An Appeal For a Renaissance of Decency
REMINISCING ON HBO’S THE NEWSROOM
SIX TURBULENT YEARS AFTER ITS FINALE
It’s not the least bit controversial to suggest that Aaron Sorkin is one of the very best screenwriters around. Having written or adapted a handful of brilliant films, including A Few Good Men, The Social Network, and Moneyball, as well as being the mind and primary pen behind The West Wing, which is regarded by many critics and contemporaries as one of the best-written shows of all time, Sorkin is a veritable industry legend. As the creator and showrunner of HBO’s 2012 drama series The Newsroom, Sorkin got a chance to once again showcase his unparalleled writing chops and deliver a riveting, granular analysis of the on- and off-screen mania that defines modern cable news programs.
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JEFF DANIELS as Will McAvoy
The Newsroom tracks the progression of News Night, the flagship news program for fictional Atlantis Cable News, a division of Atlantis World Media, a monstrous media conglomerate comparable to Fox Corp. News Night is anchored by Will McAvoy (Jeff Daniels), a moderate Republican, as he embarks on a “Mission to Civilize”. His laudable, Don Quixote-inspired mission aims to transcend the commonly cited necessary evils of 21st century cable and network news programs and, instead, strive to provide viewers with the news “as it should be”, without bias and without fear of reprisal from corporate masters or political giants.
“AS IT SHOULD BE”
EMILY MORTIMER as MacKenzie McHale
Assisting Will in his Mission to Civilize are MacKenzie McHale, Will’s ex-girlfriend and the recently hired Executive Producer of News Night as well as ACN President, Charlie Skinner. Their rest of the news division consists of a number of young and eager producers and reporters including Jim Harper, Maggie Jordan, Don Keefer, Sloan Sabbith, and Neal Sampat, all of whom are quick to buy in on Will’s mission.
In addition to being expertly written and whip-smart, (givens for any Sorkin project) The Newsroom is also very well acted. Daniels embodies McAvoy’s lead role with the same machismo, vaguely charming narcissism, and infectious charisma that many of his real-world counterparts possess. But his recently resurrected commitment to truth, ethics, and integrity elevates his character above the shady fray that many of those contemporaries find themselves ever-mired in.
Emily Mortimer is great as MacKenzie McHale, the real leader in the trenches of News Night. She vacillates nimbly between tough-as-nails and appropriately sensitive as each complex and densely nuanced situation necessitates. She, like Will, is unable to abandon the fleeting ideal that journalists are ambassadors of democracy, responsible for honorably delivering unfettered truth to the public.
SAM WATERSTON as Charlie Skinner
And the always affable Sam Waterston is perfect as Charlie Skinner, expertly encapsulating the warrior monk spirit required to effectively mediate the treacherous ground between the News Night team and Atlantis World Media’s ownership. His role as President of ACN demands of him a commitment to the Sisyphean pursuit of equilibrium between the commercially-minded limitations imposed by AWM and the idealistic ambitions of his News Night team.
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Most of the supporting cast does a comparably stellar job. Thomas Sadoski’s work as Executive Producer Don Keefer stands out as the most satisfying character arc throughout the show’s 25 episodes. Early on, he’s hard-headed, selfish, and dependably insensitive, convinced in some elemental way that he’s not a “good guy”. But as the show progresses, he slowly becomes convinced that he’s not the asshole he once believed he was and softens considerably into a fun, but still shrewd and highly capable producer, eventually garnering the romantic attention of ACN’s bombshell financial reporter, Sloan Sabbith.
Olivia Munn also nails her role as Sabbith, probably the most entertaining character on the show. She’s hilarious, quirky, brilliant, and steadfast in her integrity and dedication to honest, accurate reporting. In the end, she and Don make a natural and lovable couple.
Finally, uber-green tech reporter and official News Night Twitter-manager, Neal Sampat, deftly played by Dev Patel, is a likable, but at times frustrating character, who’s so blinded by youthful idealism that it eventually threatens to lead the entire newsroom down a very dangerous path.
ALLISON PILL as Maggie Jordan
From a character and personnel standpoint, my biggest gripe with The Newsroom centers around Maggie (Allison Pill) and Jim (John Gallagher Jr.). These two, both central characters throughout all three seasons, fall dependably flat. The cringeworthiness of their obvious latent mutual attraction, which neither of them has the gumption to do anything about, leads to our diminishing respect for other aspects of their characters. Maggie's trajectory is strange, taking her from a nobody, inhabiting the very bottom of the News Night totem pole in Season 1, to ambitious, Africa-bound field journalist in Season 2, to accomplished and confident all-around asset to the team in Season 3. It’s a natural progression on paper, but watching it play out just doesn’t compute. Pill doesn’t do a bad job with the character, but it’s tough not to wonder whether another actress might have conveyed Maggie’s eccentricities in a more believable way.
