Finding a dose of truth on TV

Nostalgia invariably wears rose-coloured glasses. So, it’s inevitable that this old journalist is convinced that, back in the ’60s and ’70s, broadcast journalism — now infested with unchecked claims and flat-out lies that go unchallenged — was in the business of unfailingly fair, unbiased, honest truth-telling.

When Trump sycophant Kellyanne Conway blurted out the phrase “alternative facts” on Jan. 22, 2017, on Meet the Press, to justify the first flock of bald-faced lies the new Trump administration was belching shamelessly and mostly unquestioned onto the airwaves, those of us who’d so deeply believed in truth reeled from the stunning gall of her remark. To his credit, host Chuck Todd, responded: “Alternative facts aren’t facts, they are falsehoods.”

But oh, how immeasurably worse it has become since then.

Desperate to cleanse my mind of the mindless dreck being poured out by broadcast media these days in the guise of news coverage, I began to binge-watch the old TV series The Newsroom not long ago. I discovered those rose-coloured glasses weren’t filtering reality into how I wanted to remember the news. It really was better then.

The Newsroom, the less well-known series by Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing being the one everyone remembers), ran from 2012 to 2014, and was set a few years prior to that, well before Donald Trump became the reigning daily news dog and pony show.

And it was savagely honest.

If anyone remembers any of the brilliant Sorkin-written rants from news anchor Will McAvoy, it’s probably the “America isn’t the greatest country in the world” rant that opened the series. But, having immersed myself in it (and I confess that was when I fell hopelessly in love with Jeff Daniels), I’ve run head-on into more rants, even more gut-wrenchingly honest … and have tripped over uncannily prescient plot lines.

From Episode 3: McAvoy apologized for “the failure of this program since I’ve been in charge of it to successfully and faithfully inform the American electorate … I’m a leader in an industry that miscalled elections, hyped-up terrorism scares, ginned up controversy and failed to report on tectonic shifts in our country.”

McAvoy pledged to redress that failure from then on in his broadcast, saying “nothing is more important to a democracy than a well-informed electorate.” That speech broke my heart with pride to think this was the profession I had chosen.

I also remember McAvoy’s declaration in the Season 1 finale, that (he was philosophically Republican), “the problem is now, I have to be homophobic. I have to count the number of times people go to church. I have to deny facts and think scientific research is a long con. I have to think poor people are getting a sweet ride, and I have to have such a stunning inferiority complex that I fear education and intellect in the 21st century.”

Echoes of current reality.

Back in 2012, the series noted (factually), the billionaires pouring money into Republican slush funds were the Koch brothers. Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas was taking money from them even then, the court itself was throwing decisions in favour of corporate America and the Heritage Foundation the Kochs were also funding had its tentacles firmly embedded in the Tea Party wing of the Republicans, while simultaneously tightening its financial and moral death grip on the party and moving it inexorably to the authoritarian right.

The fictional news hour, helmed by McAvoy, tilted bravely at all the windmills, running eventually into the fatal headwind of a company owner (played, ironically, by Jane Fonda) determined to destroy her newly conscientious anchor because he was galloping straight at the elected representatives and companies she did business with, and they weren’t happy. She finally sold the company out from under its crusading band of Don Quixotes, to a very wealthy right wing creep. Sound eerily familiar?

And that was the end of that.

Only … it wasn’t.

The real world has continued to play out in the exact fashion McAvoy (well, Aaron Sorkin, actually) documented ferociously in its very early stages, until the rug got pulled out from under him. If I didn’t know better, I’d think Sorkin somehow discovered the gift of time travel, popped into 2016 through 2024 to see how things were going, and went back to pen the cautionary tale that became The Newsroom.

But, he didn’t get all the way to 2025. Because now, it’s so, so much worse.

After The Newsroom, my next binge will be Sorkin’s better-known The West Wing, where I will console myself with Martin Sheen’s portrayal of the ethically upright, unfailingly decent president, Jed Bartlet. In between, I treasure the outraged monologues of late night comedians Colbert, Kimmel and Stewart, who truth-tell every night, tilting merrily at the windmills.

I doubt any TV network would produce a politically pointed series such as The Newsroom or The West Wing today. But we can dream, can’t we?

Retired Winnipeg journalist Judy Waytiuk is a Substack columnist at spoutingoff.com, and would still marry Jeff Daniels at the drop of a hat.