In season 1 each episode is built around a major news event from the recent past , such as the Deepwater Horizon oil spill or the killing of Osama Bin Laden . This acts as a background for the interpersonal drama , as well as providing a sense of familiarity , as the audience is likely to know the context and so not require too much explanation of events . Sorkin has said the news events on the show " will always be real " , which , for him , " became a kind of creative gift . For one thing , the audience knows more than the characters do , which is kind of fun . And it gives me the chance to have the characters be smarter than we were . " However , he has also said " i t is a romanticised , idealised newsroom , a sort of a heightened newsroom – it is not meant to be a documentary . " The second season features a story arc in which the '' News Night '' team has reported , and been forced to retract , a false news story about the United States Marine Corps using Sarin gas during the war in Afghanistan in 2009 . This story is based on a real-life news scandal from 1998 , in which CNN and '' TIME '' were both criticized for reporting a dubious and unreliably sourced story that the United States had used Sarin during the Operation Tailwind excursion in the Vietnam War
Deepwater Horizon oil spill
Deepwater Horizon oil spill
The Newsroom (American TV series)