Newsroom Service

I thought about doing this last year but to be honest my Mondays are usually busy as hell and my Sunday nights post-11pm are for, well, sleeping. Yes, I'm old. What I'd like to do if at all possible, though, is throw together a couple of quick notes every Monday on the previous night's episode of The Newsroom just from a news production perspective, that is what I think the episode got right, what I found interesting, what I liked, didn't like, and so on. I'm not going to recap the whole show, so if you haven't seen it then you may as well not even bother reading this; it won't make much sense to you.

Last night's episode was called "The Genoa Tip," so here we go.

1. While the show's format of looking back on recent events and injecting the cast -- not to mention Sorkin's pious hindsight -- into it is still really annoying, I liked the dogged pursuit of the Troy Davis story by Don Keefer. I think the Keefer character has been neutered a bit since the show's pilot, but he's still the closest thing on the "News Night" production team to resemble a real TV news producer. His desperation in wanting to save Troy Davis is a nice little admission of two very sincere characteristics in a veteran TV journalist. The first is that as a TV news producer you cover so much crap that after a while you long to be able to do even one thing that you know for a fact is truly important and that has a direct positive effect on someone's life; in other words, kind of like Clarice in The Silence of the Lambs, you feel like if you can save just one, it will have been worth it. Second, you latch onto a personal story that you have unshakable faith in because you want to truly believe that what you do matters, that you can make a difference, and to fight off the demons constantly sitting on your shoulder telling you that you're nothing more than a vulture picking at the remains of people whose lives have been torn apart in one way or another. Stories where it's you identifying with one person who's the victim of some kind of injustice is often where you find your idealism and humanity again.

2. You know, a hell of a lot's been said about how terribly Sorkin writes women, particularly on this show -- how he turns what should be strong, professional female journalists into simpering teenage girls obsessed with boys and shoes and who's dating whom. I always thought that while the show has certainly had its very sexist moments, it's also created some of the strongest, no-nonsense female characters -- dear God, Leona Lansing -- on television. But, yeah, last night's painful pilgrimage by Sloane and Maggie to a laundry room in Queens to basically battle an idiot who writes Sex and the City fan fiction was unforgivable. I get that it's a reality that some of the smartest women in one of the most intellectual cities on earth can still be reduced to debating whether they're Carrie or Samantha if you get enough of them together over drinks, but -- come on.

3. Something needs to be made clear about how journalists think and the way they go about their jobs. I've said it before but it bears repeating over and over: Aside from the shops where the political slant is clearly dictated and well-known -- Fox, segments of MSNBC, etc. -- there really is no liberal or conservative bias in mainstream media. While journalists can be a cynical bunch and it's expected that they'll often not consider a big story a big story until there's actual proof there's something there -- see last night's scene in which the news meeting made fun of Neal's obsession with Occupy Wall Street -- there's really only one thing they're biased toward: conflict. If you're a decent journalist, you'll instinctively and entirely check your politics and personal feelings at the door the second you get a tip on a great story that contradicts them completely. To wit: I'm someone who would at the very least trust my government not to use Sarin gas on civilians and, like Mac last night, I'd never buy such a story until I got 100% confirmation. That said, the second they took that phone call at the end of the show, I found myself immediately willing to throw whatever benefit of the doubt I might be willing to give our country completely under the bus in an effort to pursue the tip. That's how it works. And that's one of the reasons I'm often preaching that as a journalist you need to constantly be testing your theories -- it's to prevent that sudden ferocious instinct that says you've got something huge and want to use it to tear down everything from getting the best of you. It's to prevent the kind of disaster that's obviously going to happen to the "News Night" team.

4. Oh, and while the laundromat scene was stupid, man, Lisa just quietly eviscerating Maggie was pretty excellent.

Talking Points

I had the chance to appear on HuffPost Live a couple of hours ago as part of a segment they did on The Newsroom.

For those of you who missed it because you have real things to do with your day, here it is.

Sorkin State of Affairs

Sure, I watch HBO's The Newsroom. I do this because, as someone who's spent a good portion of his life in the news business, I'm a vain and shallow creature who desperately seeks the validation of strangers, loves talking and hearing about himself and especially enjoys anything that paints the profession he chose years ago in any light other than thoroughly, hostilely negative.

