Aaron Sorkin’s HBO show The Newsroom deals with the aftermath of a Jerry Maguire-esque epiphany (here) by the formerly vanilla cable news anchor Will McAvoy (Jeff Daniels), leading him to go on a mission to bring intelligent, informed news to the American people. Anyone who has seen The Newsroom will, after a while, feel like they are watching a story set in a world of fantasy and idealism rather than the real world in which newsrooms actually operate. Audience numbers and corporate pressures to protect business partners are ignored as the staff of this newsroom go about their business of saving America. The show has been heavily criticised for this, as well as the patently liberal agenda visible in every plot point. Sorkin is way past the point where he can make a claim to be non-partisan. This is the man who created President Jed Bartlett in The West Wing, one of the most liberal characters in TV history.
The Newsroom however goes far past what Sorkin attempted with The West Wing, and any show that has gone before it: it is set in the real world, reporting real news. While President Bartlett weighed the consequences of battling genocide in Equatorial Kundu and dragging his country into a war protecting Kazakhstan from the crosshairs of Russia and China, Will McAvoy is reporting news from mid-2010 through fall 2011. Actual news stories, from the BP Oil Spill to Osama Bin-Laden via the Arab Spring and the News of the World phone tapping scandal. Actual news footage from his ‘competitors’ at CNN, FOX, MSNBC and others are shown to contrast with what our liberal newsroom staff think should be done. After a few episodes, it sunk in that what Sorkin is doing in The Newsroom: he’s benchmarking the news. Continue reading
Curves of Indifference 