[Marxism] The Newsroom

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Well over 5 years ago I used to watch a no-hold-barred satire on the TV
news business called "The Newsroom"
(<http://www.thenewsroom.ca/>http://www.thenewsroom.ca/) on the local PBS
station in NYC. Like anything of quality that shows up there, it was
eventually dropped.

After becoming a cable TV customer, I discovered that the show can be seen
Wednesdays at 11:30PM on WLIW, the PBS affiliate on Long Island. This is
great news for anybody who appreciates Canadian comedy, which is perhaps
the finest in the world despite the bland reputation of the Great White
North. In the 1980s, you might have seen SCTV out of Canada which was also
a satire of the television business. In the cast were John Candy, Martin
Short, Rick Moranis and others.

"The Newsroom" and SCTV both poked fun at Canadian cultural inferiority
complexes. In SCTV, there was a segment called "Great White North" that
featured Dave Thomas and Rick Moranis as beer-swilling hockey fans who kept
interjecting "eh" after every sentence. SCTV included this segment as a way
of mocking CBC rules that network TV shows incorporate Canadian-based material.

In last night's "The Newsroom" episode, the executive producer George
Findlay (played to a tee by the show's creator, writer and director Ken
Finkelman) obsesses over whether CNN will pick up footage from his own
station's coverage of the kidnapping of anchorman Jim Walcott in Kabul.
Recognition from CNN matters more to Findlay than anything else. He is also
obsessed with winning the Order of Canada prize for news coverage.
Unfortunately he is in competition with Walcott, who is in the empty-headed
Ken-doll tradition of Ron Burgundy and Ted Baxter. When Walcott learns that
he is being sent to Kabul, he remarks, "Great, I haven't been to the
Caribbean in a long time."

Like "Curb Your Enthusiasm" and any other quality comedy show on
television, there is no laugh-track on "Newsroom", something that Finkelman
insists on. Each show consists of some crass undertaking by Findlay who is
challenged by his underlings in the news department. He is a total sexist
and completely uninterested in current events, except insofar as they can
be exploited for ratings. When Walcott is kidnapped, the ratings go up, so
much so that Findlay is reluctant to pay a ransom and lose the edge over
his competition.

---

Christian Science Monitor, October 28, 1996
Rare TV Satire Tweaks Taboos In Canada
By Fred Langan, Special to The Christian Science Monitor

Canadian television has never been much good at situation comedy. Scripts
are vetted by committees to ensure they don't insult anyone: no racial
slurs, no nastiness, and they often end with an earnest, moral message,
which usually turns out to be saccharin sweet.

Now along comes a Canadian comedy that is so irreverent it's hard to
imagine how it ever got on the air. It is called "The Newsroom", and it
mocks the network that shows it, the state-owned Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation (CBC).

The setting is a local newsroom in Toronto. The first episode, which aired
last Monday night, showed three newsmen arguing about whether to lead the
newscast with a local story or an air crash in the Congo.

The news director wants the writers to use a line about a "piranha-infested
river." When someone questions whether there are piranhas in the Congo, the
news writer is told to say "piranha-like fish" and lead with the angle that
there was a Canadian involved.

"We're hoping there was a Canadian on board," says the writer. In this
newsroom, they never let the facts get in the way of good story.

"The Newsroom" is written and directed by and stars Ken Finkelman, a
Canadian who once wrote situation comedies and movies in Hollywood such as
Airplane II.

Newsrooms long have been popular places for comedies, from "The Mary Tyler
Moore Show," popular on re-runs in Canada, to CBS's "Murphy Brown," still a
hit here.

Canadians haven't fared well at producing homegrown TV comedy. Prime-time
television here is filled with American sitcoms. But the CBC is trying to
"Canadianize" itself. On the night "The Newsroom" debuted, the CBC lineup
was all Canadian.

Mr. Finkelman has set up special rules for his new comedy: no laugh track,
no corny gags, and no earnest, politically correct messages. The show
savages the television news business with vicious satire. It portrays the
anchors as shallow airheads only interested in themselves, not the news.

"All I ever asked for was a German car, a cottage, and the right to enjoy
them both without thinking about anything," says the anchor, with not a
hair out of place.

The boss, played by Finkelman, is a selfish character who spends most of
his time on office politics and trying to get other people to run errands
for him.

When he interviews a well-educated black woman for a job as a researcher,
he asks her if she skis. She doesn't. He then hires a beautiful white woman
who has never done any research and can't use a computer. She, however,
does ski.

"I don't know how they got on the air," says Peter Rehak, who has worked at
CBC News and is now an executive at the commercial Canadian network CTV.
"It's a revolution for the stodgy CBC, where everything had to pass the
political-correctness committee."

The CBC receives almost all of its funding from the federal government but
recently has taken some sharp cuts in its budget. That means many local
newscasts, such as the one portrayed in "The Newsroom", are about to disappear.

The show portrays the executives scrambling for their jobs while promising
to protect the people who report to them.

"I give you my word," promises the news director to the airhead anchor.
"You know how the corporation works. I don't have final say, so my word is
essentially irrelevant. But I want to make sure you're happy."

The anchor then reads about losing his job in a newspaper gossip column.

Another episode deals with hiring a news anchor. The choice is either an
intelligent black woman or an aggressive blonde from a local station in
Edmonton.

An "anchor consultant" (they really do exist) assures the news director
that the black woman is so light-skinned she is only "subliminally" black.
"In a test in Regina [Saskatchewan] most people couldn't tell what race she
was," the consultant assures the news director.

Race is usually taboo stuff on Canadian television. But in "The Newsroom"
the "hero" (the news director played by Finkelman) is a racist creep. Even
he, however, is smart enough to rationalize not hiring minorities.

"A black anchor right now reads 'equality,' " he reasons. "And 'equality'
reads 'social spending.' And a social-spending message in this
deficit-reduction climate looks like we're taking sides, and we have to be
objective.

"A white anchor, on the other hand, reads 'deficit reduction.' "

The anchor consultant shoots back: "Blonde doesn't intimidate." The blonde
gets the job.

So far, reviewers have raved about the program. A group that monitors
images of women in the media says there has been no negative comment. But
CTV's Mr. Rehak worries the satire may be lost on people outside journalism.

"People in the news business will love to hate it," Rehak says. "But the
show is so 'in' it might not appeal to the viewing public. We'll see."



--

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