In both cases departments or agencies created fake news footage, to be slotted into local news broadcasts, with actors playing reporters and "suggested introductions" for (real) anchors to read.
Occasionally real reporters seduced by the call of Hollywood take bit parts in movies playing reporters.
Ruffalo plays reporter Mike Rezendes as a twitchy, dogged, loose cannon of a journalist.
Journalists, she said, are not always forthright about intentions, so a smart company communications officer will sometimes play reporter.
Friedan, a suburban housewife herself (though with a more complicated history than she let on), played reporter to collect evidence of how and why young married women felt so stifled.
The Mexican American star plays reporter Adriana Mendez on the show, who is also a lesbian.
"Gossip Girl's" Dreama Walker plays reporter on the trail of a serial killer in the docudrama "The Grim Sleeper".
He also played reporter Casey Wong in three "RoboCop" films and appeared as himself in "Blue Thunder" in 1983.