JOHN GALLAGHER JR. as Jim Harper
Based on the way he interacts with Maggie and other female characters throughout the show, it’s tough to view Jim as anything but a sap. His character is supposed to be (and occasionally is) a highly capable Associate Producer who worked extensively with MacKenzie in a volatile and frequently dangerous combat zone prior to their arrival at ACN. But his wishy-washiness and often spineless qualities force the viewer to question how he ever managed to survive such a taxing ordeal. As with Pill’s portrayal of Maggie, we’re left wondering to what extent the lackluster acting negatively impacted Jim’s character, who was surely not a primary source of pride for Sorkin over the course of The Newsroom’s three seasons.
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Even with the distracting dynamic between Maggie and Jim, which at times threatens to derail the rhythm of the entire show without ever quite doing so, the primary strength of The Newsroom is Sorkin’s dialogue. Throughout his career, he’s made a name for himself as a Master of Dialogue, a title that any screenwriter still in his or her salad days should aspire to, as, aside from maybe VFX-dependent summer blockbusters, dialogue is the foundation upon which every other aspect of a film or show is built.
Sorkin’s snappy dialogue often involves several characters at once, all playing a composed and well-rehearsed game of verbal hot potato, volleying their lines back and forth in rapid-fire succession that alliteratively echoes the machine-gun clacking of his typewriter. The viewer is challenged to keep up or get left in the dust.
His scripts are expertly informed, jargon-heavy demonstrations of insider knowledge of the subject at hand, yet they’re sympathetic enough to a lay-audience that anyone who wants to stay engaged, can. Whether he’s covering high-level computer coding in The Social Network, the infinite complexity of sabermetrics in Moneyball, or the loosely organized behind-the-scenes chaos that goes into every single nightly news broadcast in The Newsroom, it’s clear that the man has done the work and knows his stuff.
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Aside from the dependably gripping dialogue, the show is also unique in that the news stories the News Night team cover are real, that is, actual historical news events that we all remember. The pilot centers around the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe. Other episodes are built around the Arab Spring revolutions in the Middle East, the 2012 Presidential Election, the killing of Osama bin Laden, and the Boston Marathon bombing.
For viewers who have memories of these events, their presence as vital plot devices adds a substantial bit of intrigue, allowing us to assess the characters’ responses retrospectively and know whether they are making mistakes or handling the developing stories properly. It’s a critical aspect to the show that simply would not be there if the events that Will and his team were covering were, themselves, fictional.
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A noteworthy benefit of streaming The Newsroom on HBO’s streaming platform is the added bonus of the “Inside the Episode” segment. This feature, employed by the network on many of their streamable series, presents a brief interjection from the showrunners at the conclusion of each episode that highlight certain aspects of the episode they consider noteworthy. In the case of The Newsroom, each “Inside the Episode” segment features Aaron Sorkin peeling back the curtain and offering insight into the mind behind the show, as well as divulging some tidbits that allow for a more rounded understanding of the characters’ actions, motivations, ideas, and desires.
After the series finale, Sorkin longingly admits to us that he’d “love to see a renaissance of decency” sweep through our society. He agrees with his character Charlie Skinner, the sage-like President of ACN that “snark”, or as he puts it, “the idiot’s version of wit”, is running rampant through our various social and digital forums to devastating effect. He asserts that the onus for turning the tide back in the direction of decency rests upon each of us.
The notion that we are each responsible for stemming the influx of cynicism and snark is at the cornerstone of Will’s mission to civilize. He believes that, as the face of an incredibly powerful media entity, he has the opportunity, and the responsibility, to use that power in the best, most proactive way possible. He recognizes that, despite being a member of an industry whose spine has all but disintegrated since the turn of the 21st century, it is not beyond his reach to try to gain back some ground and reestablish his own small corner of the news media landscape as a place where truth, integrity, honor, and civic responsibility are not simply vague, cliche slogans, but deeply-held virtues that inform and guide every newscast.
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It’s disheartening to recognize that this once ubiquitous, but now somehow foolish and quixotic pursuit of pure, ethically sound journalism exists now only in a fictional newsroom. The endless struggle that Will, MacKenzie, Charlie, and their team wage throughout the show is indicative of the real, often insurmountable hurdles that stand in the way of real-world journalists getting the news out in an honest and unadulterated manner.