While the new season of the show does seem to prove that Sorkin at least took a little of the relentless criticism he received last year to heart, The Newsroom is still The Newsroom.

And maybe that's why I enjoy this so much.

The Onion: Nation Hoping 'The Newsroom' Ends Before Trayvon Martin Storyline/7.15.13

Reality TV

Today's column for the Daily Banter expands on something I wrote a while back regarding The Newsroom. The question: Is there one American TV news organization that could actually pull off the kind of broadcast Sorkin dreams of in his HBO series?

Here's an excerpt:

"I’ve been giving the whole 'Newsroom' impact thing some thought again after this week’s season finale of the show, which featured upper-management being forced to take the leash off Will McAvoy, the fictional anchor of News Night, and his staff. The result of that plot point led to one of the best-articulated summations of our current political crisis that I’ve ever seen expressed in pop culture or, really, anywhere. But something else got me thinking about the potential for the kind of supremely ethical news broadcast that this country has been sorely missing: CNN’s very serious recent ratings slide."

Read the Rest Here

Changing Channels

My latest piece for the Daily Banter is up and it asks a question that will seem a little surprising given my initial take on this subject: Can The Newsroom actually change television news for the better?

Here's the opening shot:

"A few weeks back I banged out a column for this site that took issue with what I called the misguided, 'pipe-dreamy idealism' of Aaron Sorkin’s new HBO show, 'The Newsroom.' After watching only the season premiere I didn’t necessarily claim to know whether the show would eventually wind up being genuinely good TV, but I did think that it had all the necessary ingredients to be cloying and obnoxious as hell. From Sorkin’s at times insufferably overbearing sanctimony, to characters I didn’t really care much about, to, yes, a lack of foundation in anything approaching the real world when it came to how the show portrayed the world of television news, I just wasn’t sure it would keep my attention for long let alone have the kind of impact it was obvious Sorkin was hoping it would on the industry I’d devoted almost two decades of my life to. In that original piece, I said that TV newspeople on the whole simply aren’t idealistic enough these days to be affected by anything that tries so blatantly to both lecture them and appeal to their sense of dignity..."

Read the Rest Here

Tuesday Is Recycling Day

It's been a while since I've done one of these under the old official name of the franchise, but given the recent influx of new readers I wanted to start bringing this feature back to DXM. A couple of nights ago, Aaron Sorkin's HBO show The Newsroom began with a well-written and impassioned mea culpa delivered on-air by the show's fictional news anchor, Will McAvoy. The soliloquy was everything you'd expect out of Sorkin; specifically it presented an important subject, in this case the American news media, not how it is but how intelligent people wish it would be.

Basically, McAvoy issued an "apology" to his audience for his complicity in bringing crap into its collective living room every night and for willingly contributing to the "dumbing down" of the American electorate. He copped to his own failures and promised to try to do better. It immediately reminded me of something I wrote for this site way back in February of 2007 in which I apologized for the TV news media's coverage of the death of Anna Nicole Smith. Admittedly, I was "in the closet" at the time -- working for CNN without divulging it here -- and I continued to be a part of the problem until being unceremoniously shown the door a year later. With that in mind, I can't get on too high a horse.

But what McAvoy alluded to during his fictional statement of purpose was correct in the real world: There are literally thousands of smart, dedicated, hard-working journalists in the news media who never signed up to cover garbage; who don't want to inflate every minor controversy or random event to the point where it explodes across the airwaves and pages day after day and night after night; who know that the truth is what journalists strive for and that it and it alone represents fairness, as opposed to some phony concept of forced objectivity; who understand that adding to the noise in the echo chamber in the name of the almighty ratings dollar demeans them and their chosen profession.

There are those who still remind us never to forget 9/11, as if such a thing were possible. I would, however, also remind everyone who takes an interest in being an informed populace that in the weeks just prior to 9/11 the mainstream news media as a whole was almost singularly fixated on trying to terrify every man, woman and child in this country into believing that he or she was about to be eaten by a shark.

And great white sharks have now been spotted off Cape Cod and the West Coast.

"And Now an Apology in the Form of an Open Letter To America" (Originally Published, 2.15.07)

Dear American Public,

I have no excuse. I have no defense.

