# What, no The Newsroom thread? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [November 10, 2014, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-no-the-newsroom-thread/704206 "2014-11-10T01:58:13Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Shalmanese](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shalmanese](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shalmanese)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2014, 10:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-no-the-newsroom-thread/704206/21 "2014-11-14T10:26:55Z")
> [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > I assume that Neal either used the hardware switch to put the computer in airplane mode, or went into the BIOS and disabled the wireless and wired network ports. > > But why did he need to go out and buy an airgapped computer? Couldn’t he just have wiped an existing computer and installed Windows or Linux on it? > > And when Neal said that he told the source to put additional data on a CD-R, I knew he was in trouble. [Why you air gap a computer](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/10/air_gaps.html) ---
**Author:** ![Misnomer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/misnomer/32/14897_2.png) [@Misnomer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Misnomer)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2014, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-no-the-newsroom-thread/704206/22 "2014-11-14T15:57:38Z")
> [@Joey\_P](#): > > I beleive he was at home when he unboxed the new computer and, like I said, it likely would have latched on to someone’s unsecured network. Are there really computers that will automatically connect to the first unsecured network they find without any user interaction? My laptop and iPad (and phone) love to tell me when networks are available, but actually connecting to anything takes a button press or two. The only time “autoconnecting” happens is when I’ve connected to a network in the past and told the device to automatically re-connect in the future. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2014, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-no-the-newsroom-thread/704206/23 "2014-11-18T01:50:39Z")
I’m getting tired of the constant reminders of how super-ethical these characters are, but I’ll watch the remaining episodes anyway, seeing as we’re near the end. ---
**Author:** ![fiddlesticks](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fiddlesticks/32/18129_2.png) [@fiddlesticks](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fiddlesticks)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2014, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-no-the-newsroom-thread/704206/24 "2014-11-18T18:32:46Z")
Interesting reading on what you **should** do if you are a reporter and find your self in possession of classified documents and the FBI comes by. Short answer, the ACN “first amendment” attorney character was awful in a lot of respects. [The Newsroom: What to Do When the FBI Breaks into Your Encrypted Filing Cabinet - The Intercept](https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/11/17/newsroom-fbi-breaks-encrypted-filing-cabinet/) ---
**Author:** ![Joey\_P](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/919ad9/32.png) [@Joey\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joey_P)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2014, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-no-the-newsroom-thread/704206/25 "2014-11-18T18:57:00Z")
Can someone tell me how the menu got to Neal? All Will said to the intern was that she should put the menus on his desk and then after the people showed up she should come back and pick them up. She seemed very confused…confused enough that there’s no way she would know that they should go to Neal. Unless, I suppose, in addition to writing RUN NEAL\*, he also wrote “Intern, bring this to Neal, he’s probably hiding in the parking lot, he’s the brown guy who’s name you don’t know”. And that’s another thing, they probably should have come up with a code. #1 means come back up, you’ll be out in 10 days, #3 means run…and then order that so it gets delivered and the FBI isn’t wondering when nothing shows up. ---
**Author:** ![EllisDee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ellisdee/32/4531_2.png) [@EllisDee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EllisDee)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2014, 7:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-no-the-newsroom-thread/704206/26 "2014-11-18T19:22:30Z")
> [@Joey\_P](#): > > Can someone tell me how the menu got to Neal? All Will said to the intern was that she should put the menus on his desk and then after the people showed up she should come back and pick them up. She seemed very confused…confused enough that there’s no way she would know that they should go to Neal. > Unless, I suppose, in addition to writing RUN NEAL\*, he also wrote “Intern, bring this to Neal, he’s probably hiding in the parking lot, he’s the brown guy who’s name you don’t know”. I’m not sure I follow. After collecting the menu from Will, she clearly read it, just like she would normally do. (Her main job appears to be getting food.) When she saw the giant capital letters “NEAL RUN” I think she was able to crack the code that the message was intended for Neal. ---
