The Newsroom is too frequently distracted by personal drama and fake scandal to work as an examination of journalism in the 21st century.

A message for The Newsroom: Stop trying so hard.

Season two was promoted with an ad campaign dripping with melodrama: anchor Will McAvoy (Jeff Daniels, Quad) standing in a desert, tie flapping in the breeze. Taglines like “Together they stand alone” ran on posters. HBO accordingly promoed the life out of the show.

The new season is already sappy with drama — unnecessary tension in a show about the news, which is perpetually dramatic.

The show’s will-they-won’t-they couple Jim Harper (John Gallagher Jr., Short Term 12) and Maggie Jordan (Alison Pill, To Rome with Love) are separated by states — soon to be continents, when Maggie takes off to Africa — all to avoid heartbreak. Atlantis Cable News is in the middle of an investigation for a critical misstep. Will is rekindling a relationship with the last person on Earth he’d ever date — gossip columnist Nina Howard (Hope Davis, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit). Jim has made frequent rants — reminiscent of Will’s first-season tirades — on the Mitt Romney press bus.

It’s illogical in the worst ways for a show that preached an ensemble cast and taking a sensationalism-free look at the news industry. The show has become less about its first-season goals — a cast of qualified characters telling stories — and more about the off-camera spectacle.

But the show’s most egregious fault is its breaking of its unspoken promise to build episodes based on factual events. The Newsroom’s key appeal was its coverage of real news stories by fictional characters. Some of its most gripping scenes were in season one’s coverage of Osama bin Laden’s killing and the Arab Spring.

The spiraling plotline has become Operation Genoa and the characters’ hunt to discover whether the U.S. military used sarin gas in Pakistan. Operation Genoa is fictitious, but it’s based on CNN’s Operation Tailwind story in 1998 that similarly accused the U.S. Army of using sarin gas during the Vietnam War. It was then uncovered that the accusation was incorrect, after which CNN retracted its story and fired producers.

News is a delicate fabric. Tearing the fabric is senseless. The stories exist in tandem; it’s in them that humanity sees its greatest strengths and worst mistakes. But the fabrication of a fake military scandal — in the midst of hundreds of other important stories — nullifies the work of the previous season. Making up this plotline is the last straw in destroying the credibility of the show’s portrayal of real events.

It’s ironic that Will’s “mission to civilize” the news and the ideal principles that the show stands for doesn’t extend to its own TV. Creator Aaron Sorkin should take a leaf from his own book and return to an effortless walk-and-talk mentality of covering the already rocky 21st century.

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