Day 238: My own version of liberal masochism = Watch The Newsroom in 2017

Lee Ngo
Lee Ngo
Aug 27, 2017 · 3 min read

I don’t know why I’m doing this to myself again, but I decided to watch the first few episodes of The Newsroom recently. For the completely uninitiated, The Newsroom is a relatively short-lived series on HBO that features Atlantic Cable News (ACN), a fictional cable news network that decides to report the news with the utmost journalistic integrity, independent of the influences of ratings, corporate interests, or entertainment value.

Yep. It’s like a fantasy show about dragons and ice zombies … except not really … at all.

Why do I love watching it

I think I’ve gone through the entire series of 26 episodes at least three times. Sure, it’s full of the same formulas that Aaron Sorkin applies in all of his works, especially while writing for television. Seth Meyers parodied that well in this bit here.

Much like Sorkin’s other juggernaut TV show The West Wing, The Newsroom is wonderfully quotable. The first ten minutes alone, described by Sorkin as a “drum solo” of a monologue for Will McAvoy and delivered like a pro by Jeff Daniels, is packed with fun information from end to end, including the most ironically patriotic line ever spoken.

(The only imperfection in this speech: Instead of “It sure USED TO be,” Will McAvoy should have said, “it sure COULD be.” He speaks nostalgically about an America that could only have been great for people like him.)

Like the liberal sucker that I am, I watch this show to feel smart, informed, and pandered. There aren’t many shows for people like us who take the extra effort to learn about our world, and this show says “thanks for doing your homework, now let’s take it up a notch.”

Alas, in this political era, I watch this show and fight back tears.

Why this show is almost unwatchable now

In its first season, the show emphasized an alarming trend in 2010 with the emergence of the Tea Party and the entire Republican party shifting to the right to compensate for the rising tide. With Will finally “coming out” as a Republican, the show seemed to take a step further to assert that it was doing what it could to push back the trend and bring parties back to the center.

Instead, well… you know the rest. It’s like the legacies of Will McAvoy, Mackenzie McHale, and Charlie Skinner were wiped clean from the hypothetical liberal consciousness, and things are now so bad that established news outlets are summarily dismissed or even blocked entirely from reporting.

Could you imagine what ACN would do in the Donald Trump era? Part of me thinks it would be a constant sideshow…

As if our current reality is any different.


What do you think? Would you want The Newsroom to come back in some fashion, to provide us a glimmer of hope in these dark times? Sound off.

— Lee

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Lee Ngo

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Lee Ngo

Write with intention. Think with compassion.

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