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| HBO's The Newsroom is an homage to everything that's wrong with TV news | |
| (4 days later) | |
| You could be forgiven for thinking that journalists hate The Newsroom because we are unbearable, self-centered nitpickers who think the show doesn't tell our story. | You could be forgiven for thinking that journalists hate The Newsroom because we are unbearable, self-centered nitpickers who think the show doesn't tell our story. |
| But that's not why I hate The Newsroom. | But that's not why I hate The Newsroom. |
| You'd be right to theorize that we hate The Newsroom because: • it is filled with sanctimonious showoff soliloquies by its creator, Aaron Sorkin • It exploits headlines with hindsight instead of insight, though at least that gives the audience the foresight to dread what's coming (says The Onion: "Nation hoping 'The Newsroom' ends before Trayvon Martin storyline") • It portrays women as ego-deprived, simpering, clumsy, man-dependent fools who are afraid to display their own intelligence and don't know how email works • It portrays men as ego-sated, sexist, horny, loser oafs • It – or rather, Sorkin – hates the Internet, the domain of "the pajama people" • It forces its actors to talk faster than a New Yorker on a case of Red Bull and, worse, has them finish each others' sentences, which would make a real New Yorker just slap them. | You'd be right to theorize that we hate The Newsroom because: • it is filled with sanctimonious showoff soliloquies by its creator, Aaron Sorkin • It exploits headlines with hindsight instead of insight, though at least that gives the audience the foresight to dread what's coming (says The Onion: "Nation hoping 'The Newsroom' ends before Trayvon Martin storyline") • It portrays women as ego-deprived, simpering, clumsy, man-dependent fools who are afraid to display their own intelligence and don't know how email works • It portrays men as ego-sated, sexist, horny, loser oafs • It – or rather, Sorkin – hates the Internet, the domain of "the pajama people" • It forces its actors to talk faster than a New Yorker on a case of Red Bull and, worse, has them finish each others' sentences, which would make a real New Yorker just slap them. |
| Each of those is a legitimate reason to hate The Newsroom, but it's not why I do. I hate it because it attempts to glue a patina of supposed respectability, thoughtfulness, intelligence, professionalism, care, and concern onto television news when the truth is that television news is just crap. | Each of those is a legitimate reason to hate The Newsroom, but it's not why I do. I hate it because it attempts to glue a patina of supposed respectability, thoughtfulness, intelligence, professionalism, care, and concern onto television news when the truth is that television news is just crap. |
| I can list many reasons to disapprove of TV news – not just local television news in America and cable news, each awful for its own reasons, but also national network news. I despair over the form and despise the industry for refusing to question and update its stale conventions and inane orthodoxies even as newspapers, magazines, and other old media desperately try to reinvent themselves for a new digital reality. | I can list many reasons to disapprove of TV news – not just local television news in America and cable news, each awful for its own reasons, but also national network news. I despair over the form and despise the industry for refusing to question and update its stale conventions and inane orthodoxies even as newspapers, magazines, and other old media desperately try to reinvent themselves for a new digital reality. |
| Not television. It still relies on, for example, the stand-up: | Not television. It still relies on, for example, the stand-up: |
| Hi, I'm a reporter talking to you in front of a site where no news has occurred for at least 12 hours but even so I am using ever-more-precious journalistic resource driving here with a crew and a satellite truck to try to convince you that I am expert in what happened here even though I didn't see it and there's no one left here to question and anyway I only read about it on my phone just as you can without me. | Hi, I'm a reporter talking to you in front of a site where no news has occurred for at least 12 hours but even so I am using ever-more-precious journalistic resource driving here with a crew and a satellite truck to try to convince you that I am expert in what happened here even though I didn't see it and there's no one left here to question and anyway I only read about it on my phone just as you can without me. |
TV news relies on the obvious and the repetitive. I just watched a network news show in the US tell us that sitting in a car on a hot day can get even hotter. That would be stupid once. It is insulting the tenth time. It is unbearable the hundredth time. | TV news relies on the obvious and the repetitive. I just watched a network news show in the US tell us that sitting in a car on a hot day can get even hotter. That would be stupid once. It is insulting the tenth time. It is unbearable the hundredth time. |
