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The Newsroom
2012 · TV series · 60 min episodes · 3 seasons
Created by Aaron Sorkin
A behind-the-scenes look at the people who make a nightly cable-news program. Focusing on a network anchor, his new executive producer, the newsroom staff and their boss, the series tracks their quixotic mission to do the news well in the face of corporate and commercial obstacles-not to mention their own personal entanglements.
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33 comments on Hacker News
i dont have.. and nobody talks about it.. in china.
this remind me one of the ep of the TV show <newsroom> when they found so many evidence of a massacre using chemical weapons and broadcast it.. and then found out its all fake.
What's wrong with Season 2 of The Newsroom?
This was featured in the early episodes of HBO Newsroom.
Newsroom spoilers ahead!
> The diatribe that statement is treated by the visual language of the scene like a truth bomb, which is why it is so odd because Jeff Daniels’ character is not merely wrong, but (as I intend to show) laughably so
The scene in question is literally the first scene in the first episode of the show. Jeff Daniels' character is disillusioned, sold out to advertisers, lacking integrity, and alone. His character arc, over the entire season, is about him getting over the attitude shown in the clip.
That episode is from November 27, 1994. That Newsroom episode aired July 28, 2013. Less Simpsons parodying Newsroom and more them predicting the future [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bart_to_the_Future
> Why aren't Apple's shows (and movies?) appealing to you?
What actual content do they have?
I've seen a Beastie boys doc, Ted Lasso and The morning show * edited from Newsroom when my error was pointed out.
That's a month's worth of content. What else do they have to justify continuing a subscription?
Disney has more content with just the Simpson's episodes alone. Add on top of that the entire Marvel catalog, the entire Starwars Catalog and the entire Pixar catalog.
I heard about Colvin in an episode of The Newsroom during a typically engaging Sorkin-penned monologue: "March 2nd, 1955. A young black woman is arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a white man in Alabama. Civil Rights leaders in the ACLU rush to her side. And she will be a symbol of the struggle against segregation. Her name is Claudette Colvin and she is 15 years old. She's also unmarried and pregnant. Civil rights leaders in the ACLU decide that Colvin is not the best foot forward and stand-down. 8 months later Rosa Parks happens, but during that 8 months a brilliant and charismatic young minister gets the attention of the community and is chosen to lead the bus boycotts. If Claudette Colvin doesn't get pregnant, if they'd gone in the spring instead of 8 months later, Martin Luther King is a preacher you've never heard of in Montgomery."
There's a line in the TV show "The Newsroom," after a 4-star General speaks anonymously on air about alleged chemical weapons usage, that "Generals don't have dumb friends." Two minutes of cross-checking military records will be enough to figure out who this guy is.
These days where everyone is emotionally high. Deliberately avoiding anything that reflects today's state of affairs: 1. Amazon: The Boys, The Feed, Upload, Catastrophe, The Widow, Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan, The Newsroom, Homecoming 2. NBC: Zoey's Playlist <--GREAT to unwind emotionally. 3. CDW: The 100 4. ABC: The 4400 5. Netflix: Mars (only 1 season, 2nd season looks and feels like current gov state of affairs whereby the 1st season was more Mars adventure)
So much crap going on, just trying to avoid anything that reflects today's idiot run gov/policy makers. But admittedly, slowly finding it hard to avoid since every show plot always seems to come full circle to why things gets F*d up in the first place. Netflix' Mars is a perfect example where 2nd season they brought in more gov/policy/corp injustice and made it unwatchable.
If you really need to get away...mentally, found Zoey's Playlist quite touching... like sobbed in every episode it was so emotionally releasing. I was forced watch bc my wife won the night's remote control.
Bottomline: repeating what I've said above, just avoid anything that has gov/policy/corruption/corp.
I agree with you that >40 years old dislike China more as they never benefitted from the China's economic take-off that happened after 1990.
