The Newsroom

The Newsroom may very well be my second favorite television show. It was written by the same person who wrote The West Wing, Aaron Sorkin. Like The West Wing, The Newsroom is full of witty dialogue and takes on current political topics. But The Newsroom is more modern than The West Wing, airing 2012-2014, covering more recent topics such as Deepwater Horizon, the rise of the Tea Party, the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster, the killing of Osama Bin Laden, and the 2012 Republican Presidential Primary Debates.

Last Wednesday the first 2024 Republican Presidential Primary Debate aired. Like most of our modern political debates and interviews, this debate was filled with misleading or even full-on false claims. Post-debate, the media has fact-checked some of the claims, pointing out, for example, that former Vice President Pence’s claim that “A 15-week [abortion] ban is…supported by 70 percent of the American people” is not even evidenced by Fox News’ polling on the issue (54% as of April) and that the common Republican talking point that the Biden administration plans to hire “87,000 IRS Agents” is false (rather, a 2021 Treasury report that estimated the IRS could hire 86,852 full-time employees over a 10 year period; many of which will not be enforcement agents, but hired to improve information technology and customer service or replace the employees the IRS has lost and will lose.)

In a two-part episode of The Newsroom, “The Blackout”, News Night is trying to hold the Republican primary debate so they can change the way the debates are run, because, as Will puts it, “The questions have to be tougher, they have to be able to square the campaign rhetoric with facts. [The candidates] have to be stopped when they are not answering the question and they have to be called out when their answers contradict the facts. Our job is to find the two candidates who’ll give the voters the best competing arguments and I don’t believe we’re seeing that. We have to put the candidates on a witness stand.”

There was no clear winner of the Republican Primary debate last week, but if the questions had been tougher and required more effort by the candidates the American people may have been better able to judge who they want to support. It was too easy for the candidates to go off on tangents about issues other than the ones they were asked about, making them able to mask their true opinions and intentions should they be elected to presidential office. A new debate format could help weed out candidates and get the American people more interested in the presidential primary process.

Until we get a new debate format or other means to help hold candidates accountable, it is up to the voters to look through the rhetoric for the facts. It is our duty to take part in the democratic process as informed citizens.