The Newsroom is an American political drama television series created and principally written by Aaron Sorkin that premiered on HBO on June 24, , and concluded on December 14, , consisting of 25 episodes over three seasons. It features an ensemble cast including Jeff Daniels as anchor Will McAvoy who, together with his staff, sets out to put on a news show "in the face of corporate and commercial obstacles and their own personal entanglements". Sorkin, who created the Emmy Award -winning political drama The West Wing , had reportedly been developing a cable-news-centered TV drama since After months of negotiations, premium cable network HBO ordered a pilot in January and then a full series in September that year.
Sorkin did his research for the series by observing several real-world cable news programs first-hand. He served as executive producer, along with Scott Rudin and Alan Poul.
In season 1, each episode is built around a major news event from the recent past, such as the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and the killing of Osama bin Laden. This acts as a background for the interpersonal drama, as well as providing a sense of familiarity, as the audience is likely to know the context and so not require too much explanation of events.
Sorkin has said the news events on the show "will always be real", which, for him, "became a kind of creative gift. For one thing, the audience knows more than the characters do, which is kind of fun. And it gives me the chance to have the characters be smarter than we were. The second season features a story arc in which the News Night team has reported, and been forced to retract, a false news story about the United States Marine Corps using sarin gas during the war in Afghanistan in The third season tackles two controversial topics in news reporting.
The first is the subject of citizen journalism , and the season begins with the Boston Marathon bombing and its subsequent investigation, which was quite significantly affected by the reports of social media users. The other major topic is whistleblowing, explored when major character Neal Sampat is contacted by an anonymous source, who leaks details of the US government's complicity in an atrocity in an African state.
