A fixer is someone hired to solve problems, usually sensitive or complicated ones, on behalf of a client who lacks the expertise, connections, or time to handle them directly. The term shows up in several different worlds: international journalism, politics, corporate management, entertainment, and crisis communications. What a fixer actually does varies dramatically depending on the field, but the common thread is navigating difficult situations that require local knowledge, discretion, and resourcefulness.
Fixers in Journalism
In international news reporting, a fixer is a local professional hired by a foreign journalist or news organization to make reporting possible in unfamiliar territory. This is one of the most clearly defined uses of the term. When a correspondent flies into a conflict zone, a foreign city, or a region where they don’t speak the language, a fixer becomes their guide, translator, and operational backbone.
The responsibilities are broad. A journalism fixer handles logistics like driving, travel arrangements, and payments. They secure access to locations and people, navigate local bureaucracy, arrange permissions, and manage safety and security. They also serve as cultural and linguistic interpreters, helping the journalist understand not just what someone said but what they meant.
Many fixers go well beyond logistics. They suggest reporting locations, identify sources, monitor local and social media, conduct background research, and sometimes carry out interviews themselves. Some provide editorial feedback, helping the journalist understand whether a story angle makes sense given local realities. Despite how central they are to the final product, fixers in journalism have historically received little public credit for their contributions.
Political and Crisis Fixers
In politics, a fixer is a person who manages scandals, defuses crises, and protects a client’s reputation when things go wrong. These are typically crisis communications specialists, attorneys, or political operatives with deep media relationships and experience controlling damaging narratives.
Their approach tends to follow a pattern. First, they gather every fact about the situation, good and bad. Some political fixers are also lawyers, which allows them to secure attorney-client privilege so clients can speak freely without fear of being subpoenaed. From there, they develop a communications strategy built around telling the truth clearly and concisely, urging clients to own their mistakes rather than dodge them.
Preparation is central to the work. A skilled crisis fixer meticulously researches the case to avoid being blindsided by new revelations. Some run crisis simulations with a client’s team to find gaps in their response plan before a real emergency hits. The goal is to stay ahead of the story rather than react to it. As one prominent crisis manager put it, the job requires the ability “to see around corners and plan.” Exhaustive self-audits, no matter how painful, are considered non-negotiable in this line of work.
Corporate Fixers and Turnaround Specialists
In business, a fixer is typically someone brought in to rescue a struggling company. These professionals are often called turnaround specialists, and they focus on rapid performance improvement when a business faces consistent financial losses, declining market share, deteriorating cash flow, or deep operational inefficiencies.
Unlike traditional consultants who advise from the sidelines, corporate fixers frequently take on interim management roles. They step into positions like interim CEO or CFO, giving them the authority to implement changes quickly. Their value comes partly from being an outsider: they can identify problems that insiders have grown too close to see and make tough decisions without the political baggage of existing relationships. When a company’s debt levels become unsustainable or regulatory changes demand a new structure, a fixer may lead a full corporate restructuring, realigning resources, renegotiating debt terms, and overhauling operations.
Hollywood and Entertainment Fixers
The entertainment industry has its own long tradition of fixers, and it’s where the term carries the most colorful (and sometimes darkest) connotations. A Hollywood fixer handles problems that could embarrass or destroy a celebrity’s career, ranging from scandal management to story suppression to evidence removal.
During Hollywood’s studio era, fixers wielded enormous power. Eddie Mannix, a vice president at MGM, and Howard Strickling, the studio’s head of publicity from the 1920s through the 1950s, used networks of lawyers, police, and journalists to make potential scandals disappear. They reportedly covered up deaths, arranged secret adoptions, and managed the personal chaos of major stars to protect the studio’s investments.
More modern entertainment fixers have included private investigators who conduct surveillance, suppress stories, and clean up after dangerous situations. Anthony Pellicano, one of the most notorious, was eventually convicted for wiretapping the phones of Sylvester Stallone and other industry figures. Fred Otash, a private investigator active in the 1950s and 1960s, was hired after Marilyn Monroe’s death to clear her home of anything that might incriminate the Kennedy family. The TV character Ray Donovan, who manages crises for athletes, actors, and executives, draws directly from this tradition.
Where Fixing Crosses Legal Lines
Not all fixing is legal, and the boundary between resourceful problem-solving and criminal conduct can be thin. In the legal world, for example, private investigators hired by attorneys can cross into prohibited territory by harassing or intimidating witnesses, making false statements, communicating with witnesses who already have their own lawyers, or engaging in fraud. When an investigator breaks ethics rules, that misconduct can be imputed to the lawyer or firm that hired them, meaning the attorney faces professional consequences too.
The same principle applies more broadly. A political fixer who suppresses information through legal media strategy is doing their job. One who bribes officials, destroys evidence, or obstructs investigations has committed crimes. A journalism fixer who navigates government bureaucracy to get a press pass is invaluable. One who fabricates sources or falsifies translations undermines the entire reporting process. The line between a fixer and a criminal often comes down to whether the methods used to solve a problem are themselves lawful.
Why the Role Exists
Fixers exist because complex problems require specialized, often local knowledge that the people facing those problems don’t have. A war correspondent doesn’t know which roads are safe in a foreign country. A politician caught in a scandal doesn’t know how to manage a 24-hour news cycle. A failing company’s leadership may be too entrenched to see what’s broken. In each case, the fixer brings an outside perspective, relevant expertise, and the connections needed to navigate a situation that would otherwise spiral out of control.
The term itself carries a slightly shadowy reputation, partly because of its association with scandal management and Hollywood cover-ups. But most fixers operate in perfectly legitimate roles. The journalism fixer is arguably the most essential version: without local fixers, much of the international reporting that reaches Western audiences simply wouldn’t exist.