A fixer is someone who carries out assignments for or is skillful at solving problems for others. The term has different meanings in different contexts. In
British usage the term is neutral, meaning "the sort of person who solves problems and gets things done".[1] In journalism, a fixer is a local person who expedites the work of a
correspondent working in a foreign country. Use in
American English implies that methods used to conceal their clients' identities or potential scandals are almost certainly of questionable morality, if not legality.[2] A fixer who disposes of bodies or "cleans up" physical
evidence of crime is often more specifically called a cleaner. In sports, the term describes someone who makes (usually illegal) arrangements to
manipulate or pre-arrange the outcome of a sporting contest.
Facilitator
Fixers may primarily use legal means, such as
lawsuits and
payoffs, to accomplish their ends, or they may carry out unlawful activities. The
White House Plumbers have been described as fixers for
Richard Nixon; their methods included
break-ins and burglary.[3] Fixers who specialize in disposing of evidence or bodies are called "cleaners",[4] like the character of Victor "The Cleaner" in the film La Femme Nikita, or the fictional Jonathan Quinn, subject of the
Brett Battles novel The Cleaner.[5]
In Britain, a fixer is a
commercial consultant for business improvement, whereas in an American context a fixer is often an associate of a powerful person who carries out difficult,
undercover, or stealth actions, or extricates a client out of personal or legal trouble.[1][6] A fixer may freelance, like
Judy Smith, a well-known American
public relations "crisis consultant" whose career provided inspiration for the popular 2012 television series
Scandal.[7] More commonly a fixer works for a single employer, under a title such as "attorney" or "
bodyguard", which does not typically describe the kinds of services that they provide.
In sport, when a match fixer arranges a preordained outcome of a sporting or athletic contest, the motivation is often gambling, and the fixer is often employed by
organized crime. In the
Black Sox Scandal, for instance,
Major League Baseball players became involved with a
gambling syndicate and agreed to lose the
1919 World Series in exchange for payoffs.[8] In another example, in 1975,
Bostonmobster Anthony "Fat Tony" Ciulla of the
Winter Hill Gang was identified as the fixer who routinely bribed
jockeys to throw
horse races.[9][10] Other insiders may also be fixers, as in the case of
veterinarianMark Gerard, who, in September 1978, was convicted of fraud for "masterminding a horse-racing scandal that involved switching two
thoroughbreds" so that he could cash in on a
long-shot bet.[9]
Journalism aide
In journalism, a fixer is someone, often a local journalist, hired by a foreign correspondent or a media company to help arrange a story. Fixers will most often act as translators and guides, and will help to arrange local interviews that the correspondent would not otherwise have access to. They help to collect information for the story and sometimes play a crucial role in the outcome.[11] Fixers are rarely credited, and often put themselves in danger, especially in regimes where they might face consequences from an oppressive government for exposing iniquities the state may want to censor.[12][13]
In modern journalism, these aides are often the prime risk mitigators within a journalist's team, making crucial decisions for the reporter. According to journalist Laurie Few, "You don't have time not to listen (to the fixer)", and anybody who disregards a fixer's advice "is going to step on a landmine, figurative or actual".[14] Throughout the last 20 years,[timeframe?] fixers have ranged from civilians to local journalists within the regions of conflict. They are rarely credited and paid menially, which has begun a conversation for the compensation rights of these individuals. According to statistics gathered from the
Global Investigative Journalism Network, the base pay for a fixer's time ranged from US$50–400 per day.[14]
A map based on publicly accessible research data shows a visual representation of data collected from various studies conducted on both fixers and their journalist counterparts from over 70 countries. Gathered from the
Global Reporting Centre, the survey demographic map had 132 respondents from North America, 101 from Europe, 23 from South America, Africa and
Eurasia, 63 from Asia and 9 from Australia.[15]
In popular culture
Numerous films and several songs have been named The Fixer. As a genre, they illustrate the different meanings of the term. Most commonly, they refer to the kind of person who carries out illicit activities on behalf of someone else. For example, the 2008 British television series The Fixer is about "a
renegade group acting outside the law to bring order to the spiraling criminal activity in the country".[16]
The 1986 film Wise Guys features
Captain Lou Albano as Frankie "The Fixer" Acavano, an overweight, violent yet gluttonous psychopath who is tasked with tracking and killing the protagonists after ripping off their boss, Lou Castello, of a quarter of a million dollars in a fixed horse race.
