Răzvan Penescu

O minunată pledoarie pentru jurnalism de calitate chiar dacă doar 5% din public e interesat de asta (din deja pomenitul serial Newsroom):

Mackenzie MacHale: You’re terrified you’re going to lose your audience and you’d do anything to get them back. You’re one pitch meeting away from doing the news in 3-D.

Will McAvoy: This isn’t nonprofit theater. It’s advertiser-supported television. You know that, right?

MM: I’d rather do a good show for 100 people than a bad one for a million, if that’s what you’re saying.

WM: What is it you’re talking to me about right now?

MM: I’ve come here to produce a news broadcast that more closely resembles the one we did before you got popular by not bothering anyone, Leno.

WM: I think Jay and I would rather be employed, if it’s all the same to you.

MM: It’s not all the same to me, you punk. I’ve come here to take your IQ and your talent and put it to some patriotic fucking use. And where does it say that a good news show can’t be popular?

WM: Nielsen ratings.

MM: We’re going to do a good news show and make it popular at the same time.

WM: That is impossible.

MM: Between your brains, charm, looks, and affability and my…

WM: Refusal to live in reality.

MM: … expertise in producing you—

WM: It’s impossible, Mac!

MM: Ugh!

WM: Social scientists have concluded that the country is more polarized than at any time since the Civil War. The Civil War.

MM: Yes, people choose the news they want now, but—

WM: People choose the facts they want now. So what you’ve just described is impossible.

MM: Only if you think an overwhelming majority of Americans are preternaturally stupid.

WM: I do.

MM: I don’t. And if you let me, I can prove it. You know what you left out of your sermon? That America is the only country on the planet that, since its birth, has said over and over and over that we can do better. It’s part of our DNA. People will want the news if you give it to them with integrity. Not everybody, not even a lot of people— 5%. And 5% more of anything is what makes the difference in this country. So we can do better.

Tags: Aaron Sorkin, jurnalism, Newsroom