The Newsroom: Season Review

My opinion of The Newsroom did not change much over the course of the ten episodes. From the very first scene until the very last, the show could not escape being an Aaron Sorkin show. That is not necessarily a negative –  after all, I really did like Sportsnight and have heard good things about The West Wing –  but some of the conventions Sorkin trotted out and relied on grated on my nerves more than a little bit.

Sorkin traffics in visions of a liberal utopia. As a progressive and a humanist, I don’t object to the criticisms he levels at conservative ideology throughout the first season of The Newsroom, but as a television viewer, I do object to his pandering to my emotions and to his schmaltzy style. Even the best episodes (here I’m thinking of the excellent mid-season trio of “Amen,” “Bullies,” and “5/1,” which had tension about the stories being covered and powerful behind-the-scenes corporate machinations, were too quick to become preachy. Over and over throughout the season, the show resorted too many times to obvious attempts at emotional manipulation and an excessive reliance on romantic storylines.

I realize that television shows need to appeal to a broad audience, it’s just that I thought that in what was probably an attempt to attract female viewers by delving into the romantic entanglements of the News Night staff, the show insulted the viewers’ intelligence and failed to create strong relationships between the characters. Come to think of it, that was the biggest flaw of the show; there were no healthy, strong romantic storylines. Whenever one of these very smart characters made a move to get romantically involved, they turned into stupid people. It was frustrating and ultimately infuriating for me.

And why couldn’t there have been just one sane woman on the show? The stupidity of the romantic storylines was even more evident when the women were on camera and in conversation. Mac, Maggie, and Sloan turned into weak-kneed idiots around the collection of male goofballs and jerks. It was incomprehensible.

Another major criticism that I had was that it seemed too often to crib Will’s style and editorial choices on the commentary shows that have aired on MSNBC over the past few years. There’s a little bit of Lawrence O’Donnell, Rachel Maddow, and even Keith Olbermann in Will. I used to watch Olbermann’s show and continue to watch Maddow’s, so I had already seen the style and substance of everything Will and Mac and Charlie put on the air. It would have been nice to see some originality on the part of The Newsroom in the way they presented the very real stories as reported by the fictional news team.

On the positive side of the ledger, The Newsroom’s first season would have kept me watching it even if I hadn’t been required to for this class. While he can be preachy, Aaron Sorkin can write good television. The rapid-fire dialogue that seems to irk so many who watch Sorkin’s shows does not at all put me off. The banter between the characters is smart and witty and really draws me into the show. In this way, The Newsroom is no different than Sorkin’s previous shows Sportsnight and The West Wing.

Having said all of this, I don’t think I will go out of my way to watch the second season of The Newsroom. I’m interested in Will and Charlie and Neal, but none of the other characters were compelling to me. The women were awful. Most of the men were awful. I simply do not care enough about these characters to devote more of my time to them. I think I’ll binge on the new episodes of Arrested Development instead.

Inside Job

Do you want to know what makes me angry? Injustice. Every single time I see a film or a television show that puts the cruel injustice of the world on display, I get angry. It can be political, social, or economic injustice. It doesn’t matter – injustice makes me angry.

Inside Job made me really angry. It made me angry that regulatory controls that could have prevented the economic collapse were done away with by Congress and Clinton. It made me angry that people and companies that were supposed to be regulated by those laws ended up rewriting the laws to their own benefit. It made me angry that the new laws were being enforced by government officials that had been part of the financial institutions they were supposed to be overseeing. It made me angry that speculation and rampant gambling with other people’s money was so callously discussed by the Wall Street bigwigs. It made me angry that national leaders were entirely complicit in the destruction of the financial system they were supposed to protect. It made me angry that, when confronted with their theft of the public trust, the banking executives refused to admit their crimes. It made me angry that none of those executives were ever accused of crimes by the government agencies that were tasked to prevent those crimes from being committed. It makes me angry that, five years later, those executives have still not been charged with the crimes that they have been documented to have committed. It makes me angry that the American people have not received the justice we deserve.