In Season 3 (which must be commended, however regrettably, for its clairvoyance), it’s devastating to watch unaccredited, often vindictive “citizen journalists” and pseudo-news outlets obliterate the public’s demand for real, virtuous reporting by appealing to their emotional vulnerabilities. Jim justifiably bemoans the insidious conflation of op-ed pieces and genuine reporting and seems to foresee that phenomenon as being the death knell for the sort of old-school, cold-hard-facts journalism that he and the rest of the News Night team pride themselves on delivering. The penultimate episode of the series eerily predicts the #metoo movement, as well as the evisceration of Due Process that it instigated.
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Ultimately, The Newsroom ignites in us a hope that maybe this sort of Mission to Civilize could take root in a real newsroom--that maybe some well-established anchor out there in the land of the talking heads might be willing to stick their neck out for all of us and attempt to rock the boat that corporate media has everyone blindly stuffed in the hold of. But, man, does that feel like a longshot.
The paradigm has shifted. As a result of twenty-plus years of dissipating standards, fast and loose fact-checking, scandal- and outrage-mongering, and the proliferation of editorialized viewpoints presented as objective reporting, “The News” as an institution has egregiously betrayed the trust of the public. It’s legitimately inconceivable to think of how that trust could ever hope to be regained.
Traditional news media is hysterically antiquated. It’s been rendered obsolete, seemingly overnight, by the success of long-form podcasts, whose mere existence casts a stark and grossly unflattering light on the irreconcilable faults of the traditional news hour structure, with its reductive talking points, absurd time constraints, subservience to advertisers, and general superficiality. The success of podcasts, where people are allowed to breathe between their sentences and where complex, nuanced issues can be discussed at length without a clock ticking down to the next commercial, illustrates that there is an appetite for that kind of content among the public. However, I’m wary to proclaim these podcasts as the remedy just yet.
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While it’s true that many of the leading voices in the podcast world really are more trustworthy than many traditional news outlets, the problem remains that they are not beholden to truth telling in the way that journalists are supposed to be. Podcasters are inveterately free to say whatever they want, however they want, whenever they want. This is good--freedom of speech is critical to a free society--but the distinction between “news” and a “hot take” is becoming more and more difficult to perceive.
“TRUTH TELLING”
There’s nothing stopping any of them from adopting the same sort of persona as O’Reilly, Beck, Hannity, et al. and broadcasting their personal viewpoints to their loyal listeners as if it were gospel. Because these above mentioned culprits and their cohorts have already done this on the biggest news-disseminating stages of all, the public has a misunderstanding of what real news is, and thus is at risk of being further misinformed and manipulated by unscrupulous podcasters, who have no code of ethics or QC standards to conform to.
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There’s a place for editorializing, no doubt about it (what do you think you’re reading?), but there has to be a baseline vessel for unbiased, objective reporting that is tasked with delivering facts to the public without requiring us to read between the lines or unravel twisted rhetoric to access them. Any podcaster can do this*, if they’re willing to put in the work necessary to guarantee the validity of their content, but the burden of delivering the truth to the public must be shouldered by an unfettered journalism industry whose entire existence is predicated on delivering the news without limitations or skew.
*A Cynic's Take: I’d be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge that the vast majority of podcasters are no more trustworthy than the town drunk. The internet is awash with idiocy, much of it driven by narcissistic ambition and overall thirstiness. No one in their right mind should be deluded into believing that just because someone can afford a couple microphones, a laptop, and a monthly internet bill, that there is value, let alone truth, in what they’re talking about.
Well-meaning podcasters should not be looked at as the cure to the ills of traditional news media. But their presence should signal to the gasping vestiges of honorable journalism that the public is aching for thoughtful, mature, and incisive coverage of the litany of topics that concern us all. The success of podcasting should inform the next wave of respectable journalists and offer a template for the kinds of content that could be met with an actual increase in viewership and revenue.
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RENAISSANCE OF DECENCY
A renaissance of decency is needed in many areas of our society, but it can start with the News. The notion of honorable and scrupulous journalism should not be quixotic, it should be obvious and prevalent. We need real-life Will McAvoys and MacKenzie McHales and Charlie Skinners to find some way to stand up in the face of corporate oppression and carve back out a space where truth prevails, someplace where a small candle of genuine, objective reporting can glow brightly enough to inspire a return to the glory days of the News. Because we desperately need to be able to believe people again.
Photo Credit: https://www.hbo.com/the-newsroom/cast-and-crew