The acclaimed screenwriter, Aaron Sorkin, apologized for HBO’s 3-season drama, The Newsroom. The Newsroom chronicles what happens behind the scenes of a fictional cable news channel called the Atlantis Cables News. The HBO original series covered events from recent history that news channels were reporting. Given that the series used real-life events as its source material, it’s no surprise that it was highly controversial and was heavily criticized.
Aaron Sorkin has worked on several projects, including The West Wing, The Social Network, and Sports Night. The Newsroom isn’t considered Sorkin’s best work, seeing as it wasn’t popular with critics and the writer himself. Although the award-winning writer has expressed grievances with his work on the show, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the political drama doesn’t have redeeming qualities.
Aaron Sorkin Explained His Regrets Over The Newsroom Ahead Of The Final Season
The Newsroom Covered Real-Life Events
When Aaron Sorkin attended the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival, he took the opportunity to apologize for the two previous seasons of The Newsroom before the third and final season of the show aired. The Newsroom has had its fair share of controversy because it covered events that happened in real life. Season 1 of The Newsroom which aired in 2012 covered events such as the deep water horizon and the killing of Osama Bin Laden. The second season of the show featured the 1998 scandal in which CNN and TIME had been criticized for reporting on a false story involving the United States Marine Corps.
Some journalists felt that Sorkin was essentially saying that this is what they should have said or done when those particular events were taking place.
Sorkin was blasted by journalists for how he wrote The Newsroom because there was a perception among some that he was trying to tell them how to do their jobs. Given that the show had the benefit of hindsight when it came to covering the real-life events, it came off as preachy. Some journalists felt that Sorkin was essentially saying that this is what they should have said or done when those particular events were taking place. Sorkin understood the criticism and apologized. The screenwriter also expressed his wish to start the show all over again (via Buzzfeed).
What Aaron Sorkin Has Said About The Newsroom In The 10 Years Since It Ended
Aaron Sorkin Still Regrets Some Aspects About The Newsroom
The Newsroom was the third series about live television that Sorkin had written. The screenwriter had penned Sports Night and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, which had premises similar to that of The Newsroom. Despite his experience in writing these kinds of shows, Sorkin felt that he wasn’t able to get The Newsroom right. In an interview with Vanity Fair, Sorkin explained, “I was never able to get it quite right. I always felt like I was — like I had a pebble in my shoe,” Sorkin said. “I felt like I could write a good scene, I could put a couple of good scenes together.”
In the 2020 Vanity Fair interview, Sorkin attributed why he felt that way about The Newsroom to the fact it had started off on the wrong foot and given the wrong impression. The source of the controversy that started it all was in the first episode where Will McAvoy had a monologue about what makes America the greatest country in the world. Many critics felt that McAvoy’s speech was sanctimonious and condescending.
The screenwriter took a huge gamble when he decided to use recent events as the show’s source material, and although his reasoning behind it is understandable, it ended up backfiring. “I think that there was a feeling that I was trying to show the pros how it ought to have been done,” he told Vanity Fair. “That we’re going to do this again, only we’re going to give it the ‘West Wing’ treatment, where honorable people are doing it right — obviously leveraging hindsight. And I wasn’t trying to do that.”
Is Aaron Sorkin’s The Newsroom Still Worth Watching In 2024?
The Newsroom Is A Witty Show
Despite the controversies surrounding The Newsroom, the show is still entertaining 10 years after its final season aired. The first two seasons of the show struggled to find their identity and received divisive reviews from critics. Fortunately, Sorkin seemed to have learnt from the mistakes he made with season one and two of the show. There was a noticeable improvement with the writing in The Newsroom season three. Critics might have panned the show because of how sanctimonious it came off, but audiences seemed to love the HBO drama.
Although The Newsroom is not in any way a revolutionary show, it has great things going for it like the dialogue and its talented cast. The cast of The Newsroom which is led by Jeff Daniels and includes Olivia Munn, Dev Patel, and Alison Pill did a stellar job of depicting an actual newsroom. Daniels’ performance as Will McAvoy in the show earned him an Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor In A Drama Series. While other shows like Apple TV’s The Morning Show have the same premise as The Newsroom, the show is still worth watching because of its wit and fast-paced plot.
Sources: Vanity Fair, Buzzfeed
