HBO’s Newsroom and RTAmerica: The show in current affairs
We often lose ourselves in the media spin; the spectacle of
it all. The idea that the news was a service providing information to the public, so they could make informed decisions(even if that was true if only for a few brief moments)has been replaced by a big top
of spinning intro scenes and generic notes,strung into a tune. I find myself having to take breaks from it,to remind myself of the real and concrete around me.
When the words literally and figuratively, were declared interchangeable
by the Oxford English Dictionary, everyone blamed the flaws of our education
system, but no one considered that it was just a symptom of living in an ever
increasingly virtual world. The blurring of those worlds happens on line and in
our minds, and so our language blurred too.
HBO’s Newsroom
written by legendary screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, shows Sorkin being the best at what he does,
taking complex social and political ideas and wrapping them up in interesting
characters, who spout witty, rapier sharp dialogue, whilst telling a gripping
narrative.
RTAmerica is the U.S. media branch of state run Russia Today media network.
I can’t be the only one who has noticed the similarities between these two, can I?
Jeff Daniels plays Will McAvoy, in the T.V. series, a jaded News anchor who resolves
to make real news. Rick Sanchez, the actual anchor for RTAmerica appears to be
trying to pay homage to the character. Take a look:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHIiD6jPUaE&list=PLagVUKF7CUTTMWa2kwChSU9A6cPEUgFqb&index=14&t=1516s
I know what you’re thinking. So what? Most of these male
suited anchors are a “type”. Actor Jeff Daniels is playing that, and it’s
normal to see, what you want to see. I’m also ignoring the differences. Sanchez
has a friendlier, down to earth, nice uncle quality. Will McAvoy is given a
much more nuanced delivery by Jeff Daniels.
Ok, but what about Polly Boiko and MacKenzie McHale (Emily Mortimer)?
So,the two women look very similar and they even speak in
the same posh, upper class British accent. Not only that, but they seem to
serve the same comic function. Again,I’m ignoring the differences. The
character of Mckenzie is a producer, who is the best at her job. She is the
voice of integrity and morality in the series. She is the person who “guards
the guardians." She is always behind the camera, never in front.
In the second RT video I linked, we can see another key difference. Russia Today is a state run media company, funded by the Kremlin. In the video, we see Polly Boiko undermining the threat of climate change, in favor of economic growth. It wouldn’t be good for oil and gas rich Russia, to suddenly have people switch to greener sources of energy, or cut their fossil fuel consumption now, would it? Bizarrely, the fictional character Mackenzie would never allow such an irresponsible story to appear in the news.
In the second RT video I linked, we can see another key difference. Russia Today is a state run media company, funded by the Kremlin. In the video, we see Polly Boiko undermining the threat of climate change, in favor of economic growth. It wouldn’t be good for oil and gas rich Russia, to suddenly have people switch to greener sources of energy, or cut their fossil fuel consumption now, would it? Bizarrely, the fictional character Mackenzie would never allow such an irresponsible story to appear in the news.
There are other crossovers between the two. This is again in
a kind of mirrored casting. The economic anchors,Christy
Ai and Sloan Sabbith (Olivia Munn). Larry King and Chris Hedges bring “old
school” respectability to the proceedings,just like the character Charlie Skinner (Sam Waterston).
I know, this is all coincidence and I should just take off my tinfoil hat. Maybe, there is so much spectacle and “sound and fury” in modern media broadcasting, that confusing a fictional show and a state run media program shouldn’t be surprising. Hell, maybe the crew of the Russia Today show were inspired by the message of the series and decided to do a kind of secret “pastiche”. Who knows? We search for patterns, often finding them when they aren’t there. I hope I brought you with me on my fantasy a little, just to make a point. That it's easy to see connections and causality everywhere.
Of course, Russia Today
is blacklisted as a carrier of “false news” by everybody from the mainstream
media to several intelligence agencies including the CIA. Yet,I often learn
about information that I don’t get from other news sources. For example, as
Sanchez can’t resist reminding his viewers, the story of the Federal Reserve bailing
out the banking sector in the Sanchez video, is not being talked about by other
networks. So what is this report? A propaganda video to destabilize the American economy? Or a warning of a coming economic crisis? Is the enemy of my enemy; my friend? Should I just rewatch Newsroom and dream of Journalists with integrity?
In an interview Adam
Curtis, the BBC journalist and film maker, said that “all journalism is
propaganda of a sort, as the story is presented as a narrative.” In his
documentary Hypernormalisation, he points to the Russian minister for media
coming from an Avant guard theatre background. He points to the seemingly
irrational internal political agenda of Putin and his cronies, designed to be
impossible to understand from the outside and therefore immune to prediction
and counter measures from any enemy state or the native people themselves,as examples
of how disinformation is an important
tool of control for the powerful; the spectacle, the show. In the west, chasing
ratings, advertising space, clicks and competition from tech has had a similar
damaging effect on the media.
The literal and figurative have blurred.
The literal and figurative have blurred.
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