It's pretty clear that the DOD didn't start to admit this testing program of its own volition, but because of a dogged media -- in this instance, CBS News. This is exactly the kind of journalism that Sorkin's Newsroom philosophy is meant to celebrate and encourage. Over and over again, the characters on the HBO show declare a passionate commitment to telling the truth even if it's unpopular, to reporting important stories even when powerful enemies try to keep them quiet. In the pilot, which takes place on April 20, 2010, much drama is built up around early bits of information emerging about the Gulf oil spill. An early lead that Halliburton was negligent is brought to the attention of senior producer Jim (John Gallagher Jr.), and he and Neal (Dev Patel) want to tell the world. However, Don (Thomas Sadoski), the executive producer of the 10pm show, tries to block them: "You're wrong about Halliburton? And that will be the first sentence of your bio, forever. They will own you... They will have their own record label. They will have their own theme park." Yet the pilot revolves around News Night anchor Will (Jeff Daniels) committing to reform the news and quit pandering, so of course they go up against Halliburton. Because an informed electorate is essential to democracy, as executive producer Mackenzie (Emily Mortimer) reminds Will. In later episodes, they take on the Koch Brothers, voter ID laws, and the Tea Party -- in defiance of explicit instructions from network owner Leona Lansing (Jane Fonda).
Sorkin even seems to hold that it was corporate pressure, not journalistic standards, which forced Dan Rather to vacate the once-hallowed anchor's chair on CBS News after his infamous report that a young George Bush didn't fulfill his required service commitment at the Texas National Air Guard. At one point, worrying that someone might be trying to bait Will with an incendiary tip just so he can be disgraced, Mackenzie wonders if he is "being Dan-Rathered." Elsewhere in Season 1, Charlie informs Will: "Dan got it right." (Dan Rather happens to agree: "I am not at CBS now because I and my team reported a true story," he stated in April 2012, a few years after his exit. "Nobody has ever proven that the documents were not what they purported to be.")
But Sorkin did not decide to write about the career costs of reporting true stories in today's media climate. His takeaway from the scandal over CNN's story on Tailwind is very different: he seems to have focused chiefly on how difficult journalism can be, how an error in judgment can ruin your career and threaten an entire organization. It doesn't seem to occur to him that the U.S. government might have tried to cover up an embarrassing story, or that the corporate media might have been complicit. In contrast to the support he expressed for Rather's position, Sorkin's view of the Tailwind aftermath seems completely oblivious to the objections raised by the reporters themselves.
He Said, She Said
Producers Smith and Oliver's lengthy rebuttal to CNN states: "In a June 18 meeting, [CNN President] Rick Kaplan said this was a public-relations problem, not a journalism problem, and that he did not want this controversy to progress to congressional hearings with "3,000' members of the establishment on one side of the room and CNN and members of the Special Forces on the other. During that same meeting, Kaplan and [CNN CEO Tom] Johnson expressed their concern about the pressure they were receiving from Henry Kissinger and Colin Powell and the threat of a cable boycott by veterans groups." If that quote is accurate, it suggests that the executives were not concerned primarily with whether the reporting was factual, but with the size of the opposition to it.
Oliver and Smith further alleged that at the height of the hubbub, "Kaplan and Johnson gagged us from publicly defending the broadcast, and pulled Pamela Hill and Jack Smith from a scheduled appearance on CNN's Reliable Sources program. Nevertheless, CNN continued to air unopposed criticism about the broadcast without any fairness or balance on the Reliable Sources program and with a news report from the Special Forces convention."
Smith and Oliver did try to salvage the story and keep it alive. CNN's former military adviser, retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Perry Smith, criticized Tailwind's producers in print as misguided conspiracy theorists: "If nerve gas had been used in the Vietnam War, thousands of people would have known--commanders, pilots, soldiers, load crew members, munitions storage people, intelligence officers, supply officials, transportation officials, database managers, historians, enemy soldiers." But in a 1999 piece Oliver penned about the controversy in the American Journalism Review, she quipped that the Maj. Gen. might be "relieved to hear that some of the people he describes have in fact volunteered statements corroborating the use of nerve gas and the killing of defectors. We continue to receive calls." Moreover, she added: "It appears Tailwind was not an isolated incident."
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