The Newsroom

It always struck me as rather odd that for the longest time TV was seen as the movie industry's poorer cousin. While films have tended to have larger budgets you typically get about 100 minutes to develop your characters and tell your story, but with TV you can get anywhere between 500 and 1000 minutes, per season. Over the last 20 years we've seen TV become the place to tell complicated multi character stories. One of the best examples of this trend is the HBO show 'The Sopranos'. While the Godfather trilogy had 9 hours to tell Michael Corleone's story, HBO took 86 hours to tell us Tony Soprano's story.

While there are many examples of long form stories told on TV perhaps the best single proponent of this style of story telling is the American writer and producer Arron Sorkin.

While Sorkin has written screenplays for successful films — The American President, Charlie Wilson's War, The Social Network, and Moneyball — he is probably best know for his Television work. With his shows Sports Night, The West Wing and Studio 60 on the Sunset strip, Sorkin has acquired a reputation for creating interesting characters with depth, and for telling fast paced compelling stories, and it is this track record that has elevated expectations of his works.

On the 24th of June Sorkin's latest show aired for the first time. The Newsroom tells the behind the scene stories of a primetime news show on a US TV news network after the show's anchor 'suffers'an epiphany that results in him deciding to report the news he feels matters rather than chase ratings. The Newsroom hasn't received the glowing reviews in the press that many hoped or expected it would. Many reviewers felt that Sorkin was using The Newsroom as a vehicle to lecture the media on what was wrong with journalism in the US, and further, that he was romanticising a golden era of Television news that never existed. While many will argue that Edward Murrow and Walter Cronkite's even-handedness and fairness was the high water mark of responsible television journalism, some reviews were quick to point out that Murrow took a personal stand against Senator Joseph McCarthy that led to the Senator's fall from popularity, and when Cronkite stated his personal opinion about the futility of the Vietnam war President Johnson famously said, "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost Middle America".

While those reviews make valid points about narrative problems and inaccuracies in the way television news actually works they seem to ignore the fact that there is a significant problem in the US television news business. The last 20 years have seen the rise of partisan news networks presenting opinion rather than fact, who pursue ratings rather than truth and report that which is popular rather that which is important. A recent Gallup poll details how Americans' confidence in television news is at an all time low.  Perhaps there is a lecture to be listened to.

The Newsroom is far from perfect. As Salon.com's TV critic, Willa Paskin, pointed out, we don't need a Coldplay soundtrack to help understand that Congresswomen Gabriel Giffords being shot was a bad thing. But this misses the point, the Newsroom's primary concern is not to educate us as to the failings of television news, it is a drama shown on HBO not a documentary on CNN or the History channel.

When reviewing Games of Thrones, HBO's most popular current show, reviewers didn't get hung up on the accuracy of the depiction. To be fair, Games of Thrones is set in an entirely fictional world, but the author, George R. R. Martin, based that fictional world on medieval Europe. Critics aren't complaining that Martin's work isn't an accurate depiction of Europe, or that Dragons featured in the show don't actually exist. I think what annoys me most is that many reviewers are unable to separate the story telling from the reality. I put this down to proximity many of those reviewing the show have to the television industry, criticising what you know is easier but perhaps not that relevant to the audience who don't work in TV.

I appreciate that It's equally easy for a fictional news show to look back at major events and report those events in a manner that makes the characters look great, but that doesn't change the fact that the a fictional news network is presenting news in a coherent and intelligent manner that no major news network in the US could or would today. Could it be that Journalists and commentators who wrote the reviews are annoyed at the portrayal of journalists trying to report actual news? Journalist heal thy self.

But The Newsroom is getting better. Sorkin may be relying on narrative devices we've seen in The West Wing, and Sport Nights before that, but they work, and I'm enjoying it more as it develops. Most importantly, The Newsroom has been picked up for a second season and here's hoping it continues to run for some time to come, and maybe we can gain an appreciation for TV news could be.