The case made by Inside Job is pretty damning. The film demonstrated the very damaging causes and consequences of the mingling of the financial sector with the government regulatory agencies. Since the film was made a few years ago, this dangerous situation has not changed at all. In fact, President Obama recently named, and Congress confirmed, Mary Jo White, a former federal prosecutor to head the Securities and Exchange Commission. President Obama praised her toughness and his belief that she was the right person to enforce new rules, but he neglected to mention that she also defended JPMorgan when that investment bank was accused of misuse of federal bailout funds and she defended the CEO of Bank of America in a civil suit over that bank’s acquisition of Merrill Lynch (http://www.nbcnews.com/business/obama-names-ex-federal-prosecutor-white-new-sec-chief-1C8086505). So, she’s not exactly the anti-Wall Street bulldog that Obama claims she is. People like Hank Paulsen and Lloyd Blankfein should be in jail. It is highly unlikely that Mary Jo White is going to put them there, no matter her prosecutorial reputation.

Where was the watchdog media in all of this? Mostly, it seems they were simply reporting the story as it was being fed to them by the financial institutions and the compliant government officials. There wasn’t much in the way of digging done by the media tasked to cover the financial sector. There weren’t many questions being asked as the commodities traders sliced and diced mortgages. There was no incredulity as the housing bubble became more and more tenuous. Instead, there was wide-eyed optimism and virtually unrelenting optimism about the growth potential of the stock market and the dividends for the investors, both large and small.

We were lied to by Wall Street and the United States government and the media outlets that were supposed to help inform us about the lies did not do their jobs. Or maybe, they did their jobs exactly as they intended to do them and they perpetuated the lies. I am exceedingly angry about all of this.

The Newsroom Character Study: Charlie Skinner

My favorite political blogger and public radio quiz show panelist, Charlie Pierce, regularly quotes The Newsroom’s Charlie Skinner – “I’m too old to be governed by fear of stupid people.” Although I’m not particularly old, it’s a sentiment I can agree with wholeheartedly and it is that quote from the very first episode of The Newsroom that made me interested in Charlie, and to a lesser extent, the whole show.

When Will McAvoy, host of News Night was caught on camera doing some truth-telling during a panel discussion, Charlie saw an opportunity to light a fire under his anchor and to remake the show that Will hosted. Charlie was no longer willing to let Will do fluffy infotainment and wanted the show to get back to its roots of straight news. Charlie brought in Will’s ex-girlfriend as the executive producer to make that happen.

Charlie spent the entire season fighting for, and occasionally with, Will. Charlie was struggling to make News Night into the epitome of a news show – a show that would inform the public of important events and people and ideas. Charlie wanted a show that would not be dumbed down and would not cater to advertisers. Charlie wanted a show that he could be proud of and a show that would not compromise ethically or factually.

That is not to say that Charlie was without flaws. Or at least, Aaron Sorkin wanted you to think that Charlie was flawed by giving him one of the most obvious character flaws, alcoholism. Despite several other characters declaring Charlie to be an alcoholic, I never really saw it. Sure, Charlie almost always had a bourbon in his hand, but it was not as much as Don Draper or the gang on How I Met Your Mother. Even the instances of supposed drunken belligerence from Charlie come across as righteous indignation. He yells a lot at Reese, and once at Sloan, but Charlie did not strike me as overly angry or extremely hostile whether he was drinking or not. 

As the season wore on, Charlie became less of a side player that would periodically drop a pithy one-liner and was more integral to the story and theme of the show. For the last few episodes, he became a newsman again as he worked a source that could break a big story about the NSA and warrentless wiretapping as well as provide help in protecting Will. When that source took his own life, Charlie’s reaction of grief and disappointment felt genuine.

I felt that the story arc and conclusion of Charlie’s pursuit of the information held by the NSA source was the best-written part of the entire season of The Newsroom. While the rest of staff was using the more modern methods of the internet and social media to gather information and wrangle stories, Charlie returned to good old shoe-leather investigative journalism. There were the sly references to Watergate and the tantalizing possibilities of the information to be revealed. In the end, Charlie used those possibilities, since he didn’t have the actually proof, against Reese and Leona to prevent them from firing Will. It was a predictable conclusion, but it was a satisfying one.

