Returning to my comfort show

We all have our guilty pleasures. Those things that we know we shouldn’t enjoy, but we do anyway. For some people, it’s eating dessert first while for others it's drinking a soda from time-to-time.

My guilty pleasure is Aaron Sorkin’s “The Newsroom.”

There are multiple reasons, perhaps even countless reasons, why this is a guilty pleasure. First, it's not at all lost on me that I-someone who works in print journalism-enjoy watching and rewatching a show about a fictional broadcast news station. That, of course, is the most obvious reason this show is a guilty pleasure.

Jeff Daniels does a great job as Will McAvoy, a supposedly Republican newscaster. The series begins with McAvoy, one of three newscasters on a panel, berating a college-age student when they ask “What makes America the greatest country in the world?” It’s possible you’ve come across the scene on social media, McAvoy listing all the areas in which the United States of America trails the rest of the world.

It’s not entirely wrong. According to the National Center for Community Strategies, the United States ranks 33rd out of 44 advanced economies for post-high school degrees. Still, the preachiness which begins the series-McAvoy calling the student who asked the question “sorority girl” and saying she’s a member of the “Worst. Period. Generation. Period. Ever”-continues throughout the first season.

From behind the prop of a Republican broadcaster, Sorkin hammers on the Koch Brothers and the Tea Party movement. McAvoy takes plenty of shots at the Republican Party, which he’s still a member of, but offers few critiques of the Democratic Party. At least until season two, when “The Newsroom” addresses the ethics regarding the use of drones in the Middle East. There’s also, perhaps, a small dose of reality when one of the senior producers of NewsNight-McAvoy’s show-opts to fill in for a political reporter on the campaign trail with Mitt Romney only to discover that political reporting is far different from the high-handed views McAvoy’s camp has of the world unfolding around them.

That’s not even counting the women in the show, at least the main cast of characters. Each of them are intelligent and accomplished individuals. Executive Producer MacKenzie McHale returns from a more than two-year stint as an embedded journalist, but her accomplishments seem to disappear when she’s around her ex-partner, McAvoy. Sloan Sabbith is an accomplished economics expert, with two PhDs, yet constantly gets in her own way. Maggie Jordan, an assistant producer, has moments where she stands up for herself only to crumble under pressure.

Despite all its flaws, I find myself returning to this series on a semi-regular basis.

I think the reason I do queue up “The Newsroom” on Max is because of what it aspires to be and of what Sorkin seemed to intend with the series. If we’re being honest with ourselves, the 24/7 broadcast news cycle has helped destroy discourse in our country. Social media certainly hasn’t helped, but the ushering in of CNN and Fox News and MSNBC opened up the floodgates. Now, viewers don’t get news, they get highly partisan opinions. Opinion is fine, as long as it is clearly labeled as such, but the lines are blurred when it comes to broadcast.

Regardless of their political affiliation, I have heard people yearn for the days of Edward Murrow and Walter Cronkite or even Peter Jennings and Tom Brokaw. Sorkin’s series attempts to return us to those days, with McAvoy giving his audience the facts regardless of whether they agree with them or not, but fails as it seems the series is wrapped up in its own self-importance. For me, it’s the thought that counts when I’m watching this show. Of course, Sorkin also has the benefit of hindsight, looking back on how news was covered as it broke and giving his own views on how it should have been covered.

If only any of us in the news industry had foresight as powerful as Sorkin’s hindsight.

Still, I’ll likely spend the next several days or weeks running through all the episodes of “The Newsroom” before wondering what to binge-watch next.