“The Newsroom” is, of course, an aesthetic train wreck (Olivia Munn as a Ph.D. in Economics is particularly risible), but most troubling about the show are its naïve presuppositions: that once upon a time, there was something called “the news,” a profession whose calling was answered by noble citizens who dutifully and faithfully reported only the truth, divorced from partisan politics. All this come in contrast to the news networks of today; specifically, in contrast to Roger Ailes’ factually dissembling (though immensely popular) Fox News network.
“Fair and Balanced” is Fox News’ cri de coeur, taken at face value by its loyal viewers, and correctly seen as a bit of Orwellian doublespeak by everyone else. Reasonable people understand that there are not two sides to every story (e.g., climate change, evolution), and therefore every story does not need “equal time”. With “The Newsroom”, Sorkin is deliberately harking back to a supposed Golden Age of television news as a corrective to what Ailes us, as it were.
But the foundation underlying “The Newsroom” demonstrates that myth-making is not exclusively the preoccupation of conservatives and Tea Baggers, though Saint Ronald Reagan remains an unparalleled example of absurdist hagiography. Aaron Sorkin’s myth-making is more subtle (in keeping with the tastes of establishment liberalism), though no less disingenuous, and is therefore more pernicious.
If today’s televised newscast is conspicuous for its “potato/po-tah-to” dynamic and its corporate fealty—NBC is owned by General Electric, ABC by Disney, CNN by Time-Warner, Fox by NewsCorp, and so on—then the newscasts of yesteryear was equally conspicuous for their deference to authority. Sorkin is right in saying in the old days, there weren’t two sides to every story, there was just the news. Left unsaid is that “the news” was one side of the story—the government’s side.
Thursday 9 August 2012
Not Necessarily ‘The Newsroom’ ☀
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Kill your television.
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Why does this parenthetical exist? What about Olivia Munn makes her “particularly risible” as a Ph.D. in Economics? Is...
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jonprins said:
Edward R. Murrow was a government-side talking head?
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