In a recent episode of Aaron Sorkin’s new HBO drama,
Newsroom, about the inner workings of a network news
program, a young staffer puts his fist through a computer monitor.
He had become enraged after repeatedly viewing a clip in which Rush
Limbaugh expressed lack of sympathy for foreign correspondents
imperiled while covering the uprising in Egypt. I can relate. Not
fifteen minutes earlier, the same episode had me seething during a
scene in which unfounded attacks were made on reputable policy
shops like Heritage and Cato. I had the good sense not to break my
hand over it, though.
Newsroom follows the exploits of Will McAvoy, a once
staid evening news anchor whose profanity laden moment of honesty
during a panel discussion at Northwestern University transforms him
into a YouTube sensation. His direct superior decides to seize upon
this notoriety and refashion Will—whose reputation had been that
he was safe, the Jay Leno of news—into the sort of old fashioned,
idealistic newsman who speaks truth to power. Not surprisingly for
an Aaron Sorkin show, power correlates approximately 1:1 with
conservative interests.
The twist is that McAvoy, played as likeably flawed by veteran
actor Jeff Daniels, constantly proclaims that he is a member of the
Republican Party and balks at any notion of liberal favoritism on
his show. Right. We are informed that conservatives perceive him as
a RINO. He does little to bolster his GOP credentials, scoffing at
the New York Post for being too lowbrow, blanching when a
date brings a legally permitted concealed carry weapon into his
swank Manhattan apartment, and describing himself as a member of
the “media elite” on air — using the phrase proudly as a
credential, not in the self-effacing pejorative.
It is almost as if Sorkin foresaw the coming complaints from
conservative watchdog groups about his latest unbalanced show and
decided to add a measure of even-handedness. And a weak measure, at
that. McAvoy is not so much Sorkin’s ideal newsman, as his ideal
conservative. He never articulates a single conservative value and
uses his airtime to attack other conservatives. More on that later.
Even McAvoy’s ostensible Republicanism itself is played for smug
laughs. “I am a registered Republican,” he tells his boss, “I only
seem liberal because I believe that hurricanes are caused by high
barometric pressure and not gay marriage.” Ignoring for a moment
that hurricanes are actually caused by low pressure, the
irony is apparently lost on McAvoy that the global warming agenda
he alludes to is essentially a secular religion with adherents as
zealous as anti-gay bigots.
McAvoy, supposedly distressed by what he sees as the extremist
drift of the GOP, turns his guns on the Tea Party movement. In his
eyes, the movement started as a legitimate populist response to
heavy-handed governance but transformed into a rag tag group of
ignorant radicals acting as useful idiots for the Koch brothers. He
laments that a dentist is running a campaign to the right of a
career conservative politician. A dentist! Remember, viewers, in
this progressive world born of the imperious politics of Woodrow
Wilson, only “experts” should hold office.
The anti-Tea Party crusade begins with McAvoy embarrassing two
blameless activists on air for the sin of declaring that the Tea
Party is a decentralized movement while being unaware that the Koch
brothers funded a rally in a neighboring state. He helpfully
informs them that the Kochs could buy their liberal equivalent,
George Soros, several times over, as if greater success in business
somehow makes the exercise of political speech insidious. The
network owner, played by noted American super-patriot Jane Fonda,
later warns McAvoy’s boss that the Koch brothers bury enemies under
Brinks trucks for these sorts of incidences.
Sorkin’s greatest beef with the Tea Party, besides their
purported ignorance, seems to be that they are centrally controlled
by malevolent plutocrats. In a later episode, he approvingly
juxtaposes government employees picketing against Wisconsin
Governor Scott Walker with pro-democracy protesters in Tahrir
Square. Surely, those noble activists who trashed the Wisconsin
legislative chambers with an illegal and raucous sit-in, bilked
taxpayers with phony doctor’s notes, and brought about recall
proceedings of a duly elected public official over a matter of
political disagreement weren’t centrally aided or influenced at all
by union leaders.
One wonders if Sorkin is also a fan of that other
“decentralized” protest movement, Occupy Wall Street, which
completely exceeds the Tea Party in several key indicators
including rapes, shootings, and defecation on police vehicles. But
aside from his fandom for noxious political movements, Sorkin’s
latest creative effort betrays two flawed lines of reasoning
typical of liberals at the turn of this century.
