The Newsroom Factroom - Episode 1

by Jonathan Bredemeyer

If you have good taste (professional TV critics excluded as you can't afford good taste and keep successful careers), you liked The Newsroom.  Aaron Sorkin is good, if not great, at writing TV shows, no in-depth analysis required.  What's going to be interesting about this show is how he hits us over the head with the most dramatic and life-altering events in our recent history, and frames the common American viewpoint in the international opinion of the United States [translation to critic speak: a juxtaposition of the live delivery of historic news onto a fictionally-informed US audience with global statistics].

This series of articles will consider the facts that Sorkin hits with (given that this is history now), and verify this point-of-view that he creates.  Specific facts will be selected based on their dramatic impact, not validity.  These aren't chosen because they are obviously right or obviously wrong.  Facts are chosen because they were/are critical to Sorkin's storyline.  These are taken and determined to be accurate, potentially accurate, or inaccurate.  This is based on internet research from primary sources (and even Wikipedia when they do it best).  Luckily, with the scene set in modern day, these things are available via the web.

• The United States is 7th in literacy in the world.
• Accurate.
• The CIA factbook has U.S. men and women at 99%, but there are other countries with a few tenths of a percentage point higher. Without more effort than this is worth, it a rough tie at someplace between 0-1% of the population not being able to read.
• https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2103.html#us 
•  I'm not sure why the CIA doesn't have any statistics newer than 2003...
• The United States is 27th in math in the world.
• Accurate.
• I can't speak for April 20th, 2010, but it's easy to find that the U.S. was down to 31st in the world by the end of the year.  I guess 27th didn't look as bad as we thought...
• http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/dec/07/world-education-rankings-maths-science-reading
• The United States is 3rd in median household incomes in the world.
• Accurate.
• Dead on. Although I don't think being behind Luxemburg and Norway really bothers anyone...
• http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/economics/oecd-factbook-2010/gross-national-income-per-capita-table_factbook-2010-table37-en
• The United States is 1st in the world for number of adults who believe in Angels.
• Accurate.
• 68% of Americans according to Aaron Sorkin's own show, Studio 60. No really, I'm good with referencing Studio 60 because the research Sorkin did the first time around on the "honey-crusted nutballers" (Matt Albie) is still relevant 2 years before this episode takes place.
• http://www.religionfacts.com/christianity/beliefs/angels.htm
• The United States is 1st in the world in number of incarcerated citizens per capita.
• Accurate.
• This is true today, and the USA is nowhere near anyone else. Not hard to believe we led 2 years ago.
• http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_pri_per_cap-crime-prisoners-per-capita
• The United States is 1st in the world for defense spending.
• Absolutely accurate, and I don't think anyone doubted it for a second.
• www.sipri.org/yearbook/2011/files/SIPRIYB1104-04A-04B.pdf
• The graph on wikipedia of the data is nicer... 
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures 
• Deepwater Horizon depth.
• Accurate, but not in a good context.
• I think xkcd does it justice: http://xkcd.com/1040/large/
• The rate of oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico:
• All over the place.
• This hits right in the middle of some official estimates.  I think it's fair to defer to Wikipedia on this one because the range of the guesstimates is so large.
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill#Spill_flow_rate
• Facts about the Mineral Management Service.
• Accurate. 
• There are loads of news articles on this portion of the government and all the issues around that time. 
• Everyone else was covering the lost prototype of the iPhone 4.
• Yes and no.
• So the phone was lost a month earlier, and if you're up on following blogs, you knew that it was purchased for $5,000.  It seems the major news outlets started running the entire story around that time though, so yes for the official news channels, but no for the internet...
• http://gizmodo.com/5520438/how-apple-lost-the-next-iphone

Hopefully, you enjoyed this article. The Newsroom writers seem to have done their homework, so there probably won't be loads of red text, but you never know... it is an election year...