Feeble Fantasies

OMFG that sneezing panda is hilarious!

Let's start this one with a disclaimer: I have an embarrassing weakness for 'liberal' political TV programming coming out of the States. What's worse, now that the Democrats really do control the White House, watching re-runs of West Wing just doesn't provide the kick that it used to. Solution? HBO's The Newsroom. Written by Aaron Sorkin of West Wing fame, it is a fantastical ode to the kind of front line, adrenaline journalism that all journalists dream of: deadlines, emergencies, eating crappy food while working late for low pay, outdoing each other with stories of how that improvised live broadcast from >>insert warzone name<< went, shouting jargon at confused interns and ritually referring to the Fourth Estate's historic mission. 

Not that I should be all that cynical. Having worked in a newsroom, I understand well how one gets caught up in the excitement of shouting out that fresh bit of news across the office, of watching wires buzzing with an endless stream of News, or even running seemingly pointless errands between the MCR and the boss's desk. It is in fact quite unusual that compared to lawyers, who have over the years accrued an enviable compilation of televised renditions, journalism has been more the domain of films rather than TV. The time of course, is ripe and this is what brings me to the title. For a while now, mainstream media has been evidently drowning in commercialisation driven by ratings, a cancerous concern over 'balanced' news coverage, the victory of facts over interpretation and gossip over opinion. Moreover, threatened by upstarts a la Wikileaks, it has shown its ugly elitist face (overhearing journos talking about Julian Assange at the extradition hearings in London was a particularly sobering episode), while reporting on the financial crisis has descended into a hell of uncritical acceptance of the economic 'facts'. Just like the political sphere before it, the media in late capitalism is often a byword for our fall into a world devoid of meaning, but saturated with words, banners, flashing advisories and tickers displaying a bewildering amount of information. Whither news? Oh how I sometimes wish it did. 

The Newsroom has a different scenario in mind, no less than a redemption. Not only any redemption, but one that's driven from this inside, eschewing any outside interference and drawing on the resources of the profession itself. Not to dwell on the plot of the series, the producers of the news programme around which the show centres are on a mission, a mission to civilize, to defend America (ie, the world) against the onslaught of second rate news, second rate politics and second rate consumption. In this particular instance, the fearless team (led by a moderate Republican no less, hint, hint) take on the Tea Party machine of lies and stupidity, supported somewhat begrudgingly by the capitalist owner of the media group, who in the end turns out to be 'one of us' - the liberal, moderate, educated America. It is here that we see the ultimate feeble fantasy; squeezed out of actual news programming, the arch-journalist is now a fictional character, a Don Quixote - ironic considering the frequent references to the  ingenious gentleman in the script. Let me be clear - I do not doubt that such talent and conviction exist in reality as well, and perhaps a living out of fantasies is a precursor to them becoming a reality. And yet, like so many other feeble fantasies (a return to a welfare state, the promise of liberal democracy and so on), to think that independent, bold and truly civilizing news can exist within the constraints of our socio-economic reality sadly seems very unlikely. At least there's lots of office romance to compensate.