“Journalism is an incredibly prevalent career in the comic book world – many of the biggest superheroes tangle with reporters and photographers along the way (whereas few, if any, regularly meet with accountants or used car salesmen).”

— Rose Moore, ScreenRant (2016)

I was obsessed with the Christopher Reeve Superman movies when I was a boy.

I knew every line to every movie (my favorite was “Superman III,” with Richard Pryor), and I was known to wear my Superman pajamas under my clothes to kindergarten class.

Those movies were the first to make me think about being a reporter.

In “Superman II,” Lois Lane, a reporter for the Metropolis Daily Planet, scales the Eiffel Tower to get the scoop on terrorists who have taken hostages there. She was more heroic than Superman, I always felt, because she went up there knowing she would die if she fell and that she certainly isn’t bulletproof.

I wanted to be that brave.

In fact, journalists were all around the superheroes I loved as a boy.

Superman’s alter ego, Clark Kent, also reports for the Daily Planet.

In the first Batman movie with Michael Keaton, his love interest and foil was Vicki Vale, a photographer with the Gotham Globe who tried to figure out Batman’s secret identity.

Peter Parker, alter ego to Spider-Man, was a photographer for the Daily Bugle (this 2016 post on ScreenRant has a good roundup of comic book journalists: https://tinyurl.com/ybn2wzfr).

It’s not by accident that reporters intermingle so frequently with superheroes.

There are all the practical reasons of plot: Journalists chase danger, as superheroes, do, and need to be where the action is, as superheroes do. Plus, men flying around in capes would certainly be the biggest news of the day, so only a bum of a journalist would be anywhere else.

But I think reporters also end up in comics because they, like Superman, stand for truth, justice, and the American way.

A great many reporters were, like me, inspired into the profession watching Clark Kent and Lois Lane uncover wrongdoing and hold bad guys and crooks accountable. We became reporters because we want to make sure this country remains a nation of the people, by the people, for the people, that America and her people consistently live up to her ideals.

And, in so doing, many, many journalists become heroes, themselves — believing enough in those ideals to give their life.

When the good men and women on this planet went off to war against the Nazis in World War II, hundreds of journalists went off with them (see a great story from USO here: https://tinyurl.com/yc6lxurx). Sixty-nine of those journalists never went home.

Seventeen journalists died in the Korean conflict.

Sixty-three in Vietnam.

By 2006, Iraq was already the deadliest war theater for reporters, with 71 killed in action, according to the New York Times (https://tinyurl.com/y868y9fh).

Journalists have sacrificed at home, too.

Investigative Reporters and Editors, today an international organization dedicated to press freedoms and training journalists, was begun in 1975 and one of its first outings was a team of journalists pulled together to investigate the car-bomb murder of Don Bolles, who reported on the mob (https://tinyurl.com/y9cw24xg) in Arizona.

Those reporters ultimately linked the mafia to farmers who forced immigrants into near-slave labor and to major land developers and to Barry Goldwater, a senator and one-time presidential candidate.

The Committee to Project Journalists says 11 reporters have been killed in the U.S. since 1992, most recently Capital Gazette reporters Gerald Fischman, John McNamara, Rob Hiaasen, and Wendi Winters when the disgruntled subject of a story attacked their newsroom in Annapolis, Maryland (https://tinyurl.com/y7fgmb4l).

The risk continues to this day.

As protests and riots erupted across the country in response to the police killing of George Floyd, reporters found themselves harassed and attacked by protesters and police alike.

Journalists put themselves in harm’s way — either by deliberately landing in war zones or knowingly upsetting dangerous people — because the fruits of their work — arming citizens with the information they need to effectively self-govern — is worth the risk.

This Independence Day, remember that journalists are not the enemy of the people.

They’re superheroes.

Justin A. Hinkley can be reached at 989-358-5686 or jhinkley@thealpenanews.com. Follow him on Twitter @JustinHinkley.