Media for Half the Country: The New York Times, HBO, and Aaron Sorkin

Do shareholders of The New York Times Company ask themselves why a publication would seek to alienate half the U.S. population in articles that are ostensibly about matters of general interest? They should, as should all stakeholders in HBO. The half I’m talking about is the Republican half, of course.

I am moved to ask this question because this weekend we are treated to a puff piece in the NYT (link) on Aaron Sorkin’s new HBO show “The Newsroom,” in which a news anchor man, in a moment referred to as a “crisis of conscience”, delivers a tirade about how the United States is actually a piece-of-shit country undeserving of all its accolades and patriotism (I wrote about this recently, and included the hideous trailer here: Getting Dumber at HBO).

But the journalistic crime by the NYT is not the fact that it has chosen to feature the new show — nothing wrong with that — it’s the fact that nowhere in the article is the blatantly left-leaning narrative of Sorkin’s Liberal orgy even mentioned, and this is an error of omission that is unforgivable in a media outlet that seeks to portray itself as offering its readers a reasonable view of news and culture.

That Sorkin and HBO seek to poke a sharp stick in the eye of Conservatives and patriots across America is their prerogative (lord knows they’ve done it before, with The West Wing, Real Time with Bill Mahar, etc.) but the New York Times should not jump into the Liberal mosh pit and help introduce a new show without informing readers of its blatant bias, and certainly should not participate in the charade that the show’s subject matter is a mere critique of broadcast news, as Sorkin would have us believe:

“The commoditization of news has created an environment in which we’re told that certain things are important that simply aren’t,” he said…Believing that a crucial institution had lost direction, Mr. Sorkin responded the only way he knew how: by creating a TV show about it.

Oh, I see — Sorkin is going to expose the news business as a profit-driven lie machine — nothing partisan in that! And, amazingly, nothing partisan in this plot summary either:

After a corporate-ordered recuperation, McAvoy returns to work inspired to do better, and, with a producing team that includes an old flame…and some novices…he sets out to deliver a news program that demands accountability and doesn’t hesitate to express opinions or call out lies.

Except…

Just how Liberal and anti-American are Sorkin and his new show? You can hear it explicitly in the “tirade” shown in the trailer (a litany of America’s lower-than-acknowledged ranking on metrics like literacy, infant mortality, etc.), and you can imagine it quite easily from the cast of Liberal influences that surround the entire production, a slant so extreme that it is in fact a trap door that opens into a Liberal hell realm:

• Mr. Sorkin also visited real-world cable news shows and was embedded at MSNBC’s incarnation of “Countdown With Keith Olbermann” 
• Mr. Olbermann, a longtime friend of Mr. Sorkin’s…
• On the America-hating tirade central to the show, Sorkin told Jeff Daniels, the actor who delivers it, ‘As important as it is to you, it’s twice as important to me.’ 
• Chris Matthews, the host of MSNBC’s “Hardball” (whose son Thomas plays a staff member on “The Newsroom”)…
• Jane Fonda is featured as a character who owns the network

Okay, so the show has achieved a Liberal racial purity, and yet, despite this pedigree, Dave Itzkoff and the NYT fully indulge the Sorkin/HBO public relations machine and allow the principals and supporting cast to wax poetic about the show being about “…finding the truth in news…”, as in the following faux benign quotes by two notoriously shrill Liberals:

Chris Matthews… said Mr. Sorkin’s challenge “is to find that ticktock that’s always in the background of a newsroom.” ….Mr. Sorkin “has to find — and I think he will — the high stakes in finding the truth, not just in who governs, but in who tells us what the truth is.”

Mr. Olbermann agreed that one requirement for good drama is “idealistic people in nonidealistic settings, and certainly television news is almost as nonidealistic as you can get these days.”

Itzkoff, where’s your qualifying statement about the show’s Liberal bias? Does the NYT have editors? Were you in on it, or were you overruled as they edited your story?

Do you naively believe that passing the show off as some kind of saintly fixative of cable news programs is going to lure patriots and Conservatives into watching an anti-American piece of garbage like this show for even one minute?

I thought journalism was supposed to provide more than just news of upcoming cultural events. I though it was supposed to provide context — why artistic productions matter, and how they fit into the fabric of modern American culture. The real focus of your story should have been the obvious politics behind Sorkin’s new show.

In fact, the great irony of your piece is that it was missing the truth about Sorkin’s new show, the very thing Sorkin claims to be waving the banner for.

Since you didn’t do it — since you failed in your primary duty on a grand and comprehensive scale — I will do it for you now.

The Newsroom is Aaron Sorkin’s latest screed against all things Conservative: against patriotism, American exceptionalism, and against all citizens who believe in such ideas. It seeks to portray Liberal commentators as righteous, “hyper-competent”, and smart, and to portray those who love their country as stupid and uneducated. It seeks to provide some of the most anti-American people in today’s America, including Jane Fonda, Keith Olbermann, and Sorkin himself, with a megaphone through which they can yell their hatred-filled tantrums at audiences who innocently seek some enjoyable entertainment on weekend nights. Born of Liberal rage, and fueled by Liberal rage, The Newsroom promises to thrill Liberals and rebuke Conservatives and joins a pantheon of shows whose appeal to a mass audience was Dead On Arrival. Viewers beware: you have been warned.