But I think for regular Chinese, the younger they are, the more liberal their world views are. This is because the education they received are more westernized each year (You might be surprised). Younger Chinese are generally more proficient in English. And to learn English people have to expose themselves to original English materials. I still remember when I was learning English I got access to things like TED, Open courseware such as Harvard's Justice, shows like the Newsroom, movies like the 12 Angry Men. China's human right records today is not good, but it was much much worse 30 years ago. Back then rural Chinese would kill new born female babies, have no issue buying and selling women (here's a movie about the topic[1]) and toddlers. People from different provinces fought and discriminated each other. And those are not government sponsored, just people being poor and illiterate. Now average Chinese are more literate and many more attended higher education (there's no higher education during the culture revolution)[2]. To this end I need to thank Nixon and people doing business with China. The average Chinese has a better life and can think more rationally thanks to economic and educational improvements.
On the other hand, internet censorship has become more strict after 2010. People do find ways to access VPN, it's just they don't discuss sensitive topics on Chinese internet.
1. https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/blind_mountain_2007
2. http://uis.unesco.org/en/country/cn (notice the Tertiary education section)
My 3 minutes in Hardcore mode:
ok lets do ths. I have no idea what is happening or how long i can go without typing before all that i ahve typed before will be lost: I feel like im making way more mistakes than i usually do, which is weird because I usually dont have to look at what Im typing as much either. I dont know. I have basically nothing left to say. And i am scarted to lose this challenge. It seems only one minute is over so far. So we have some ways to go. Quite a while actually. Closing in on half, but not really if i look at it properly. This bprogress bar at the top is really stressing me out. I feel llike Keanu Reeves in Speed. Or Sandra Bullock. Or ... What this guys name again. The one from dumb and dumber... ah commonm you know this! Dennis Hopper is the bad guy. Ah... I cant believe I'm blanking on the name. He was in Newsroom, which was not quite as good as it was supposed to be. Actually quite a lot less -... goood? I guess. Well, anywaya. Araron Sorkin is kind of hit or miss if you think about it. For example Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip was ver y entertaining but the "high-stakes" scenarios they went for near the end of the season just didn't really work for a TV show setting. But overall I enjoyed it quite a lot I guess. Almost done!
We can't, only government can and they won't Meet/farming industry is quite big and employs a lot of people not to mention the industry lobbying is strong. Going against them is political suicide.
The problem of global warming is not a technical problem or a problem that is not solvable or daunting. It's a Human problem, a combination of greed, complacency, and the daunting task of making massive lifestyle and business change all across the world to come into agreement and work together and make massive compromise.
The chances of this happening is zero.
There will be changes, and people should be lauded for their effort, but its too little too late.
Reminds me of one of my favorite scene from "The Newsroom" TV Series. Maybe a bit too drammatic, but the gist is true. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyULP9rk-iM
You’re being downvoted for knowing factually correct information that happens to disprove some of the biases that’s HN posters hold, which is a shame. Downvotes aren’t supposed to be a consolation prize for having your inferior arguments lose.
As a reference point, season 3 of the tv show “The Newsroom” has a plot that centers around a new reporter who aids their source in collecting confidential documents from the US government, and every reporter in the newsroom immediately understands they’ve ‘solicited’ information and thus violated the espionage act. I sincerely doubt that this is a concept that a tv show writer can understand and effectively explain, yet would be opaque to a reporter.
As a minor note though, Wikileaks absolutely buried trump related documents and carefully timed the release of Clinton related dumps, which makes sense as Wikileaks had been reduced to a front for Russian intelligence by that time. But the emails they released were themselves authentic, and their veracity can be independently verified by the DKIM system they had enabled. Funnily enough, for all the sound and fury over the Clinton emails, the worst thing that they show is that Clinton received a debate in advance, just like Donald Trump did.