**Author:** ![Joey\_P](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/919ad9/32.png) [@Joey\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joey_P)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2014, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-no-the-newsroom-thread/704206/27 "2014-11-18T19:24:50Z")
> [@EllisDee](#): > > I’m not sure I follow. After collecting the menu from Will, she clearly read it, just like she would normally do. (Her main job appears to be getting food.) When she saw the giant capital letters “NEAL RUN” I think she was able to crack the code that the message was intended for Neal. Okay, I didn’t see that. ---
**Author:** ![Queen\_Tonya](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/4491bb/32.png) [@Queen\_Tonya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Queen_Tonya)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2014, 12:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-no-the-newsroom-thread/704206/28 "2014-11-19T00:02:52Z")
I was sorta thinking “yay for sorority girl” for playing her tiny but important part there. I can think of dozens of coworkers off the top of my head that wouldn’t have followed those instructions to drop the menus off and pick them back up without asking for paragraphs of explanation. And they certainly wouldn’t have figured out to get it to Neal, but would have barged back in to the office with the FBI loudly asking “I don’t know what you want to eat, why does this say NEAL RUN on it?” It may be that I just have extraordinarily dumb coworkers, but still. Yay blondie. I’m liking the new season better than the previous ones, more humor and it’s more compelling to watch these new story lines since we don’t know what’ll happen next. ---
**Author:** ![Joey\_P](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/919ad9/32.png) [@Joey\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joey_P)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2014, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-no-the-newsroom-thread/704206/29 "2014-11-19T00:26:44Z")
> [@Queen\_Tonya](#): > > I was sorta thinking “yay for sorority girl” for playing her tiny but important part there. I can think of dozens of coworkers off the top of my head that wouldn’t have followed those instructions to drop the menus off and pick them back up without asking for paragraphs of explanation. And they certainly wouldn’t have figured out to get it to Neal, but would have barged back in to the office with the FBI loudly asking “I don’t know what you want to eat, why does this say NEAL RUN on it?” > > It may be that I just have extraordinarily dumb coworkers, but still. Yay blondie. > > I’m liking the new season better than the previous ones, more humor and it’s more compelling to watch these new story lines since we don’t know what’ll happen next. I may be misremembering, but she may have been yelled at in the past for second guessing Will. She may be one of the several people that’s he’s given the ‘just do what I tell you, I know what I’m doing’ speech to. Does Neal even know who his source is? I would have assumed he’s just a random person on the internet? Does he have enough information to give the FBI a real name or even the ability to give them enough to get an IP address? (I assume the answer is yes or he A)wouldn’t be in trouble and B)wouldn’t be taken seriously by Mack. ---
**Author:** ![Queen\_Tonya](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/4491bb/32.png) [@Queen\_Tonya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Queen_Tonya)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2014, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-no-the-newsroom-thread/704206/30 "2014-11-19T00:30:07Z")
Hmm, that is a good question. Neal kept doing the “then he, or she, did X and I did Y. Then they, or he or whatever, did Z” when he was telling the story to the bigwigs the first time. I guess we’re just supposed to assume in further conversations with the source, Neal learned their name? ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2014, 1:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-no-the-newsroom-thread/704206/31 "2014-11-19T01:52:02Z")
As far as we know, Neal _doesn’t_ know the name of his source. ---
**Author:** ![Fair\_Rarity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fair_rarity/32/153_2.png) [@Fair\_Rarity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fair_Rarity)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2014, 2:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-no-the-newsroom-thread/704206/32 "2014-11-19T02:01:55Z")
I knew that they mispronounced WaterTOWN before I watched E1, but it still made me irrationally mad when I heard WaterTON myself. ---
**Author:** ![not\_what\_you\_d\_expect](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/not_what_you_d_expect/32/3246_2.png) [@not\_what\_you\_d\_expect](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/not_what_you_d_expect)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2014, 2:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-no-the-newsroom-thread/704206/33 "2014-11-19T02:04:54Z")
I thought he did know. Didn’t Will tell him to give him the name before he ran? ---
