Atlantic Cable News anchor Will McAvoy (Jeff Daniels) refuses to underestimate his viewers in the first trailer for the final season of HBO’s “The Newsroom,” released Friday.
“Americans are serious people, and we can reflect that back in the worst of times,” McAvoy tells his newsroom staff. “We don’t do good TV; we do the news.”
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Series creator and hands-on showrunner Aaron Sorkin has modeled each of the show’s first two critically acclaimed seasons after actual events that dominated news coverage in recent years, including the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, the assassination attempt of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and the Occupy Wall Street movement.
Season 3 seems to be more of the same with Will, fictional producer MacKenzie McHale (Emily Mortimer) and reporter Neal Sampat (Dev Patel) applying their journalistic ideals to one of 2013’s biggest stories — the Boston Marathon Bombings. It was a watershed moment for social media news coverage, as well as a tutorial for some outlets on how not to cover breaking news.
Both issues are again addressed in the trailer.
“Two times in 24 hours law enforcement had to publicly disclose information, because either a paper or website put someone’s life in danger — he’s hiding in a boat in someones back yard? Id like confirmation on that before I say it on TV,” screams McAvoy in the trailer.
“Social media is going to solve this crime,” Neal adds.
We also see the ACN crew handling a story about classified government documents that could land a reporter in jail — a pretty clear reference to Edward Snowden leaking National Security Agency and having to eventually flee the country to escape capture.
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“We need to get the trust of the audience back, it’s a moral imperative,” Will assures them.
Watch the video above.
“The Newsroom” returns for Season 3 Sunday, November 9 on HBO.