> GoT is a tentpole show with a rabid audience but it's not especially good (it's no The Wire). Deadwood and the Sopranos are from a different era of TV. Veep is great, but True Detective, True Blood, Boardwalk Empire, Enlightened, and The Newsroom would all be in the middle of the pack at Netflix.
As The Dude once said "Yeah, well, that's just, like, your opinion, man"
Objectively speaking, there isn't a single Netflix-original TV show rated over 9 on IMDB: https://www.justwatch.com/us/provider/netflix/tv-shows?rating_imdb=9
Compared to 7 titles on HBO: https://www.justwatch.com/us/provider/hbo-now/tv-shows?rating_imdb=9
But I think your point is that when we're talking about "The Wire" level production, others have caught up (AMC, FX, etc) and Netflix can simply license those titles. But, there's notable downsides to that (you have to wait, there's a significant cost to purchase, etc). Also, AMC, FX, etc have yet to establish a long-term credibility for consistently creating high quality content...until they do, HBO as the "premium offering" in light of others is still there.
At the end of the day we're talking about whether HBO's content can sustain the justification of paying $15/month. You just need rabid audiences for that to happen, not "one dude on the internet thinks The Wire is greatest thing ever created".
It reminds me of Genoa on newsroom. I won't spoil it for those who haven't seen the show, and highly recommend watching it if you haven't. You don't even have to be into the news or politics, I haven't watched the news or read a newspaper in over 5 years and I very much enjoyed the show.
"It sure used to be. We stood up for what was right. We fought for moral reasons. We passed laws, struck down laws - for moral reasons. We waged wars on poverty, not on poor people. We sacrificed, we cared about our neighbors, we put our money where our mouths were and we never beat our chest. We built great, big things, made ungodly technological advanced, explored the universe, cured diseases and we cultivated the world's greatest artists AND the world's greatest economy. We reached for the stars, acted like men. We aspired to intelligence, we didn't belittle it. It didn't make us feel inferior. We didn't identify ourselves by who we voted for in the last election and we didn't scare so easy. We were able to be all these things and do all these things because we were informed... by great men, men who were revered. First step in solving any problem is recognizing there is one. America is not the greatest country in the world anymore.”
― Aaron Sorkin, The Newsroom Script Episode 1
I don't buy the logic here, and I'm not sure David Sims does either; this strikes me as one of those headlines that was written by an editor, independently of the article.
For as much as anybody here likes HBO, the diagnosis Stankey (and, I think, Sims) has of it seems apt. HBO has a sterling reputation. But so what? Even today, they're no longer distinctively good; in fact, there are basic cable channels (AMC and FX) that have given HBO a run for its money.
Does anyone really believe that HBO is going to outcompete Netflix on original programming over the long run? Netflix introduces new programs like Google introduces new chat programs. It's not even an event for them. They just randomly drop them in the middle of the week, as if they don't have time even to promote them. Have you ever started an episode of Jessica Jones and had to wait 2 minutes for them to promo the next season of Mindhunter?
And that's just Netflix. Amazon will eventually figure TV out. Disney controls Hulu now. Apple is making a move into online video.
Meanwhile, after Game of Thrones ends, what's HBO got for tentpole series? Westworld? Besides the fact that it won't be airing again for 2-3 years, its renewal was not even a certainty.
I think Stankey is right. If HBO is going to be a factor long-term, a thing people pay substantial amounts of money to retain access to, it is going to have to look more like Netflix and less like a thing you pay your cable company extra for. HBO could afford lulls of a year or two taking flyers on just 1-2 new prestige series (Carnivale; Newsroom; Vinyl). But premium cable is over, everything is going to be disintermediated, and HBO will need to justify demanding $15/mo directly from people. I'm not sure it's worth that today.
Also the endless monologues where the speaker is just so correct that no one can dare question what they are saying and the target of the monologue is left speechless with just how wrong they were.
Same thing happened with The Newsroom, it's a Sorkin trademark. Although the heavy-handedness was relaxed with season two.
