Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

Cast: Anna Torv, Sam Reid, William McInnes, Michelle Lim Davidson, Chum Ehelepola, Chai Hansen, Marg Downey, Stephen Peacocke, Robert Taylor, Caroline Lee, Maude Davey, Bert LeBonté, Jackson Tozer, Maria Angelico, John Leary, Peter Houghton, Dom Phelan, Tony Rickards, Robert Grubb, Edwina Wren, Rhys Mitchell, Tim Draxl Cullen Gorman, Hany Lee, Meewon Yang, Rohan Mirchandaney, Melissa Jaffer, Anne Charleston, Alexandra Schepisi, Stephen Lopez, Peter Paltos, David Woods, Alex Duncan, David Whiteley, Blair Venn, Keith Brockett, Natalia Novikova.

The moment journalists became celebrities, it could be argued, something special was lost. The bond between wanting to be respected and have respect for the news, for the story, became blurred, eradicated as discerning hard-hitting journalism that sought the truth was replaced by a near fantasy of illusion, commentary, and unsubstantiated opinion, of the non-story being the headline news.

There was a time when such was the gravitas of the presenter or The Newsreader that the tone of lead story would be felt long after they had gone off air, there was no fluff, no segway to a member of the public who wasn’t aware of the full facts of the information being given a platform, all there was between the anchor and the viewer was the camera, the shared experience, the joint moment of realisation that the world was changing before them.

There have been many dramas that have tried to capture what a newsroom was like during the days before mass media coverage, from the brutally funny in the British comedy series Drop The Dead Donkey, the compelling 1976 film Network with a glorious performance by William Holden adding a sense of exploitation to the unfolding tragedy, to the debatable in Anchorman: The Legend Of Ron Burgandy, none have perhaps caught the viewer’s eye as 2012’s The Newsroom, until now, until the Australian television channel ABC discovered it had an absolute winner in reflecting the mid-1980s breaking news through the eyes of its outward looking persona.

Rarely has the news from Australia made an impact on the world stage, and up until the last decade or so when the nation started suffering huge, almost apocalyptic fires, the issue of climate change, and the fierce debates of the rights of the Aboriginal people, Australia to the outside world meant sport, the odd celebrity making good in Hollywood, and dreams of a freedom that surpassed that of those sent to the former colony as prisoners.

Yet the world never stopped coming to the nation, and the news never stopped happening, and as The Newsreader looks at the lives of a station’s production team during the first few months of 1986, what the viewer is left rendered pummelled by the tension of the crew is just how much we forget that events happen to us all, that there is always a local angle in which the story is added to and completed by.

Whether that is in the grief  framed by the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster as 73 seconds into its flight it exploded, the AIDS  crisis that became a worldwide epidemic and which saw many gay men treated with damnation, undeserved fear and disgust, ostracised and outcast by the community, especially in the wake of national blood bank not screening their deposits and causing issues with haemophiliacs and others in need of such a valuable resource, or even the moment in which Russian secrecy almost destroyed half of Northern Europe as the awful moment when the nuclear reactor at Chernobyl blew up, this was world news being bought to the Australian people with honour, exposure and fierce commitment to get the news right.

The legendary U.S. reporter Walter Cronkite had the perfect mantra to which the public should consider in the modern age, “Get it first, but first get it right”, this simple message of reporting should once more be the line in which every journalist and reporter, every want to be social media expert should adhere to, and one that is perfectly examined in the six-part drama, The Newsreader.

With a cast that includes the superb Anna Torv, Sam Reid, and Robert Taylor, and directed by the impressive Emma Freeman, Michael Lucas’ creation is one of sheer guts, of bravery, of intelligent drama fleshed out and given a human quality that is endearing and insightful, The Newsreader is the find of the year, and one that should receive more attention.

As Philip L. Graham wrote, “Journalism is the first rough draft of History”, we must make sure in the future our history is not one dominated by clickbait, by paywalls, or of lies manufactured by the weak, the lazy, and the opportunistic. Ian D. Hall