I am a member of the American news media and have been for some time. This means that on more than one occasion I have -- willingly or unwillingly -- foisted upon you the trite, the inane and the monumentally ridiculous, and done so under the auspices of my supposed right to inform and educate you as to important events which affect your lives. I have been party to the beaming into your living room of seemingly endless video loops of JonBenet Ramsey dressed as a five-year-old prostitute. I have encouraged various interchangable Ken-and-Barbiesque meat-puppets, pompous and breathless, to sincerely attempt to convince you of the hidden threat lurking in your underwear drawer. I have conspired to make you believe that you were, at any given moment, in danger of being eaten by a shark. I have actually written the words "every parent's nightmare" -- more than once, in fact. I have dispatched correspondents to Aruba in search of Natalee Holloway. I have marveled at the ingenuity behind using an episode of Dateline NBC to promote The Apprentice. I've been good friends with Rick Sanchez for sixteen years.

In short, I have betrayed you. I have betrayed your trust.

I have let you down.

Yet I've never felt compelled to humbly ask for any sort of forgiveness for my offenses. I have never felt true shame, both for myself and my chosen profession. Until now.

I'm sorry for the coverage of the death of Anna Nicole Smith.

I'm sorry that so many supposedly venerable news organizations have elevated the all-but-inevitable self-destruction of a B-list former-stripper, Playmate, hack actress, gold-digger, tabloid queen, and all-around piece of human flotsam to the lofty heights of near-Shakespearian mythology. I'm sorry that we have treated an absolutely meaningless event as if it were somehow nothing short of a cultural earthquake, sure to send reverberations and tremors throughout society until they shake the very foundation -- the very soul -- of every man, woman and child in America. I'm sorry that we have devoted hour after hour to discussing and debating such asinine subjects as the paternity of this horrid woman's baby, even being willing to proclaim, with a straight face, that its father might be the husband of Zsa Zsa Gabor. I'm sorry that we've allowed Wolf Blitzer and Diane Sawyer to look no better than Pat O'Brien and Maria Menounos. I am truly sorry that we have, even for a moment, lent a shred of credibility to the opinions of Nancy Grace.

During the past week, those charged with the awesome responsibility of relaying to you the global, cultural, political, economic and medical news which you rightly expect and demand from us, have instead willingly allowed ourselves to be taken hostage by every permutation of loathsome, opportunistic degenerate -- each claiming to be able to add yet another spoonful of pabulum to the pot we're all too happy to stir. During the past week, hundreds of American soldiers and innocent civilians have been killed in Iraq -- as our focus shifted to one minor celebrity who died just off the Florida Turnpike.

We have failed you.

We have failed ourselves.

The only possible consolation is that many of us are well aware of our own ethical bankruptcy in the continued pursuit of this absurdity. I could explain at length my own feelings in the matter, but better I allow an anonymous colleague of mine to be the eloquent, impassioned and utterly frustrated voice for the thousands currently toiling away on this story at otherwise-reputable news operations across the country:

"I'm sorry, but I did not spend tens of thousands of dollars in school to cover this bullshit. She's a celebrity for fucking the unfuckable; that's not an accomplishment. I actually announced to the newsroom this morning that I didn't go to journalism school to cover a two-bit Texas whore and that, if this was the kind of news we were covering, I could use my diploma for toilet paper. It's unbelievable. BREAKING NEWS??? I'm really sorry that the drug addict OD-ed, but that's what happens when you're an overweight drug addict."

Couldn't have said it better myself.

With Contrition,

Chez

Unreality Show

My latest piece for the Daily Banter is now up -- it deals with Aaron Sorkin's new HBO series, The Newsroom. The show has many of the very good hallmarks of a Sorkin production, as well as more than the usual number of very bad ones. The important thing, though, is that it tries to bring West Wing-style nobility and heroism to the world of modern TV news -- and given what we all know about TV news these days, that's a pretty comical conceit that requires a hell of a suspension of disbelief. What the NBC suits are now doing to Ann Curry proves it.