| Television news relies on conflict. Even BBC News depends on the jousting challenge. Far worse, CNN is about to resurrect the show Jon Stewart killed, the egregiously argumentative Crossfire (this is what happens when Stewart is allowed to take a summer off). | Television news relies on conflict. Even BBC News depends on the jousting challenge. Far worse, CNN is about to resurrect the show Jon Stewart killed, the egregiously argumentative Crossfire (this is what happens when Stewart is allowed to take a summer off). |
| TV news relies on adrenalin, on convincing us that long-since-broken news is still breaking. Sorkin romanticizes the control-room rush of making deadlines that no longer matter now that news can be a constant flow online. | TV news relies on adrenalin, on convincing us that long-since-broken news is still breaking. Sorkin romanticizes the control-room rush of making deadlines that no longer matter now that news can be a constant flow online. |
| Television news also relies on officialdom. Sunday morning in America is a propagandafest with various news "talk shows". Watch this grilling of a US State Department mouthpiece regarding Edward Snowden by real reporters and tell me that you've ever seen anything like this on TV news. | Television news also relies on officialdom. Sunday morning in America is a propagandafest with various news "talk shows". Watch this grilling of a US State Department mouthpiece regarding Edward Snowden by real reporters and tell me that you've ever seen anything like this on TV news. |
| So what do I expect of The Newsroom? Ridicule would be a start. It could lampoon TV news and all its habits and idiocies, its pretense and pomposity. But then, Jon Stewart already does that better than Sorkin could ever do. | So what do I expect of The Newsroom? Ridicule would be a start. It could lampoon TV news and all its habits and idiocies, its pretense and pomposity. But then, Jon Stewart already does that better than Sorkin could ever do. |
| Sorkin doesn't have Stewart's light touch. When he attacks, the Internet and Facebook in The Social Network, he demonizes. When he idolizes on The West Wing, he elegizes. | Sorkin doesn't have Stewart's light touch. When he attacks, the Internet and Facebook in The Social Network, he demonizes. When he idolizes on The West Wing, he elegizes. |
| Unfortunately he gives cable news the West Wing treatment. On The Newsroom Sorkin's characters act mournful and mopey that they can't fix their sex lives or the world when what they should be fixing is their industry. And in truth, all they really do is read the news off TelePrompTers and get paid way too much to do so. They don't earn their ennui. | Unfortunately he gives cable news the West Wing treatment. On The Newsroom Sorkin's characters act mournful and mopey that they can't fix their sex lives or the world when what they should be fixing is their industry. And in truth, all they really do is read the news off TelePrompTers and get paid way too much to do so. They don't earn their ennui. |
| Sorkin could reinvent TV news. He could present us with a vision of what it could be. TV news could be good at explaining complex issues and narratives. It could be good at visualizing complex data. It could be good at telling us what we should know rather than what we already know. It could be good at giving us the point of view of witnesses -- real witnesses who now carry their own camera trucks in their pockets. It could be good at convening us to action. | Sorkin could reinvent TV news. He could present us with a vision of what it could be. TV news could be good at explaining complex issues and narratives. It could be good at visualizing complex data. It could be good at telling us what we should know rather than what we already know. It could be good at giving us the point of view of witnesses -- real witnesses who now carry their own camera trucks in their pockets. It could be good at convening us to action. |
| But TV news isn't any of that that and neither is Sorkin's moody rendition of it in the show within his show. He merely takes TV news as it is and adds a layer of adolescent emotion and obnoxious rhetoric to it. That's why I hate The Newsroom. | But TV news isn't any of that that and neither is Sorkin's moody rendition of it in the show within his show. He merely takes TV news as it is and adds a layer of adolescent emotion and obnoxious rhetoric to it. That's why I hate The Newsroom. |
| But, like a tawdry trial on cable television, I can't stop watching – or tweeting about it. Well, sort of: | But, like a tawdry trial on cable television, I can't stop watching – or tweeting about it. Well, sort of: |
| Sorry I stopped tweeting #newsroom last night. It put me to sleep. A sound sleep at that. | Sorry I stopped tweeting #newsroom last night. It put me to sleep. A sound sleep at that. |
| — Jeff Jarvis (@jeffjarvis) July 15, 2013 | — Jeff Jarvis (@jeffjarvis) July 15, 2013 |