Lou Bloom
Bloom is a grubby small time criminal with no moral fiber at all. Although he is intended to be an anti-hero it is hard to see him in any type of heroic light at all. He loves filming criminal activity; he feels comfortable amongst the criminal element and will stop at nothing to get what he wants. He is also a predator, coercing Nina into sex with promises of more and more salacious footage for her news station.
Ultimately, Bloom is responsible for two deaths - Rick's, by virtue of the fact that he let him die instead of getting him help, and Loder's, by sabotaging his vehicle and causing a fatal accident. Bloom is able to find live crime scenes by listening in on the police frequency with a radio scanner he purchased at a pawn shop. Because he thinks like a criminal he is also able to stay one step ahead of the criminals and find them in the act of committing their crimes. He ends up on top, his career on the rise, his business expanding.
Nina Romina
Nina is a hard-nosed journalist who runs the newsroom and wants to make sure that her channel stays one step ahead of the other networks when it comes to giving viewers what they want. She also knows that viewers want the shocking, the salacious and the downright voyeuristic, because every time she features this her ratings go up. She also knows that crime against affluent people gets far more attention than crime against residents of Los Angeles' more disadvantaged areas. Nina has no line to cross when it comes to getting a story. There is nothing she believes off limits (for example, the live footage of the family involved in the home invasion) and will over-rule her entire team when it comes to running a story she thinks will cause a stir.
Rick
Rick is Lou's first assistant and thinks in the same way his employer does; he also tries to shake Lou down for a raise, using what he knows about the way in which he gets his stories as leverage. This comes back to bite him when he is shot by a gunman the men are tailing; Lou lets him die rather than getting him medical attention because he cannot work with anyone who has something over on him.
Joe Loder
Joe is the first person to explain to Lou what a stringer is - he is one of the men Lou watches filming the scene of the crash he drives by on his way home from selling stolen materials to a scrap dealer. Joe is more the traditional journalist at heart, often willing to share a credit if it means that a better story is achieved. This is not something that Lou is willing to do. Joe is killed when Lou tampers with his truck and causes it to go off the road.
Frontieri
Frontieri is a detective whose path seems to cross frequently with Bloom's. He is suspicious that Bloom is involved in some way in the home invasion that he seems almost to interrupt. He also feels that Bloom is creating more of the crimes he covers than helping to publicize them.