Here's the opening shot:

"Like just about anybody who’s spent a good portion of his or her career in the TV news industry, I watched Aaron Sorkin’s new show, 'The Newsroom,' on HBO a couple of nights ago. I did this because, like anybody who’s spent a good portion of his or her career in the TV news industry, I desperately seek the validation of strangers, love talking and hearing about myself and especially enjoy anything that paints the profession I chose years ago in a light other than thoroughly, hostilely negative."

Read the Rest Here

Once You're Done with the Piece, a Few Extra Thoughts on The Newsroom, in No Particular Order (Beware of Spoilers)

1. One complaint I can tell I'm going to have with it is one I always have when Sorkin writes a show with any sort of "political" content: since, as I said, every character acts as some sort of surrogate for Sorkin himself and exists mainly to preach the gospel as Sorkin sees it, they'll all be varying degrees of liberal. This isn't necessarily a problem when there are characters on-screen who openly display progressive political tendencies, but it'll be noticeable when, say, Will McAvoy claims to be a Republican. In Sorkin's world, liberalism is the only political opinion espoused openly and Republican "conservatism" is centrist and reasonable. In other words, Sorkin paints Republicans not as they are these days but how he, as someone who's liberal, believes they should be.

2. I have to imagine that at least a couple of the characters on the show are based on real people within the TV news industry -- e.g. McAvoy's personality lines up almost perfectly with that of Keith Olbermann except for the fact that McAvoy's not clinically insane -- and with that in mind I'm almost positive I know who Don Keefer, the youthful, brash, arrogant, sort of asshole-ish former EP of News Night, is supposed to be. While he certainly has the kind of attitude and view of himself that grows up out of the carpeting in most television newsrooms, there's one very well-known figure in the business who mirrors his personality and mannerisms almost flawlessly. He's a former high-powered executive producer in cable news who's now very high up the network food chain. Good guy, overall -- but especially years ago? Yeah, that was him.

3. I feel sorry for Alison Pill. I really hope her character develops into something better than it is now. That said, there actually are thousands upon thousands of kids just like "Maggie" toiling away thanklessly in TV newsrooms these days. Some are talented as hell, some are in way over their heads, but they do exist. And I very much appreciated the moment when McAvoy looked her in the face and simply acknowledged her by saying her name. I remember the first time that sort of thing happened to me, two decades ago, and the feeling of validation is something you hold onto for a very long time.

4. Loved it when Mac playfully put her foot down and let McAvoy know who's really in control while the show's on the air. The relationship between the producer or EP and the talent is always one of trust, with each side having to rely on the other and know that he or she has the best interest of the show and the other person at heart. That kind of trust is integral for the daily high-wire act that is a TV news show -- whether it's at the local or national level. But I'll never forget one of the earliest stories from my time coming up in local news. I had a story break in the middle of a show and attempted to get one of my anchors to read it live; for whatever reason, he refused to, wanting instead to wait on it a few minutes. When I tried to get his co-anchor to do it, she also refused as a show of solidarity with the guy sitting next to her on the set. I was maybe 22 years old, it was one of my first times out and I was admittedly letting them manhandle me because I was afraid of them, their popularity and their authority. So I picked up the phone and called downstairs to my EP. Her response: "I don't want to see either of them for the next two blocks. Kill any face-time they have." And so I did. We wiped between stories; went right into full reporter packages; even killed tosses to weather, instead coming right up on the segment without an intro. My EP's advice to me when I came down after the show? "They need to know at all times that you are in charge and if they forget, remind them." There's a reason it's called the control room.

5. The news consultant on the show is Nancy Bauer Gonzales, former long-time news director in Los Angeles and a truly terrific lady. She's the one who hired me at KNBC in 2000 and I actually had dinner with her and some old friends from that era a couple of weeks ago. Despite the fact that by the end of my tenure at KNBC I was hiding a nasty little drug habit, Bauer is kind enough to still look upon me pretty fondly and I couldn't be more proud of that given that I respect her very much. She's a great choice when it comes to advising on the technical aspects of working in a newsroom and covering breaking stories.

6. On that note, while it's true that a cable news outlet would have hundreds more people than just those within one small room working a big story -- even as proprietary and competitive as the individual shows can often be -- it was thrilling to watch the "breaking story" unfold in the last quarter of the show. It made me miss it. Covering breaking news is, admittedly, a thrill you never quite get out of your system.

Adding: This bit of brilliance...