Review: Aaron Sorkin's 'The Newsroom'

As MacKenzie McHale, the executive producer of the fictitious prime-time cable program “News Night”—whose motley staff is the focus of The Newsroom, Aaron Sorkin’s new series for HBO—Emily Mortimer is made to declaim all sorts of lines that stake her out as the conscience of the show, and, it may be intuited, the articulator of Sorkin’s ideals. Lines like “We don’t do ‘good television’—we do the news!” and “That studio is a courtroom—and we only call expert witnesses!” To her star anchorman, Will McAvoy (Jeff Daniels), she delivers passionate pep talks about “reclaiming journalism as an honorable profession,” imploring him to “Be the integrity!”

So, in the interest of upholding the honor of journalism as a profession, let it be noted here, in full fairness, that The Newsroom bears many of the hallmarks of Sorkin’s greatest work: the quick pulse and audacious political engagement of his NBC series The West Wing; the wry knowingness of his screenplays for The Social Network and Moneyball; and the head-of-steam righteousness of his Broadway breakthrough, A Few Good Men. All that said, it would run counter to the concept of “being the integrity” to suggest that The Newsroom is a good television show.