**Author:** ![VarlosZ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/d78d45/32.png) [@VarlosZ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VarlosZ)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2014, 2:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-no-the-newsroom-thread/704206/34 "2014-11-19T02:35:30Z")
I liked the first episode of the season quite a bit; any time the show decides to focus on the nuts & bolts of running a newsroom, it seems to do well. Episode 2 was a little dicier. Several things, I thought, just didn’t come off, and I especially wasn’t buying Maggie’s whole thing with the EPA guy on the train. Not that she overheard something like that, not that she’d use it, not that (if she was going to use it) she’d let him know, not that he’d be totally uncomprehending when she decided not to use it, and definitely not that he’d be so blown away by her integrity that he’d decide to reward her with all sorts of on-the-record goodies. Question: what good does it do Neal to run? He’s not going to live the rest of his life on the lam, and if he’s going to rely on public opinion to protect him as a journalist (which would seem to be his best bet), then being a fugitive from justice would, I imagine, tend to undercut that. I don’t see how that’s in his best interest at all. I would understand if it was an impulsive decision and he was afraid, but it was Will (a lawyer) who told him to go. I don’t get it. ---
**Author:** ![Misnomer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/misnomer/32/14897_2.png) [@Misnomer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Misnomer)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2014, 2:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-no-the-newsroom-thread/704206/35 "2014-11-19T14:58:18Z")
I just watched the episode last night. Good stuff. > [@VarlosZ](#): > > definitely not that he’d be so blown away by her integrity that he’d decide to reward her with all sorts of on-the-record goodies I didn’t get that from him at all: I got “what can I give you so that you won’t release what you overheard??” Even after she repeatedly assured him she wasn’t going to use what she recorded, he didn’t fully trust her (with good reason). He gave her the embargoed report out of fear, not as a reward. > [@VarlosZ](#): > > Question: what good does it do Neal to run? I was wondering that, too! That made absolutely no sense to me. I also found myself wondering, “Would it really be the _FBI_ storming the newsroom for a national security incident?” But that was more idle curiosity than a sense of anything being wrong. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2014, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-no-the-newsroom-thread/704206/36 "2014-11-19T15:13:28Z")
I was bothered less that Neal got the message from Will than that Don stupidly bought that stock based on the embargoed information that Sloan had. Surely they have regular training on insider information and so forth. ---
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2014, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-no-the-newsroom-thread/704206/37 "2014-11-19T15:25:50Z")
> [@Fair\_Rarity](#): > > I knew that they mispronounced WaterTOWN before I watched E1, but it still made me irrationally mad when I heard WaterTON myself. That’s my reaction in “Homeland” every time Carrie says “Kuh-BOOL”. I want to throw something at the TV. No career Foreign Service type would ever make that mistake. ---
**Author:** ![Joey\_P](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/919ad9/32.png) [@Joey\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joey_P)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2014, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-no-the-newsroom-thread/704206/38 "2014-11-19T15:35:35Z")
> [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > I was bothered less that Neal got the message from Will than that Don stupidly bought that stock based on the embargoed information that Sloan had. Surely they have regular training on insider information and so forth. Regular training!? He doesn’t need regular training to know what insider trading is. Of course, as long as he didn’t buy some ginourmous amount of it, he should be okay. ---
**Author:** ![randwill](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/a3d4f5/32.png) [@randwill](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/randwill)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2014, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-no-the-newsroom-thread/704206/39 "2014-11-19T16:49:13Z")
I liked it when the EPA guy on the train said to Maggie, “You’re doing a monolog.” and she said, “Where I work, everybody does that.” 😉 ---
**Author:** ![EllisDee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ellisdee/32/4531_2.png) [@EllisDee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EllisDee)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2014, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-no-the-newsroom-thread/704206/40 "2014-11-24T20:29:00Z")
That interview with the EPA guy was a masterpiece. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-no-the-newsroom-thread/704206.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-no-the-newsroom-thread/704206.md?page=3)