Since I’m unlikely to continue watching this show, I’m going to miss Charlie. Most of the other characters were too idealistic for my taste and Charlie, while occasionally idealistic in terms of what he believed the news should be, was practical, pragmatic, and abrasively avuncular. He was loyal to the people that he trusted and respected and I found him to be endearing and realistic.

The Newsroom: The Greater Fool

Sorkin’s idealism sure was out in full force in this episode, wasn’t it? Coming full circle from Will’s season-opening monologue about America’s lack of greatness, the season finale ended with Will changing his answer to the question posed by a college student. In fact, he answered her directly since she was applying for an internship with News Night. The rest of the episode featured an existential crisis for Will, his show, and the television news in general. Oh, Sorkin, you never fail to over-dramatize your issues.

At times, I felt like I was watching The Rachel Maddow Show for all of the talk of voting rights and Tea Party lunacy. Will spent part of the show trying to establish his Republican Party bona fides, but he really came off as a left-of-center editorialist. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I happen to agree with the way Will (and Sorkin) present the Tea Party and their affiliated politicians. Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Rick Perry, and the rest of those nutballs should not have been anywhere near a major party’s nomination for president, yet they all led the race at one point. How does that happen? That is partly what The Newsroom was trying to answer all season long. It’s too bad the show didn’t make more of an effort to blame the truly responsible parties – the American voters who have managed to remain uninformed and uncaring about politics despite the best efforts of people like Will.

Maybe it’s because I’ve been watching these characters for ten episodes, but I found this episode to be entirely predictable. There was no way that Will would quit. There was no way that Maggie would do the smart thing and go for Jim. There was no way that Mac would suddenly turn sane. There was no way that the higher-ups at the network would get away with trying to fire Will. There was no way that News Night wouldn’t end up doing the news the way that they wanted to. There was no way that Will would not say the young, idealistic woman applying for an internship was what was great about America. That’s the sentimental idealism of Aaron Sorkin on full display.

Rating: 3

Sponsored Content

Clicking on the links to Buzzfeed in Sullivan’s post made me feel icky. Not just because it was taking me to the gaping maw of lowest-common-denominator content at that site, but because I knew the clicks are exactly what Buzzfeed wants and needs to continue its lowest-common-denominator profiteering.

Now, I am all for websites and traditional media outlets finding ways to generate revenue. Innovation is especially necessary for the traditional media such as newspapers and magazines. The online versions Wall Street Journal and the New York Times have both moved to paywall models, and I happily pay for the Times content.

Sponsored content online is another method that works as a money maker for websites like Buzzfeed and Salon. I at least scan the Salon headlines every day, not clicking most days, and quite often, and more and more frequently, I see clearly labeled sponsored content for things such as wine and entertainment. Salon gets paid to publish these advertorials because they specifically target the typical readership of the website. The same surely holds true for Buzzfeed and the sponsored content they publish, like the Sony Playstation advertorials.

Sponsored content is nothing new. Newspapers and magazines have been accepting and publishing this form of advertising for decades, sometimes subtly like the Playstation material or full-page political ads in newspapers that imitate editorials, or more overtly like the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, which is really just one big travel and fashion advertising vehicle, albeit with phenomenally beautiful women as the hook. Then, of course, there is product placement in films and television. I always chuckle about product placement because of a scene in Wayne’s World 2 when Wayne and Garth were making their movie. Wayne holds up a can of Pepsi right next to his face and then the camera cuts to Garth decked out in layers of Reebok gear.

To me, as long as the print (or web) content is clearly labeled as “sponsored” – this is where The Atlantic got itself into trouble last year with its horribly misguided acceptance of an advertorial praising David Miscavige an Scientology – and the reader is given the option of reading or not reading the material, I have no trouble with websites publishing the advertisement. And as long as you are aware that you are constantly the target of advertisements, be it in print on film or on Facebook, you can make better-informed decisions about what to click on or read. 

