Crooks in suits

Study shows that businessmen are television’s favorite bad guys | Timothy Lamer

From oil tycoon J.R. Ewing in Dallas to corporate raider Gordon Gekko in Wall Street, businessmen have been Hollywood's stock villains for decades. An occasional doctor, lawyer, mechanic, or teacher will be the bad guy in a TV drama or movie, but studies show that Hollywood holds a particular hostility toward the corporate world.

The latest evidence: a study, titled "Bad Company," released last month by the Business & Media Institute, a division of the Media Research Center in Alexandria, Va. Analyzing the top 12 prime-time dramas during last year's May and November sweeps periods, BMI found that 77 percent of the plots involving business were negative toward businessmen and commerce.

Business characters weren't just run-of-the-mill lowlifes, either. They committed 21 times more fictional kidnappings and murders than terrorists or gang members did, and they committed almost as many serious felonies as drug dealers, child molesters, and serial killers combined. On NBC's three Law & Order shows, almost half of the felons (13 of 27) were businessmen.