The first is their assessment of the news industry. Liberals
have never been comfortable with conservative dominance of talk
radio, which developed out of the less overt liberal domination of
every other medium. Conservative talk radio emerged as a refuge for
those who sought an alternative to left-leaning traditional news.
With the advent of the Internet, the rise of blogging, and an
increase in the number of cable channels, the news has been
democratized to a degree never previously thought
possible.
All of this stymies liberals, who fondly recall the days of
purportedly impartial newsmen, McAvoy’s “media elite.” McAvoy’s
news director calls for McAvoy to model himself after Murrow, who
brought down McCarthy, and Cronkite, who ended the Vietnam War. The
arrogant assumption underpinning this call for a return to news in
an old-fashioned mold is that if Americans just heard the “truth,”
they would vote for progressives. One should presumably ignore the
facts that McCarthy, though his methods were deplorable, was
correct about government infiltration by communists, or that we
were actually winning the Vietnam War before a crisis of faith
brought on by Cronkite’s blistering — and inaccurate — Tet
Offensive editorial.
Sorkin’s most frequent news industry targets are Rush Limbaugh
and Glenn Beck. A weekly fixture of Newsroom is some clip
or another in which either of those pundits misinforms their
audience. What Sorkin misses is that no one gets their news from
pundits. The audience that consumes Limbaugh and Beck is made up of
dyed in the wool conservatives and masochistic liberals seeking
entertainment. Anyone who does get their news from talk
shows already knows where they stand and presumably wouldn’t be
swayed by the “truths” dispensed by Sorkin’s brand of
journalism.
Jon Stewart, who anchors the Daily Show, a “fake news”
program on Comedy Central, made a similarly flawed argument in his
now infamous raking over the coals of conservative pundit Tucker
Carlson. Stewart took Carlson to task for his work as co-anchor of
CNN’s Crossfire, a legendary political program which may
or may not have been taken off the air due to Stewart’s stinging
guest appearance. He accused the hosts of doing a disservice to the
public discourse by featuring partisan political theater rather
than legitimate debate. The great unfairness, of course, is that
the audience of Crossfire was made up of political
junkies, not truth seekers.
The second logical flaw, and one that has even greater
implications for our national discourse, is a line of reasoning
best described as “poisoned root, poisoned fruit.” It all stems
from the tortured progressive understanding of the relationship
between cause and effect. Naturally, if an organization accepts
corporate money from villains such as the Koch brothers, their
product is tainted, according to liberals. It is not that people —
including the wealthy — support causes that they philosophically
agree with or that buttress their rational interests. No,
conservative think tanks are merely bought and paid for.
A former employer of mine was once slammed in a leading national
newspaper for accepting a grant from the foundation of a large
retailer. No matter that the amount of money was just about enough
for a single large dinner event, and was spit in the bucket of a
multimillion dollar budget. The reporter — this was a news piece,
not an editorial — implied that my employer had written favorably
about the retailer because of this grant money, as unconvincing as
that would seem to anyone with common sense. No wonder
conservatives seek out alternative media.
Liberals dutifully ignore that the flow of dollars cuts both
ways. Soros and Buffett on the left throw their money behind plenty
of political agendas. While they are usually wrong in their policy
prescriptions, they are certainly free to state them. Buffett and
Soros have come by their beliefs honorably, and so they support
organizations that do work amenable to those beliefs. The same goes
for the Koch brothers on the other side. Nothing sinister is at
play and there is nothing inherently harmful about the wealthy
using the influence their wealth affords them. Such is the
marketplace of ideas.
Sorkin is a gifted storyteller. My college friends and I used to
have West Wing days in which we would try to imitate the
rapid fire dialogue characteristic of his programs. I will surely
continue to watch Newsroom as although it puts any glass
monitors within my vicinity at risk of being punched, it is
extremely entertaining. But Sorkin needs to be more intellectually
honest. There is no such thing as an impartial newsman,
conservative money in politics is no more or less detrimental to
civic life than liberal money in politics, and a thin veneer of
“balance” is insulting to viewers.