The Newsroom: Blackout, Part 2: Mock Debate

Televised political debates are silly. Even when they were in their infancy in the 1960 presidential campaign, political debates were a way to draw superficial conclusions about the candidates and not a way for voters to reach substantive decisions based on the stated policies of the candidates. Candidates, even when asked about their current or planned policies, are not pressed on the details or the consequences of those policies beyond very simplistic statements. Moderators don’t expect the candidates to explain their positions so much as they expect the candidates to say something that resembles an answer.

Will and the News Night team wanted to moderate a Republican presidential debate in order to upset the familiar format of fluff and fanfare in favor of formidable policy questions. The lack of substance to the debating format obviously irked Will and Charlie and they had hoped to prove that the voters would accept tough policy questions during a debate. Of course, they never got the chance to show what a presidential debate should be because the Republican party turned down their attempt to get the debate after seeing how tough it would be on the candidates.

I’ll admit that I didn’t watch a single one of the Republican debates over the course of 2011-2012 because I wouldn’t have been able to stomach the sights and sounds of that crowd of buffoons. I did, however, watch clips and listen to sound bites of parts of those debates and was astonished by lack of depth they exhibited, even when compared to the sadly devolving superficiality of the debates of the last few election cycles.

I would love for there to be a real-life Will McAvoy to moderate a presidential debate – a moderator that would ask tough policy questions and who wouldn’t be steamrolled by candidates who ignored or avoided his questions. I would love for there to be a real-life moderator that didn’t insult the intelligence of the voters by being part of the foolish questioning formats that took over the debate process. I would love for the political parties to seek out a moderator that would put their candidates through the paces during a debate, desiring a process that rewards strong, logical arguments and powerfully articulated policy statements. I would also love to be a millionaire.

Rating: 3

Good Night, and Good Luck

Joseph McCarthy had been running roughshod over the rights of American citizens for nearly four years by the time Edward R. Murrow began to expose the sham of McCarthy’s accusations. Why did take so long for Murrow to bring this story to light? Informational inertia is a possible culprit. By that I mean that it is difficult to move public opinion on a subject without a great deal of effort on the part of the government or the media. In the case of McCarthy, there are a few possibilities – the public either did not know of the extent of McCarthy’s accusations or did not have a great deal of interest or, worst of all, agreed with him.

I don’t think that the first option is a possibility because McCarthy had been making national headlines for years with his theatrics and the anti-communist fervor of the House Un-American Activities Committee had been in the public eye before that.

The second option is a probable explanation. By early 1954, when Murrow made his case against McCarthy, the public had been subjected to anti-communist rhetoric at various levels of vehemence since at least 1917. The McCarthy show was old hat.

The third option is also likely true. Not to sound like a broken record, but anti-communism had been drummed into the American mindset for decades and large numbers of Americans were in agreement that communism was an existential threat to the United States.

Ultimately, as the Clooney film about Murrow’s efforts to expose McCarthy explained, the American people were willing to overcome their informational inertia and listen to what Murrow and others had to say about the junior senator from Wisconsin. Murrow’s broadcasts came along at just the right time to push Americans to confront the mania of Joe McCarthy. The anti-communist fears never really left the public sphere, but at least it calmed down in the subsequent years.

The Newsroom: The Blackout, Part 1: Tragedy Porn

This is the first episode that I had to look up whether or not an event actually happened. It turns out that my memory was correct – there was no blackout in New York in the summer of 2011. What do they call that device in Greek drama? Deus ex machina? C’mon, Sorkin! You’re better than this.

Whatever. The blackout will likely big a much bigger factor in part two of the episode, so I’m not going to get into that aspect right now. The part of this episode that most intrigued me was the ongoing efforts of Charlie to get to the bottom of the tabloid assault on Will. The tabloid stories about Will aren’t even the most important part of that story line. To me, what really matters is how Charlie is getting his information. His no-longer anonymous source has been revealed to work at the National Security Agency in signals intelligence. Yeah, the source knows that Atlantis is hacking emails and voicemails and is using that information to provide stories for its tabloid. And yeah, that is affecting Will’s status moving forward as anchor. But, what I’m interested in seeing the show explore is the larger implications of the NSA illegally spying on Americans. It seems as if Charlie’s source has an agenda to expose the depth of the domestic spying because his conscience can’t take it anymore, even though he had a hand in developing the technology that allowed they spying to take place. Better late than never, I guess.

