QHow did Aaron Sorkin research for this series?
AWhile he was thinking about the show, he spent time being a fly on the wall in various newsrooms such as FOX, CNN, MSNBC, and TruTV. He also had a series of lunches with heavyweights from the news, business men and women from across the ideological spectrum who work or have worked as anchors, producers, executives, panelists, etc. They were long roundtable discussions, but basically he asked them two questions: What would a utopian news broadcast be, and what's stopping you from doing it?None of the characters in the show are based on anyone from real life.
QDoes The Newsroom cover important news and political events?
AIt may, but the show isn't an analysis of recent U.S. politics. It uses news from the recent past to tell a story about how news is produced in the corporate media age.While the show may present a particular point of view about the news stories it mentions, the main purpose of any news story mentioned is to tell a story about how the content of the news is affected by various factors, such as internal pressure to break a story before information can be verified, management pressure on the news division to cover sensationalist stories rather than "hard" news in order to boost ratings, and pressure on corporate management to not be critical of political powers. The Newsroom illustrates these points by showing them in the context of real stories from the recent past, such as the 2010 Gulf oil spill, the Casey Anthony trial, and the 2010 and 2012 national elections.So while the show may include coverage of some important news stories, it skips many others because its primary intent is to show how the news is produced, and to provide commentary on the most important news stories or political events.
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