As a photo-journalist, I have found some very good film portrayals of my profession (I have often wondered if it was because often we end up writing the things).
Television is something else again. Probably the only two good examples that come to mind are, Man and a Camera with Charles Bronson in the 1950s and Lew Grant with Edward Asner in the late '60s early '70s.
Does that mean you liked it or not?
Well, I’m driving a cab right now while interminably looking for a “real job”. Every cab driver seems to be: A super cool black guy, a non-English-speaking Arab/Paki/Hatian or a psychotic white guy.
I haven’t seen “Hack”, since I work Friday nights and haven’t bothered to set up the VCR, but from what I hear the main character is an ex-cop who drives at night and solves crimes/rights wrongs during the day. Like he would have the flippin’ time. After a 12-hour shift, I get 4-5 hours of sleep, job hunt, do things around the house and then go to work. Even if you replaced the “job hunt” with “save damsels in distress”, he would have AT MOST 4 hours to pull this off through investigation, leg work, etc. I just can’t see it.
Before that I was (and with any luck from any gods whatsoever will soon be again) in marketing and PR. Those professions don’t get a lot of airtime, but when they do it’s normally to set up a punchline from one of the “cool” characters. That never really bothered me, as so many of my brethren in the field actually warranted the stereotype. I marketed, advertised and news pimped, but I always preferred to hang out with the engineers.
Before that I was a reporter. I thought All the President’s Men and Salvador were pretty good (particularly since they were “fact-based” films), but so many reporter movies and TV shows have a young beat reporter tracking down a story for days and weeks at a time AND NOT WORKING ON ANY OTHER STORY. That doesn’t happen. That doesn’t even happen with columnists and senior reporters, much less some kid a year or two out of college. His / her editor would be keeping the reporter’s genitalia in a Bell jar on the desk as a warning to all those who would try to repeat the same mistake in the future.
That’s another thing I hate about reporter shows: the stereotype of the gruff old editor with the heart of gold. For one thing, most editors I worked with were women. For another, most of the men I worked with were just ex-reporters who got tired of the field work and wriggled their way up. For a third, the ratio of pricks to people just trying to do a good job and go home was pretty even. That parental figure crap was just that.
With all that being said, I really enjoyed “Key West”, despite its lack of realism. It was just too damn well written not to love.
I also thought “Deadline” showed a lot of promise. Oliver Platt was great as a columnist and Bebe Newerth is without flaw in any role for my $. Too bad it was axed after only a handfull of episodes. It was on so briefly it made “Key West” (cancelled after 14 episodes) seem like MASH or the Simpsons.
“The Paper” with Michael Keaton and Marissa Tomei is one of my most favorite movies ever. Sure, it’s a comedy/drama and most of the characters represent a stereotype, but the stereotypes they represent are REAL.
I have personally known every character in that movie, and I’ve even been a couple of them at various times. This movie was more like a documentary on how a small/mid-sized daily newspaper operates than anything you’ll ever see on PBS. A truly brilliant film and one that almost (ALLLLLLLLLMOST) makes me consider going back into the field
No i didn’t. Although i shouldn’t have implied that sucking ass is necessarily a bad thing - i would just prefer not to do it. 
Oops, forgot that one. I guess I was thinking only of modern day portrayals of nannies. That is now officially my question, are there any modern day portrayals of nannies who aren’t whackos?