The Journalist as a Detective: The Media Insights and Critique in Post-1991 American, Russian and Swedish Crime Novels

Abstract

Today it often happens that the protagonist in crime fiction is a journalist—for instance, in the globally spread sub-genre of Nordic noir. This article examines what readers can learn about journalism by comparing crime fiction (a widely popular genre fostering society critique) from Russia, Sweden, and USA. These countries with significantly different press traditions have in the post-1991 era been involved in transformations of the media landscapes which have led to a public distrust in traditional media. We approach these novels as a form of adult media education and thereby as a resource for the reader to develop a critical thinking about journalism. The novels under consideration are permeated with transnational understandings and provide a rich ground for reflections around challenges for finding the truth, such as news-making as a male-dominated activity, journalism as a publicity arena, and an accelerating news environment (i.e., information overload paired with a competition for immediate reporting) as a threat to investigative journalism. The struggling, truth-seeking protagonists can be understood as an answer to a widespread cultural anxiety about journalism’s questioned authority as a truth-telling occupation.