http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/09/arts/television/hbos-the-newsroom-draws-backlash-over-rape-plot.html 2014-12-09 01:18:56 HBO’s ‘The Newsroom’ Draws Backlash Over Rape Plot An episode of “The Newsroom” on HBO has generated a backlash against an argument that some critics found disparaged the credibility of rape victims. === Even by his own reputation for stirring up intense reaction from critics and viewers of his work, Aaron Sorkin kicked off an unusually fevered backlash on Sunday night with an episode of his HBO series, “The Newsroom.” Mr. Sorkin, in an astonishing case of prescience, created a plot that hewed closely to the In examining issues about the inability — or unwillingness — of the legal system to respond adequately to rape victims, as well as how journalism ethics parallel the legal system, Mr. Sorkin presented an argument that some critics found disparaged the credibility of rape victims. Mr. Sorkin said on Monday that he had intended the plotline to be thought provoking, as he did with much of his work. “Most of the time the conflict on the show is about ideas, and frequently those conflicts stoke a lot of passionate debate in the days that follow a broadcast,” he said in the interview, conducted by email. “I understood going in that there would be backlash — some of it thoughtful, some of it less so — but that’s a bad reason not to write something.” In the episode, Don Keefer, a television news producer, was ordered to find a college student who had started a website designed to allow women to anonymously name the men who raped them. He was told to persuade her to go on live television to confront one of the men she had accused. He found the woman, who argued passionately that the legal system had failed her and so many other rape victims. Don told her that he found her credible and found the accused “sketchy,” but could still not square the idea of naming men accused of rape with his sense of fairness, which he tied to the American judicial system. To simply accuse the man on television meant no jury and no presentation of evidence, the producer argued. And when Mary, the student, countered that her assailant was innocent until proven guilty only in the legal sense, the producer said he felt “morally obligated” not to name a person who has not formally been charged with a crime. Those words were widely cited in a fusillade of criticism online. One of the show’s writers, Alena Smith, said she was Emily Nussbaum, the TV critic for The New Yorker, On the Jezebel website, Julianne Escobedo Shepherd And Libby Hill, The latter criticism dovetails with long-expressed criticism that Mr. Sorkin has tended to undervalue his female characters. Some critics questioned HBO for running the episode even as the details of the University of Virginia case — and An HBO spokesman, Quentin Schaffer, said on Monday that the network had no issue with how the episode paralleled contemporary events. “ 'The Newsroom’ smartly explores events that have happened or could happen,” he said. Mr. Sorkin argued that he “designed the story so that Mary, the Princeton student, would have our sympathy,” adding, “The two men she accuses are kept off screen.” He said: “I cast a great actress who feels like our sister, our daughter, our roommate. I did everything I could to make it difficult not to believe her so that Don’s declaration that he’s obligated to believe ‘the sketchy guy’ would be excruciating.” “Let me put it a simpler way,” he said. “She’s not a rape victim. She is an alleged rape victim and I wanted to make it harder for us to remember that. It’s easy to side with the accused in ‘To Kill a Mockingbird.’ I made it less easy last night.” Mr. Sorkin did not dispute that he “had excused” Ms. Smith from the writers’ room, but,