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Last month I started watching a DVD boxset of Aaron Sorkin's #TheNewsroom — it had lain untouched for a few years because the first episode pissed me off so much. But I decided to give it another try... (thread)
...For those who haven't watched it, #TheNewsroom is annoying for precisely the same reason The West Wing was good: it tries to show what journalism *could* be, if only it got its act together...
(For example, in episode 1 two new-that-day producers lead a broadcast news team to uncover the scandal behind the *breaking* Deepwater Horizon spill story)
(In less than a day.)
(To a journalist, this is like President Bartlet fixing the climate crisis over breakfast)
(In less than a day.)
(To a journalist, this is like President Bartlet fixing the climate crisis over breakfast)
But anyway. Watched barely 8 years on, #TheNewsroom becomes a fascinating window into what now feels like a totally different era...
First of all: the *entitlement*
#TheNewsroom is able to uncover a corporate scandal in less than 24 hours in episode 1 because the senior producer went to (we assume Ivy League) college with someone at BP. Not only that, his sister is senior at Haliburton.
#TheNewsroom is able to uncover a corporate scandal in less than 24 hours in episode 1 because the senior producer went to (we assume Ivy League) college with someone at BP. Not only that, his sister is senior at Haliburton.
It's an acceptance of privilege from another age. If Sorkin was writing a "how it should be" #TheNewsroom right now, I very much doubt the characters would be well-connected in the same way (i.e. through family and education rather than through source-building)
Secondly, #TheNewsroom perfectly distils the cultural challenges that the internet presented to journalism. Although it looks like it's about broadcast journalism — it's actually equally about *online* journalism.
...Each episode of #TheNewsroom is like a chapter in the history of online journalism:
Blogging
Wikileaks
Online trolls
The Baghdad Blogger
The misreporting of the death of Senator Giffords
Blogging Wikileaks Online trolls The Baghdad Blogger The misreporting of the death of Senator Giffords
...which makes it a great history of that period in journalism's recent past, including the excitement surrounding it — typically channeled through the character Neal Sampat, who writes the blog of the TV show's presenter...
(Neal is one of the very few non-white characters in #TheNewsroom - and not only is his role very junior, but his route into the newsroom appears to have been through accident rather than merit: on the Tube during the 7/7 bombings, he filmed footage & sent it to a TV station)
As the blogger on the team, Neal's portrayal is in its own way a history of the stereotype of the online journalist c2012: someone excited the potential of Wikileaks, who lurks on message boards for trolls, while pitching stories about the Yeti at news meetings #TheNewsroom
(In another scene that you wouldn't see 8 years on, Neal asks a female colleague if he can say online that she 'slept her way to the top' as part of an undercover role)
(She slaps him. Then agrees.)
#TheNewsroom
(She slaps him. Then agrees.)
#TheNewsroom
The role of women in #TheNewsroom, by the way, is summed up pretty well here: https://www.vulture.com/2012/07/newsroom-recap-season-1-episode-2.html
...So #TheNewsroom had a lot about it which is annoying — but also a lot which is potentially inspiring and instructive, and I keep wondering whether to show it to journalism students...
...For example, the Giffords shooting is a case study in how misinformation on a death gets misreported (the idea that a TV station would not run it once NPR had is laughable, of course, but the arguments they have over it are instructive) ... #TheNewsroom
...And the episode of #TheNewsroom with an Egyptian 'stringer' (basically the Baghdad Blogger) provides fantastic material to talk through the ethics of reporting in other countries/cultures, responsibilities towards contributors etc.
... #TheNewsroom provides plenty of material to talk to students about political interviewing, and political reporting more generally. The stuff on political (Tea Party) funding adds more talking points, too.
...Episode 6 of #TheNewsroom is perfect for talking through the ethics of off the record conversations with sources (and also a disastrous interview where a gay politician is treated as being defined by his sexuality)