There's nothing wrong with that. I'll let Will McAvoy of Newsroom (Aaron Sorkin) answer that for you. Take a look at one of the first season's episodes.
Have you seen Aaron Sorkin's most recent TV show, The Newsroom? It's mostly left-leaning (by American standards, at least) so you may not like it (apologies if I've mis-judged your political stance..), but personally I thought it was a great - though often very flawed - show. Anyway, the reason I mention it is that one story theme is the idea that balanced journalism doesn't always mean 50% to each side. I can't find the quote I want from the show with a quick Google, but here's a very similar quote from Sorkin himself: 'I don’t believe the truth always lies in the middle. I don’t believe there are two sides to every argument. I think the facts are the center. And watching the news abandon the facts in favor of “fairness” is what’s troubling to me.'
Regardless of whether it was said by Trump or Clinton, if someone says they "watched in Jersey City, New Jersey, where thousands and thousands of people were cheering [at the 9/11 attacks]" and then claimed they saw it on TV, and then facts showed that this was never shown on TV because as far as anyone can tell it didn't happen... I'd want to see an article about them lying. And that article would naturally make the side of whoever lied look worse. Nothing partisan about it.
I dunno, I like most of Sorkin's work. However I couldn't watch "The Newsroom" past four or five episodes. You're right, it seems like The West Wing's characters all re-hashed into TV news characters and it was too cloying.
I still go back and re-watch The West Wing every couple of years. Yes some of it is cringe-worthy, but as a non-US citiizen when first broadcast I learned a few things about US politics and it caused me find out more, especially from a historical point of view. He also does some nice things such as dropping in interesting educational nuggets such as the Peters Projection cartography stuff in the second "Big Block of Cheese" episode (S2E16) [0].
[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVX-PrBRtTY
Sometimes I feel like half of my HN comments are about this guy, but Aaron Sorkin (writer/creator of A Few Good Men, The West Wing, The Social Network, and recently The Newsroom) wrote this line in a not-very-successful TV show 15 years ago called Sports Night, which is the same phrase but slightly nicer, and has stuck with me.
Dan is a TV host who did a Variety Fair interview in which he was semi-pro drug legalisation.
> Dan: The validity of your read on what most of the country thinks notwithstanding, Stanley.... Actions are immoral. Opinions are not. And I won't apologize for mine. Discussion is good, and for those of us fortunate enough to be the subject of magazine articles, it may be our responsibility from time to time to try and raise the level of debate.
People enjoy pretending hard journalism is the rule rather than the exception. Having the internet & cable news destroy it is just another part of the fantasy TV shows like The Newsroom enjoy telling.
This story is almost exactly the plot of The Newsroom (HBO) episode from two weeks ago, where a mega-douchey tech entrepreneur (played brilliantly by BJ Novak) purchases ACN with the intent of turning the network into a crowdsourced, citizen-journalism "digital media company." The real-life story is hilariously similar.
I thought it was from Newsroom but someone else said "film"
ECHELON[1] showed us precisely what you call a "conspiracy" theory to be provably true. If ECHELON is a conspiracy theory, then the Snowden leaks are a singular whisper in a backroom, relatively speaking. We've had that "concrete proof" (which the Snowden leaks are not, by the way) for nearly fifteen years.
As for the US government lying to its people, we've known about that too for at least 40 years [2]. According to one CBS article, lying politicians are one of the "three things most Americans take as an article of faith"[3]. It's simply not a big deal. Take the Iraq war and WMDs as another example of the US government lying to its people.[4]
Hell, if you've watched The Newsroom's first season, you'd have seen a whole multi-episode story arc about an NSA whistleblower revealing extensive spying going on at a level thus far unprecedented. [5] Did Aaron Sorkin and the rest of The Newsroom writers have special information on PRISM, or is it just so ingrained in the American psyche that it was entirely predictable and fully plausible? Keep in mind this was MONTHS before Snowden.
