If Superman’s greatest weakness is green kryptonite, then Clark Kent’s may well be the ethics of journalism — thanks to his work as a reporter who has to cover his own heroic alter ego. It is a conflict in the character apparent since his first comic book appearance.
In his 1938 debut, Superman saves a woman wrongly sentenced to death. Clark is relieved that the front-page news of her release makes no mention of the Man of Steel’s intervention. Clark also likes that his job often leads him to tips on where Superman is needed. But when he is assigned to report on the hero, he feigns enthusiasm. He tells his editor, “If I can’t find out anything about this Superman no one can!” Disingenuous much, Clark?
Flash forward to modern times.
In the new “Superman” film, which opens in theaters on Friday, Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan) is surprised when Clark (David Corenswet) allows her to interview him as Superman for The Daily Planet. Her probing inquiries agitate him. She also chastises him on the ethics of reporting on himself, since he would know the questions in advance — generally a no-no in responsible journalism. But she shouldn’t judge him too harshly: She’s dating Clark and probably should recuse herself from the interview, too.
It is a good moment for Lois, who does not always fare so well in comic books. In 1986, when Superman was rebooted by the writer and artist John Byrne, Lois is determined to get the scoop on the new hero. She lands an interview but too late. Clark has the exclusive, gives it to The Planet and is hired by the paper, which is when he and Lois first meet.
“That has always been the conceit, that he gets his job by reporting on Superman and therefore proving himself to be an ace reporter,” Mark Waid, a comic book writer, said in an interview. “I personally reject that notion because I don’t understand what that proves other than he’s really good at taking advantage of the system.”
Kelly McBride, a journalism ethics expert at the Poynter Institute, said in an interview that “if a journalist has a double life, there’s bound to be problems.”
Clark “can’t be a secret newsmaker and then a mild-mannered reporter,” McBride added.
Waid examined the superhero’s young adulthood in Superman: Birthright, the 2003-04 comic series with the artist Leinil Francis Yu. It presented Clark’s call to journalism as coming from a desire to hide himself and his powers from others. “I report on events rather than get directly involved,” Clark tells his mother. In this story, Lois lands the exclusive on the hero. She also gets a front-page article with Clark about Lex Luthor’s scheme to portray Superman as an alien conqueror.
In Man and Superman (2019), the writer Marv Wolfman and the artist Claudio Castellini make the revelation that Clark moves to Metropolis because of The Daily Planet, which Clark thinks “paints indelible pictures with words the way no other newspaper ever has.” The story also puts a new spin on his feelings for Lois. His thoughts indicate he’s a fan of her prose first: “She’s everything I thought she’d be from reading her stories. Tough. Fair. Funny. Sharp. And of course a great writer.”
In an email interview, Wolfman said he saw no problem with Clark reporting on Superman, because he is writing news articles, not opinion pieces. “He’s writing about facts,” Wolfman wrote. “He doesn’t color it at all. That also allows him to criticize how Superman did something wrong.”
Clark’s writing about Superman became more complicated when Lois was promoted to editor in chief. Besides sharing his secret, Lois and Clark are also married at this point. In a three-part story in Action Comics last year, the writer Rainbow Rowell and the artist Cian Tormey depicted the strain the new dynamic put on Clark and Lois, who tells him that his writing about Superman is a conflict of interest.
“I can’t put my role as a reporter before my responsibilities as Superman. I am Superman,” Clark responds.
“I know, Clark,” she counters. “And I’m the editor in chief.”
McBride, the chair of the Poynter Institute’s Craig Newmark Center for Ethics and Leadership, had a firm opinion about Lois being Clark’s boss: “How is H.R. letting her supervise her husband? That’s also highly problematic.”
Rowell, who was a metro columnist for The Omaha World-Herald, includes sharp details when Lois places Clark on general assignment. “There’s no such thing as a small story,” she tells Clark. He asks, “Yeah? When did Lois Lane write an obituary?” (It turns out that Clark is excellent at human interest stories. His articles begin to find a home on the front page.)
The tensions mount and seep into their home life. Finally, they come to a truce after some heartfelt conversations. “I tell myself that I’m not above the law,” Superman says. “Above morals and ethics. But you caught me in a blind spot, Lois. And I was embarrassed.”
Lois responds: “I’m supposed to be the standard-bearer for the whole newsroom. I thought I could keep all our roles clean and separate.”
Then she adds, “You’re not three different people. You’re only my husband.”
There is no easy answer. In conceiving the story, Rowell said she tried to find an ethical solution. She finally came to a conclusion. “For me,” she said, “the ending is that they’re going to just keep moving forward, doing their best under a very unusual situation.”
She also offered a confession. “As I was writing, I was thinking, this is fascinating to me as a former reporter, but I don’t know if that’s fascinating to other people,” she said. “I imagine if you’re a plumber and you’re watching something like the Super Mario movie, you’re going to have moments of, ‘Well, no, that’s not how I would do it.’”
George Gene Gustines has been writing about comic books for The Times for more than two decades.
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