Reputation

Journalists face many dangers that aren't necessarily life threatening. These dangers potentially could have an adverse effect on their reputation as journalists or the public perception of them as a whole. Dangers like this tend to be brought on from risks that journalists take to really get an in depth, ground breaking story. Most dangers to journalists you could argue are self inflicted as they put themselves in these positions to become the best.

Louis Theroux



I am focusing this post surrounding dangers to reputation around Louis Theroux. Theroux is a BBC journalist who has built his reputation over the years reporting on sub cultures that are considered 'weird' or 'strange', in these documentaries Theroux attempts to submerge himself within the sub culture to get a raw and true feel of why these people live the way that they do and how they live the way that they do. In doing such in-depth reporting Theroux has put his reputation on the line a number of times in order to make an interesting and unique documentary. As you can see from the image below Theroux is no stranger to 'real' danger either.

 

Weird Weekends 1998 - 2000

"Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends" was Theroux's first television documentary series aired on the BBC; it ran over 3 series and was considered a success. There are a number of episodes within the series that Theroux puts his reputation at risk to involve himself more within the chosen American sub culture of the episode. The most notable risk to his reputation is within the third episode of the first series in 1998 entitled 'porn' in which Theroux looks at the porn industry and how both males and females that work in the industry are affected. In this episode he decides to give a fully nude image of himself to a porn agency in order to see if he was a male pornstar if he would get work. Needless to say that this could have potentially had a lot of adverse effects on his reputation if the image was released to the public, potentially career damaging results may have come of this. Theroux did this to this effect throughout the series making it one of the most in-depth, hilarious and entertaining documentaries of its time, Theroux appeared to be willing to potentially risk his career in order become a successful journalist; a tactic that seems to have worked.