The Newroom Factroom - Amen

by Jonathan Bredemeyer

[Update: So this episode got nailed pretty hard in some circles. They REALLY dislike Sorkin's juxtaposition of combined events against one another.  The story's a story, and he gets to the point in an hour by referencing multiple events simultaneously. Admire the craftsmanship even if you disagree with the point... which was obviously missed.]

Photo: HBO

Hola, y bienvenido to this series of articles that examines whatever facts we like on Aaron Sorkin's The Newsroom. If you need a reminder of what happened in this episode, it was posted last week. I'm sick of regurgitating the regular rules repetitiously each time, so read up or just be reasonable. Accurate, potentially accurate, or inaccurate, and we're off...

• Hosni Mubarack gave a 17-minute speech in which he said he would not resign amidst thousands of protesters calling for democracy in Egypt, while at the same time the Wisconsin governor was held hostage by protesters.
• [Audience:] "Accurate-smacurate" [...if this were a Studio 60 bit...] 
• Not sure why, but every journalist fluent in English felt the need to establish the speech was, in fact, 17 minutes in length. Here it is, so yes that part's true, as is all the Egypt coverage.
• It gets complicated by the Wisconsin thingamadoole. Yes, there were teachers protesting Scott Walker's proposed changes to unions, but not trapping him in a newspaper office.
• The 'trapping' probably refers to Wisconsin Senator Glenn Grothman who gets "chased, trapped by hecklers" a few weeks later.
• The Egypt government shut down the internet and left only an ISP called 'Noor' up, because it linked to their stock exchange, with 83 routers.
• Accurate
• The government absolutely did that, and here's how, but the dates in the show are not quite right. By February 2nd, the internet was back on. 
• Kahlid Salim was an underground blogger who reported updates on the revolution in early 2011.
• Incorrect... in the best way possible.
• If you thought you recognized the young Egyptian's name when he announced it over Skype, you no doubt got chills. The 'Kahlid Salim' you saw was most likely a tribute to  Khaled Saeed whose death sparked this entire revolution. On January 25th, 2011, the day the revolution started, he was dead. He died June 6th the year before. This seems to be a depiction of his role had he not been beaten to death by two corrupt police officers. Without his death, the revolutions probably would not have happened. 

Rush Limbaugh quotes and conflicts of interest of supreme court judges (based on which parties they attended) are not facts worth checking.  Although, Limbaugh uses enough sarcasm and the Kochs spread around enough money that you can find an enraging quote or an unethical money trail every other day in news reported in early 2011. Happy watching.