The Newsroom’s take on TV journalism gets mixed reviews from the pros

As a journalist, I love good storytelling about my craft.

All the President's Men came out in 1976 as I was finishing J-school and it was rocket fuel for me and my friends. I love His Girl Friday, the smart and cynical 1940 sendup of sensationalized news that still has something to say.

And of course, Network (1976) remains the benchmark for acid-dipped portraits of television news, a harbinger of a lot of what we see today on cable news shows.

So I was a little fearful about what I would see after many reviewers dissed The Newsroom, writing powerhouse Aaron Sorkin's take on the state of TV journalism in the age of the Internet and Fox News.

I've got a complete set of Sorkin's The West Wing and I loved The Social Network. His writing is as recognizable as a Jimi Hendrix guitar riff or a line from a David Mamet play.

Even if his characters all seem to have permutations of the same voice, the dialogue crackles the way it did in 1940s screwball comedies. You're along for the ride even if you're not sure you find these people credible.

And apparently that's the problem some are having with The Newsroom, which debuted Sunday night on HBO Canada.

[ Related: A Minute With: Aaron Sorkin on 'The Newsroom' ]

It opens with a stunning rant by veteran ACN cable news anchor Will McAvoy (played by Jeff Daniels) at a university seminar. He asserts "America is not the greatest country in the world," and in classic Sorkin style reels off statistics of why exactly that's so.

McAvoy, whose popularity rested on not offending anyone, comes adrift until his new executive producer Mackenzie McHale (Emily Mortimer) prods him into adopting a more hard-nosed approach in his interviews with newsmakers.

Anyone who watched The West Wing knows Sorkin is an old-school liberal who believes people in positions of power have an obligation to tell the truth and pursue a higher purpose, even when reality forces compromises.

His take on TV news is that high-mindedness has been eroded by pandering to extreme opinions and pitching everything to the lowest intellectual common denominator.

McAvoy yearns for the days when anchormen like Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow spoke truth to power, and millions tuned in to see them do it.

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But reviews of The Newsroom have been less than kind, especially from TV journalists. CBC As It Happens host Carol Off, like Mortimer's character a veteran of covering war zones, was unimpressed by the show's "jingoistic premise."

"It's tedious and navel-gazing — there isn't a scene, plot development or character in this newsroom that's even vaguely plausible," she says in a CBC compilation of impressions by its reporters. "What happened to humour and irony at HBO?"

CBC News Now host Carole MacNeil found the show's handling of breaking news pretty close to reality. And while she had problems with the fictional ACN newsroom's ethnic makeup and gender balance, she approved of Sorkin's attack on lazy journalism.

The Guardian, in its summary of reviews, cited The New York Times' David Carr's observation that the central premise of the show is flawed.

"The conceit is that if cable networks did a good job of cooking informational broccoli, we would line up for second helpings," says Carr. "Too bad it happens not to be true — not when coverage of a dolphin that has lost its way can generate more empathy than ethnic minorities being wiped out in far-flung places."

But Peter Mansbridge, who anchors CBC's The National and screened The Newsroom's first four episodes, observed that this is supposed to be entertainment, after all.

"And quite frankly I'm not minding The Newsroom and the blunt hammer it uses in decrying the state of U.S. cable news. And really, is it that hard to wield that hammer?"

The Globe and Mail, which Saturday featured a cutting feature on Sorkin and a review from a disappointed Rick Groen, suggested Sorkin has missed the zeitgeist altogether.

I guess you could make the point The Newsroom is a Sorkinesque Happy Days, which yearned for the supposedly simpler Eisenhower Era (McCarthy, the Korean War, the Hungarian Revolution, Suez, hello?).

But Sorkin's best work has been about rewriting reality. Remember The West Wing was broadcast largely during George Bush's presidency.

Like that show, The Newsroom is about what could be, maybe what it should be. Isn't there enough cynicism and irony out there to leave room for something conveying perhaps anachronistic idealism, especially if its entertaining?