‘The Newsroom’ season 3: Olivia Munn chimes in on Aaron Sorkin – storyline controversy

“The Newsroom” has always been a pretty thought-provoking show, but this past episode definitely stirred up more conversation than any other during season 3.

Specifically, we are talking about the story where ACN producer Don Keefer tries to convince a Princeton rape victim to not appear on TV to discuss her website, saying that it would make them targets, and cause them to be even more afraid of attacks and public shaming. This story apparently caused a major stir in the writers room, and one writer claimed to have been thrown out by show creator Aaron Sorkin.

One person who has come to the defense of Sorkin is star Olivia Munn, who visited Entertainment Weekly Radio this week and explained that the goal here by the showrunner was to present every side of the story and the reality of such situations, and not to defend Don or act as though his viewpoint was the right one:

“…The reality is that Sorkin writes things so that they can be talked about, and so we show both sides of it,. I think it was important to show what it’s like for women to be a rape victim, want to speak out, and then have somebody come in and say, ‘Hey don’t do that. That’s going to be bad for you.’

“Sorkin wasn’t saying ‘Don’t do that.’ … He was saying ‘This is what happens.’”

The only issue that we feel right now with this is the intentional fallacy. We as viewers do not know what Sorkin intends, and it is unfair to judge the work by this. From our personal standpoint, our biggest critique of the story is mostly that it is very complex, and with there only being two episodes left, we would not have put it into the episode. There is just not enough time to do it justice, and to accurately present every vantage point.