Through all his films, Billy Wilder paid close attention to journalism, a profession he held in his youth in Vienna and Berlin in the 1920s. In emblematic works like "Ace in the Hole" (1951) and "The Front Page" (1974), but also in many more of the films he both wrote and directed, the Viennese filmmaker created a wide range of media workers who together offer a bitter view of the profession. This paper analyzes the 27 most relevant characters in Billy Wilder’s films and compares them with the real members of the profession on which they are based.