There is much, much more in-between our cuts here, including a storyline involving a hacking scandal that mirrors Rupert Murdoch and Newscorp’s, but at the core of the recent Season 1 finale of HBO’s “must-see” Aaron Sorkin series The Newsroom, was the nationwide Republican voter suppression effort.
Specifically, the finale centers around the GOP-enacted polling place Photo ID restriction laws that may serve to keep tens of thousands, including 96-year old Tennessee resident Dorothy Cooper (who The BRAD BLOG reported on last year) from being able to cast her vote this year, even after she’s been legally voting there for 75 years without a problem — even during the Jim Crow era in the South.
Is Sorkin reading The BRAD BLOG? Among other evidence throughout the season that suggests as much, one character, as you’ll hear in the clip below, charges, as we often have, that this issue deserves much greater prominence in the corporate mainstream media. In regard Cooper and the spate of Republican voter suppression laws that may well determine the outcome of this year’s elections, the character demands to know: “I wanna know why I don’t see it on the news?!…Why isn’t this the first story on the news every night?!”…
(For much more of the news monologue by Will Macavoy (Jeff Daniels) on Republicans and the Tea Party in this particular episode, see this version which has received almost 2 million views on YouTube, and includes his entire speech, though it lacks the key hospital scene seen above.)
When we first wrote about The Newsroom in July after its premiere, we suggested that the show was worth subscribing to HBO for, all on its own. While it continues to be flawed in some respects — most notably in some of its soap opera-ish elements, and some of the casting — it is still absolutely must-see TV in our opinion.
The show’s focus on what it might look like if a mainstream corporate media outlet actually decided to focus on covering the actual news that the nation needs to become a more informed electorate — exposing the many Breitbartian scams of Fox “News” and today’s GOP and the Koch Brothers and their astroturf Tea Party along the way, using real breaking news events and footage along the way — could well, as we wrote at the time, “change the way actual news is reported in this nation.” There is even evidence, perhaps, that it may have even already done so, to an extent.
Though the first season is now over, the show has been renewed for Season 2. In the meantime, all of the episodes are available to HBO subscribers via On Demand and HBO GO, so it’s still well worth jumping into from the start (the first episode is available to all here), before the next season begins.
If you have Time Warner I know you can pro-rate the number of days you sign up for HBO, at about 80 cents a day. I subscribed the day Game Change came out, unsubscribed the following day, and it cost me less than a cup of coffee (it was so worth it). I am looking for a free weekend to marathon The Newsroom.. Damn summer and all of the outdoor fun!
For me The Newsroom is in a part a reaffirmation of the importance of the stories we tell. Maybe it’s just coincidence but it seems that shortly after this show started we’ve seen an increasing assertiveness from Soledad O’Brien and Chris Matthews. The Ben Swann piece in a recent Bradblog post is straight out of The Newsroom.
All of a sudden a shift in perception feels possible. That perhaps actual journalism doesn’t have to be relegated to an honored place in the past. Maybe it and a rebirth of our values are possible right here and now.
It is a great series.
Well, they’re still getting it wrong. It’s not “voter ID” laws that are the problem. We have “voter ID” in every state.
It’s polling place Photo ID restrictions!
And, of course, they cited 84 instances of “voter fraud” but there have been no more than ten (10) cases of in-person impersonation — the only type of voter fraud that can be prevented by polling place Photo ID laws — out of more than 250 million votes cast since 2000.
Great that they’re covering this, but language and accuracy matters.
Fake news has been better than network news for many years.
I’m with David L. I think the show calling out the major networks and cable news was partly responsible, if not mostly, for making them call out Rmoney and Lyin’ Ryan for their lies even before the RNC last week.
Cenk Uygur and Lawrence O’Donnell were the first mainstream TV media types I saw who correctly used the terms “lie, liar, lying” weeks before Rmoney even picked Ryan. They did so without fear of reprisal because they had “facts” to report. It has made it easier for journalist (or made them feel guilty) to do real journalism and report facts.
Carrying on a great and growing tradition from Hacking Democracy and Recount to The Newsroom and beyond. HBO is there for us we need to support them too. They are so worth it. 😀 Rob C. C.
Yeah I just noticed the 8/15 posting where Brad posits what a lot of us recognized at the time … the irony of life imitating art when Soledad went all “Newsroom” on Sununu coming within a week after the episode where Will McAvoy repeatedly calls out guests for lying on his show. She’s also been on an incredible roll ever since. It seems like every other day now that we’re seeing a steady stream of fireworks from her calling out a new guest for trying to pass off bullshit. And as Cenk has pointed out, she’s also been an equal opportunity punisher going after Democrats too. But it’s true that Republican lies are far more frequent and egregious. There’s really no equivalence.
If Newsroom was in fact the inspiration behind Soledad putting on a clinic for the men in the industry on how it’s done, and it looks like it very well might have been, then it’s already exceeded what I thought it could accomplish. As self obsessed as the news industry is, a lot of people in that industry and especially the cable and network news personalities do seem to watch the show rather religiously.
While I think it’s extraordinary in confronting these important issues I’m not a big fan of it stylistically. There’s a certain strain of ridiculous melodrama that has it coming across as a fluffy sitcom instead of the type of “power entertainment” series we’ve come to expect from HBO. Maybe it’s just the Sorkin style but I don’t particularly care for it.
Anyway, my understanding is that Sorkin writes the episodes himself but outsources the research to his writing team so it very well could be that one of them used bradblog as a resource. But then again, he did fire all the writers except his ex-gf and speculation is that he’s looking to assemble a team of rivals that include writers that will argue for the airing of conservative issues to make Will a more “credible” republican. So this show could very well be in freefall.
In an “ask and you shall receive” kind of way, I just found my weekend to marathon the Newsroom. I am sick, aches and chills, but still lucid enough to enjoy some entertainment. I ordered HBO, watched 4 episodes, and was ecstatic. What a great show, it is what I pray for: bring back the actual fourth estate!
I’m from Wisconsin, and our largest newspaper, the Journal Sentinel, is so in the tank for Walker, Paul Ryan. Don’t even get me started on our local news shows, which are always giving Walker face time, with a last minute toss-out that “Democrats are angry”.
So, I’m wallowing in Newsroom heaven, and On-Demand services suddenly stop in my area. I was just starting the episode about the Egypt uprising, and the beginning of the Wisconsin protests and it quit on me!
Anyway, if this series can shame some journalists to start speaking to truth, than I couldn’t be happier. Thanks Brad for promoting this.