Simply put, the Snowden leaks are a "no shit" for most people. The majority now believe he did the wrong thing, according to a recent poll[6]. Also worth noting in that same poll, "Forty-eight percent of respondents to the poll said that they support prosecuting Snowden for his actions, while 33 percent were opposed."
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON
[2] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/interactive/2013/jun/24/guardian-guide-us-government-whistleblowers
[3] http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57485776/lying-politicians-a-fact-of-life/
[4] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/18/panorama-iraq-fresh-wmd-claims
[5] http://thenewsroom.wikia.com/wiki/Solomon_Hancock
[6] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/05/edward-snowden-poll_n_3542931.html
Newsroom NSA episode predicted this.
No, I don't think I'm forgetting that. Netflix is talking about doing five original scripted series per year. HBO does... seven or eight, maybe? (Off the top of my head from the last year, Game of Thrones, Girls, True Blood, Boardwalk Empire, Newsroom, and Treme; that list isn't complete). That content is all not only original but, at least initially, exclusive. Showtime is at about the same level of volume, so this isn't unique.
You're right that in terms of a fraction of hours of content per month, most of what they show is not first-run original content, but I don't watch TV 24 hours a day, so I don't care. Like I said, if I got that amount of original content from four or five different providers (let alone 10), that would be more television than I have time to watch. The fact that they mostly show movie reruns is immaterial.
Felt compelled to post because I hadn't seen Suits mentioned. Modern Family continues to be reliable for laughs and hasn't been added yet. The League is the other show which I find myself laughing out loud at least a few times every episode.
Hell on Wheels surprised me by having a strong second season.
I had high hopes for Copper, but it hasn't really grabbed me in the 1st handful of episodes.
Agree with all the obvious ones:
Homeland, Louie, Newsroom, Sherlock, Game of Thrones, Community.
My wife is addicted to Castle and I've come to really enjoy it too. Since we've caught up to date with that we've now switched over to Person of Interest, which I'm really enjoying.
I've fallen behind with the following and plan to catch up ASAP:
Dexter, Sons of Anarchy, 30 Rock, Breaking Bad.
PS: yeah, I watch a lot of TV :)
As I've learned from the TV show "The Newsroom," ask the follow-up! Have they looked for evidence? Could the data have been on an FBI agent's personal laptop rather than an "FBI laptop?" Do they consider data in the class of Apple UDIDs to be "private?"
Apartment complex exclusivity was re-affirmed as illegal a few years ago [1]. Of course if there is only one choice in the area, that's perfectly legal.
Does HBO Go work well on those device? I watched an episode of Newsroom using the HBO Go website, and it was a terrible experience. Ignoring the "sign into your cable company" thing, the video quality wasn't that great despite using tons of bandwidth. It stuttered but looked OK. On the other hand Netflix movies look much better and use less bandwidth. It's like they're still using the old Flash codec instead of MP4.
[1] http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2009/05/federal-court-upholds-fcc-ban-on-exclusive-cable-deals/
This is very hypocritical if it is coming from journalists who cover the small ideas of the big minds and shrug the big ideas of small minds because they don't have funding or 20 million signs up their first week on the app store.I would urge every writer to watch the first 10 minutes of Adam sorkin's newsroom episode 3.
This is fundamentally not true. The massive disruption of this industry isn't from Japan/Germany or banana republics or China, this is pure change in distribution. It's analogous to music or movies or tv, only none of those industries fancied themselves as the "fourth estate" while the getting was good.
The ground moved beneath the feet of this industry and as much as they like to sit around and acknowledge that with self-loathing NYT pieces, I'm not sure they've accepted it. Seems like there's still a lot of sitting about and grumbling about how bad it is and how much better it was when back when. Or worse, how relevant they really, really, really still are cough David Carr cough.
See The Newsroom on HBO for example of this version of onanistic self flagellation.