segment interviewing a livery cab driver. Later, she became an anchor for Metro News 1 but quit because she hated the cutesy-puns and “news tease” style of reporting the job entailed. Currently she hosts Channel 12’s extra-early morning show that airs at 4 AM.

Fun Fact: As a teenager, Robin (under the name Robin Sparkles) was a Canadian pop star with the hit “Let’s Go To the Mall.”

Bill McNeil (Phil Hartman) was a classic big voiced, egotistical news anchor for New York’s AM newsradio station WNYX. He was constantly at odds with news director Dave Nelson (Dave Foley) and a rival with co-anchor Catherine Duke (Khandi Alexander) but was quite clever and often able to one up them. He set up a cubical around his desk so he could sit around the office without pants. Station employee Matthew Brock (Andy Dick) idolized Bill and Bil treated him like a lapdog. He once got in trouble with the FCC for saying the word “penis” on the air. Sadly, Bill died of a heart attack and was replaced by the greatly inferior Max Louis (Jon Lovitz) in 1998.

People seem to forget that Mr. Stewart is a comedian not a real reporter.

Channel Four’s Ron Burgundy (Will Ferrell), Brian Fantana (Paul Rudd), Champ Kind with sports (David Koechner), and Brick Tamland with weather (Steve Carell) were San Diego’s best local news team back in the 1970s. With a memorable out phrase (“You stay classy, San Diego”) five-time local Emmy award winner Ron Burgundy was beloved by the entire city. With the ever changing decade and the rise of women’s rights, Channel 4 was forced to hire a woman, Veronica Corningstone (Christina Applegate). Starting out doing fluff pieces, she became co-anchor after Burgundy missed a broadcast due to an unfortunate incident with a motorcyclist. Corningstone and Burgundy became bitter rivals and Corningstone sabotaged Burgundy’s career causing him to be fired. It took a near-tragedy at a zoo to bring Burgundy back to the news desk where he and Corningstone enjoyed a successful career together, eventually bringing news to the entire world.

Perhaps the bravest of all fake news reporters? Kermit goes where the real stories are!1

Over-reactive, opinionated and sensationalistic, Kent Brockman (voiced by Harry Shearer) has been Springfield’s favorite newsman since the 1960s. Despite being fired several times (once for calling the audience SOBs and once for cursing on the air) and winning the multi-million dollar state lottery, Brockman still brings the news to Springfield on a nightly basis. He hosts the Channel Six news (where he argues with traffic reporter Arnie Pie (of Arnie in the Sky)), Eye on Springfield, and Smartline. He also takes political stances such as supporting Proposition 304, which makes television call-in polls legally binding. One of the most celebrated moments in his career came during NASA’S first “average man” space mission where an embiggened-looking ant floating close to a camera (possibly conquering the space shuttle) prompted him to say “And I for one welcome our new insect overlords.”

Morbo (voiced by Maurice LaMarche) and Linda van Schoonhoven (voiced by Tress MacNeille) are the highly popular hosts of 31st century news programs Channel √2 News and Good Morning, Earth. Morbo is a belligerent green alien with a large, veiny pulsating head who despises puny humans and their small, inferior brains. Linda, a blonde female, is his ever chirpy (no matter how horribly tragic the story is) co-anchor.

Diane Simmons and Tom Tucker are reporters for Quahog 5.

Recovering alcoholic Murphy Brown (Candice Bergen) was a take-no-prisoners type investigative journalist and anchor of 20/20-esque newsmagazine show “FYI”. In 1991, she had a bastard child which raised the ire of then-Vice President Dan Quayle, questioning the family values of a public figure having a kid without a father.

Brown, the secretaries she replaced almost weekly, and the rest of the crew at “FYI” (tall guy, neurotic Jew guy (later replaced by Lily Tomlin), balding guy, and Faith Ford), brought the news from Washington DC to the people of America from 1988 until 1998.

Arguably the greatest fake television newsman, 1970s UBS network news anchor Howard Beale (Peter Finch, who won a posthumous Oscar for the role) is best known for his “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it!” speech given in the midst of a nervous breakdown. Though he was originally going to be fired because of low ratings, his promise to kill himself on live TV (since the show was all he had left) made him a television sensation.

Beale became the “Mad Prophet of the Airwaves” ranting and raving about society. The audience loved hearing his ramblings and the network loved his great ratings. Those network executives turned the program from a straight news program into something closer to infotainment, quite prescient for 1976. When Beale revealed the network’s owners’ illicit business dealings with foreign countries, corporate overlord Arthur Jenkins (Ned Beatty) taught him that all that matters is money and that people are irrelevant. This meeting caused him to preach depressingly to his audience about how life is meaningless, which destroyed his ratings, and lead to his assassination on live television.

Miranda Veracruz de la Jolla Cardenal (Teresa Parente) is a Latina Chicago on-the-scene TV journalist. She’s often sent to report on the mishaps of an idiotic woman’s shoe salesman, his male club and his family.

Aaron Altman (Albert Brooks) and Tom Grunick (William Hurt) are two television reporters for a local news station in California. Grunick was attractive and charismatic but quite dumb- the classic “talking head” newsman who knows nothing about the world, even when he reads it nightly on the teleprompter. Altman is the highly neurotic and intelligent but non-camera friendly reporter, who memorably sweat through his shirt when he got the chance to take over the anchor desk one weekend.

Conceited and stupid but with one of the best newscaster voices ever (though he often mispronounced words), Ted Baxter (Ted Knight) was the long-time anchor for Minneapolis’ WJM-TV. He even survived a mass series of layoffs that gutted the entire station (including associate producer Mary Richards (Mary Tyler Moore) and boss Lou Grant (Ed Asner)) in 1977. Even today, the name Ted Baxter has achieved infamy as a term used derogatively to describe shallow newsmen.