What is a newsman to do but save the world?
This is the stylized world of spin that Aaron Sorkin imagines for his latest HBO offering, The Newsroom. Sorkin, of course, is no rookie in the world of public-relations-as-infotainment; his critically-acclaimed The West Wing was created in part to temper the image of the Machiavellian policymaker. The Newsroom, too, is a bit of charitable publicity, designed to be an “idealistic, romantic, swashbuckling, sometimes comedic but very optimistic, upward-looking look at a group of people who are often looked at cynically,” in Sorkin’s words.
Idealistic it is. Sorkin’s romance is the strange wedding of classical republican virtues to the sanctimonious Ethos of the Twitterati. The proper functioning of American society largely rests on McAvoy’s enlightened shoulders; if he were to fall from above the fray, the forces of evil and tri-cornered hats would surely win the day. Each bright-eyed, bushy-tailed—albeit neurotic and emotionally stunted—member of the News Night team exhibits a singular (selfless!) dedication to the lofty pursuit of moralizing through editorializing.
Curiously, very little actual reporting occurs on screen; the show primarily deals in framing narratives instead of digging up stories. With power under the trustworthy watch of the News Night team, they now seek to “speak truth to stupid.” The mission, after all, is to civilize, not to merely inform.
“Civilization,” in the world of The Newsroom, is built on the values and tastes of the urban-dwelling upper-middle class. Any moral ambiguity or complexity in each news event is sterilized in favor of presenting the One True Opinion of reasonable people. Alternative narratives, when they are trotted out, are fashioned from straw and debunked as carelessly as they were constructed. The moral question posed in this world is simple: Are you on the side of righteousness or vulgarism? If only all journalists were Will McAvoys, the implication smolders beneath the lacquered schmaltz, there would be no more social rot.
More interesting than Sorkin’s stilted vignettes of recent media events—even Occupy Wall Street had a few bones to pick with his generous retelling—is the reaction from the show’s vaunted subjects. As a love letter to the industry, The Newsroom has the press blushing more from embarrassment than flattery. For one, Sorkin simply did not do his homework; journalists suggest that his newsroom is more of a fetish than a reflection.
More importantly, the chattering classes reflexively rejected the heavy crown he attempts to bestow on them in the series. Jake Tapper found that while the show preaches open discourse, it practices partisan hackery; that it “extol[s] the Fourth Estate’s democratic duty, but believe[s] that responsibility consists mostly of criticizing Republicans.” David Marash is wary of the show’s penchant for “pontificat[ing] to the ‘stupid.’” Martha Nussbaum doles measured feedback, claiming that The Newsroom sometimes scores a point now and then, even “if you share its politics.” Dan Rather appears to be the sole media voice in the digital wilderness that approves of Sorkin’s characterization, for what it’s worth.
Sorkin’s maudlin treatment of media and society is but a glossy aggregation of our larger cultural perceptions. We like to believe that the news informs us, that we are dutiful citizens necessarily keeping abreast of The Issues in our delicate democracy. We feel the warm glow of civic partipation, if only towards our own tribe. The other fellows watching the other channels are the blind ones in need of the Will McAvoy treatment, of course; reality’s well-known bias is in the eye of the beholder. Consumption of cable news as lazy political praxis.
In truth, political news is entertainment. It is celebrity gossip in ill-fitting suits. Politicians, scandals, and gaffes enter and exit the stage of public consciousness with little impact on our ability to affect change. A real life McAvoy would be just as able to goad the great unwashed towards proper thinking as Billy Bush and John Madden. It is no coincidence that some of the most successful political talking heads cut their teeth on sportscasting and entertainment reporting.
While The Newsroom may not tell us much about the real-life functioning and challenges facing cable news outlets, it tells us a lot about the fantasies of its acolytes. I’m almost embarrassed for them.