Media
Anything for the story
Media
A vidlink, a press pass, and the nerve to point both at whoever least wants the attention. That's a Media, in one sentence. It's not like the old days, back when a real Mediacorp had your back, covered your legal bills, and made sure your face got airtime. Today's Media works the Net with their own name, their own contacts, and their own reputation as the only thing standing behind a story. It's a harder way to make a living. It's also a much harder Media to silence.
History
Before the War, news came from the top down. A handful of massive Mediacorps decided what everyone saw, heard, and believed, and they answered to their Corporate shareholders long before they answered to the truth. The Fourth Corporate War didn't just break the old media system, it broke the audience's trust in it. When the Old Media told people everything was fine right up until the missiles started flying, nobody forgot.
What grew out of that wreckage was something closer to the first days of the muckraking version of journalism: independent reporters, pirate broadcasters, and screamsheet stringers uploading straight to the Data Pool with nobody standing between them and their audience. No editor to soften a story. No Corporate legal department to bury it. Just a Media, their sources, and whatever credibility they've managed to build one true story at a time. It's a dangerous way to work. It's also the only way left that Night City still half believes.
Role Ability: Credibility
A Media's defining skill is called Credibility, and it measures something that can't be bought outright: whether people actually believe what they publish. The more Credibility a Media has built, the more doors that open for them and the more damage their next story can do.
Credibility works on a few different fronts. A well-connected Media picks up rumors passively just by staying plugged into the City's information networks, threads worth pulling that wander across their desk without them even looking. They can also chase leads directly, digging up sources the way any investigator does: asking questions, calling in favors, working a room until somebody talks. Once they've got a story, Credibility decides how far it travels, who's willing to talk to them for the next one, and how much the audience actually believes what they're being told. At the low end, that means a byline on the neighborhood screamsheet and a story that gets a few local thugs to reconsider their business practices. At the top end, it means a name recognized worldwide and a story that can put a Megacorp in the ground.
Famous Medias
24/7, real name rarely used, runs Never Blink News, a one-man operation that plays a lot bigger than it actually is. He started out in Corp-run news before quitting in protest over censorship, and he's been running his own pirate channel out on the Street ever since. He's a bloodhound once he's caught a scent, and more than one Corporation has learned the hard way that paying him off only works if you catch him before he's already recording.
Jumpshot (Angela Banks) earned her handle by leaping out of a moving AV-4 to get footage of an NCPD beatdown her bosses refused to air. She released it herself, went freelance not long after, and has been diving straight into the middle of a story ever since. She's picked up regular work with 24/7's Never Blink News, and anyone hiring her should know exactly what they're getting: she'll get the shot, and she will absolutely put it out there, whether or not that's what the client wanted.
The Trade
A Media's career is measured in reach, and every level of that reach comes with its own kind of access and its own kind of danger.
Street Journalist: The lifeblood of the modern media apparatus, Street Journalists are the Medias who run around with Camera Hats and little buzzing drones. These chumps live off the neighborhood screamsheet and the small corner of the Data Pool nobody outside the block has heard of. Sources are local: gang honchos, block leadership, the kind of people who'll talk if you buy the first round. Stories here move small, but they move fast, and a street journalist builds their name one true story at a time.
One Man Show: The real 'Fake it til you make it' style of Media. These are the ones who run their own show over the data pool, usually live and dangerous. This style of Media has become more popular over the years as shows like 24/7 have gotten big since they have a lot of room to have amazing scoops and hilarious crash and burns. Its not a news year if at least one of these shows didnt end in a pool of burning gore.
Corporate Grifter: The antithesis of a 'True' Media. Corporate Grifters are corporate backed Medias whos job isnt so much to broadcast the truth but to obfuscate it for their corporate overlords. These are the Medias who go into a job in a clean fancy gear, with ready made talking points, and a clear eye for the best angles to make the story say what they want it to say. Too bad they are also really effective, so much so that the other Medias have to work double time to drown them out of the market. Interestingly most of these Medias work for Arasaka, Militech, and oddly Netwatch.
See Also
- Cheat Sheet — Credibility Role Ability mechanics, Rumor Table, and Skill Checks.
Night City MUSH is a fan project. Cyberpunk Red is property of R. Talsorian Games. Cyberpunk 2077 is property of CD Projekt Red. Cyberpunk Edgerunners is property of Studio Trigger and Netflix.