The 1993 film Point of No Return features
Harvey Keitel as a cleaner who is called in to kill everyone and destroy the bodies after a mission goes awry.
The 1994 film Pulp Fiction features Harvey Keitel as Winston Wolfe, a notorious fixer and cleaner, who helps the protagonists dispose of a corpse.[17]
The main antagonist of the 2000 novel Void Moon is a near-psychotic fixer who cleans and investigates a murder in his employer's casino.
A
BBC Two documentary Alex Polizzi: The Fixer features a fixer in the benign British sense – a consultant who helps to turn around failing businesses.[18]
The 2000 crime picture The Way of the Gun has James Caan as a fixer known as Joe Sarno, a "Bagman".
The 2007 film Michael Clayton stars
George Clooney as a fixer who works for a prestigious law firm and uses his connections and knowledge of legal loopholes to help his clients.[19]
In Canadian writer
Linden MacIntyre's award-winning 2009 novel The Bishop's Man, the
protagonist is a guilt-ridden
Roman Catholic priest and former fixer for the
Diocese of Antigonish named Fr. Duncan MacAskill. After years of quietly resolving potential scandals involving the misdeeds of Diocesan priests, Fr. MacAskill has been assigned by
his Bishop to a remote rural parish on
Cape Breton Island,
Nova Scotia, and ordered to maintain a low profile. While at his new parish, Fr. MacAskill begins spiritually counselling the son of a childhood friend, who suspects that his son was molested by the previous parish priest. Deeply moved by the boy's pain, Fr. MacAskill begins to seriously question his own past and the morality of acting as a fixer of such cases. MacIntyre's novel was inspired by the 2007
sexual abuse scandal in Antigonish diocese.
In the ABC drama Scandal, the main character
Olivia Pope (portrayed by
Kerry Washington) was a fixer and head of Pope and Associates, a crisis management organization that fixed political scandals and
cleaned up crimes. Kerry Washington's character,
Olivia Pope, is partially based on former
George H. W. Bush administration press aide
Judy Smith, who serves as a co-executive producer.[21]
The TV series Ray Donovan follows the eponymous character, played by
Liev Schrieber, a Los Angeles-based fixer for celebrity clients. The character was inspired by a variety of Hollywood fixers such as
Eddie Mannix and
Fred Otash.[25]
The 2016
Coen brothers' film Hail, Caesar!, satirizes the American film industry of the 1950s, and is very loosely inspired by
Eddie Mannix's career as a Hollywood studio executive and fixer.[26][27] In the film, actor
Josh Brolin portrayed Mannix,[28] who is shown scrambling to quietly resolve the kidnapping of an
A-listleading man, while battling to keep multiple thinly fictionalized send-ups of real Hollywood scandals of the era out of the
tabloids. Behind it all, however, Mannix depicted as a devout, if sinful and unconventional,
Roman Catholic family man with two children and a doting homemaker wife named
Connie Mannix (
Alison Pill).
In the 2020 television show Devs, security chief Kenton (Zach Grenier) serves as a fixer for the heads of the Amaya corporation.
In the Ubisoft videogame Watch Dogs, enemy players are known as fixers, and players can get contracts to eliminate other players, or carry out illegal jobs in game.
In several
cyberpunk-themed
tabletop role-playing games such as Shadowrun and
Mike Pondsmith's Cyberpunk, fixers are intermediaries between clients and mercenaries, "well-connected fencers, smugglers, and information brokers who apply their trade on the black market,"[30] connecting mercenaries to jobs they prefer to take and other mercenaries in the network they can work with.[31]
^Arjomand, Noah Amir (2022). Fixing Stories: Local Newsmaking and International Media in Turkey and Syria. Cambridge University Press.
ISBN9781316518007.
^Cronenberg, David (September 21, 2007),
Eastern Promises (Crime, Drama, Thriller), Kudos Film and Television, BBC Films, Serendipity Point Films, retrieved January 19, 2023
^Avenue, Committee to Protect Journalists 330 7th; York, 11th Floor New; Ny 10001.
"The Fixers". cpj.org. Retrieved April 23, 2019.{{
cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (
link)