NBC's newsroom comedy Great News let the cat out of the bag on the sorry state of modern journalism: If you want to make it in the news biz, you can't be impartial, you have to pick a side and create drama.
In the January 4 episode "Catfight," veteran anchorman Chuck (John Michael Higgins) is horrified to discover that his old school brand of impartiality doesn't fly anymore.
His younger cohost Portia (Nicole Richie) comes to him to try to explain that things just aren't the way they used to be and he has to get with the harsh way news media works today.
Portia: If you listened to me, you wouldn't be in this mess.
Chuck: Please help me, Portia. I'll give you anything. How about a $25 gift card to Coconuts?
Portia: Look, I'm sorry that impartiality in journalism is dead, but this is where we are now. It's prison rules. You either pick a side, or everyone kicks the crap out of you.
It all starts when Chuck discovers that the alt-right website "Blightbarf" (no prizes for guessing which website that is supposed to be) is hailing him as a right-wing hero for taking down his young, liberal cohost. The headline reads: "Right-wing anchor slams liberal bitch over climate change hoax." Chuck and Portia look over the footage of the previous night's broadcast to see what this "slam" could have been, because neither can remember anything adversarial. The closest thing they can find is something vaguely resembling an eyeroll when Chuck has an issue with his contact lens.
Chuck's not upset that he's considered right-wing versus left-wing, he's upset that either side would have claimed him as their own because he prides himself on being completely impartial. We flash to a memory of Chuck at a baseball game wearing a shirt that simply says "Baseball" and, as the teams argue over a call, he's yelling, "Each team has a valid perspective on this!" He is that careful to stay objective.
The real problem, they discover, is that he's wearing a red MAGA tie. Chuck is completely confused because, at the request of network brass, he's been wearing a plain green tie all week. The truth comes out that they had him wear that tie so producers could green-screen right-wing motifs onto his ties (MAGA, the Texas flag, Obama with devil horns, and an animated tie that shows a bomb being dropped on Hillary Clinton) "to drum up controversy."
Now that Chuck has all of these new fans, Portia can't understand why he's upset. Chuck explains, "I want fans who like me for the right reasons: Because I'm impartial and I'm trustworthy." He decides he has to clear this up on the air, but Portia warns him that will never fly in today's world. "That is a big mistake, Chuck," she tells him, "Once you've been claimed by either side, you're stuck with it. Look at poor Michael Moore. You think he still wants to be a liberal crusader? You can tell by the way he dresses he clearly just wants to be a pornographer." She's right (about Chuck, I can't say about Michael Moore).
As soon as the broadcast is over, Twitter eviscerates him. Portia says, "The right is calling you a traitor, but spelling it with a 'D,' and listen to what the left is saying: 'Remaining neutral is a privilege reserved for a rich white man.' Congratulations, Chuck. Now both sides hate you." While it was frustrating that they painted conservatives as being uneducated and illiterate, they also painted liberals as being completely insufferable, so maybe we can overlook it just this once.
Chuck ends up being doxxed, trolls are coming at him from all sides online, and he's hiding under his desk at work. Portia finally helps him out by having him say a bunch of nonsense that means nothing but has buzzwords that will placate both sides, so he can go back to being impartial without being attacked - for now. That doesn't change the fact that she was right throughout the whole episode on the current state of the media. They don't want impartiality - they want controversy.