Where will Sorkin and The Newsroom take this story? I’d say that it can’t go far because the real world news organizations haven’t taken it very far. Sure, The Newsroom has more leeway to tell a story because it isn’t real, but that also means that it can’t delve deeper into the truth because it doesn’t have the resources of a real news organization.

Rating: 3

The Newsroom: “5/1”

When I went to bed the night of the bin Laden raid, I had no clue that President Obama was going to be on television. I’m getting old and I need to get up at 5am to get to the start of my workday at 7am, so I’m in bed most nights by 10pm. Since I don’t have cable (I have the bare minimum of channels through a grandfathered satellite plan), I also rarely have the television on in the evening. So it was a bit of surprise to me the following morning when I opened my computer and saw the headlines plastered all over the website of the New York Times. 

The part of this episode that had the biggest impact on me wasn’t the buildup of tension as the news team gathered information. Nor was it the humorous buildup of tension around Will’s pharmaceutical ingestions just hours before he needed to report on bin Laden’s death. Nor was it the superfluous storyline of Jim and Lisa and Maggie and Don. What got me the most was Charlie’s reluctance to air the story even though the News Night team was most certainly the first to confirm what the president’s announcement would be. 

More specifically, it was Charlie’s reason for holding off on airing the story – he didn’t want to repeat a mistake that he had made during the Gulf War in the early 1990s and accidentally help the enemy by divulging information that might lead to the death of innocent people. This gets to the core of the ethics news reporting. If there is the possibility that reporting the facts could cause harm, do you still report the facts? Charlie probably didn’t consider the negative possibilities during the Gulf War, but he certainly learned the lesson to be cautious and was determined not to let it happen again, even if it cost his news team and the network the scoop. I know that I was being manipulated to admire Charlie for his decision, but I’m willing to forgive the manipulation because I really do admire the kind of thinking that went into Charlie’s decision.

Rating: 3

Talk-radio Hosts

The biggest and most obvious difference that I saw between Barry Champlain and Happy Harry Hard On was the way they felt about their respective audiences. Barry had nothing but disdain for his, but Harry respected his. I couldn’t decide if Barry was self-loathing or had delusions of grandeur or both. Harry is self-aware, knowing that he has power over his audience and that he only has that power because he is adopting a persona. Barry is spiraling out of control. Harry is urging people to purposely lose control. Barry wants his audience to go away and leave him alone. Harry wants his audience to act out and change their lives. Barry ends up resigned to the fact that he connected to his audience despite the fact that he might wish otherwise. Harry relishes his connection to his audience. Barry seems likes he’s depressed and coming unhinged. Harry seems exuberant and willing to take controlled risks. Despite my general dislike for Christian Slater’s Nicholson schtick, I think Harry is the better character and certainly the more likable character.

Regarding the Bill Moyers piece, I think a connection can me made to the fictional films in that the rage of Barry and the power of Harry are both evident. Michael Savage (how much more of a Dickensian name could he have?) is full of unthinking, bilious, free-floating rage. Glenn Beck has a tremendous amount of power over his audience, even though it seems to me that he is either unwilling or incapable of understanding that power. While Moyers went out of his way to avoid attributing the shooting carried out in the Tennessee Unitarian Universalist Church to talk radio hosts and their influence over the shooter, there is no doubt that at least one person carried out a crime because of Glenn Beck’s language (http://mediamatters.org/blog/2010/07/23/the-ca-cop-shooter-and-glenn-beck-heres-what-we/168178 and http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/30/AR2010073003254.html and http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/10/11/california-shooter-glenn-beck-schoolteacher/). Beck and other conservative radio hosts cower behind the label “entertainer” to avoid responsibility for the consequences of their words. They are fomenting fear through their violent and incendiary language, but they don’t care as long a people keep listening and buying their books. I think they are more disgusting than the most disgusting fictional characters.

It seems I may have some strong opinions about Glenn Beck and right-wing radio.