The News
National Television News BroadcastingDescription
Event Involvements
Events with structured involvement data
The News functions as the medium that interrupts the private moment: the bartender relays a breaking bulletin about a terrorist bombing, forcing Sam and Toby to reorient toward national concerns and end their conversation.
Manifests via the bar television/newscast and the bartender's verbal relay of the bulletin.
Exerts agenda-setting power by shifting attention from local political despair to international crisis.
Demonstrates how media interrupts and reframes political narratives, subordinating local campaign drama to national security stories.
The News appears as the factual engine that introduces the terrorist bombing into the scene; the bartender relays a bulletin, converting a private political moment into an immediate national security concern and redirecting the characters’ priorities.
Manifested via the television broadcast observed in the bar and reported by the bartender.
Acts as an external authority that can interrupt and reorder private agendas; exerts informational power without direct accountability in the scene.
Demonstrates how media interrupts and dictates the tempo of political life, forcing private moments into public response.
The News functions as the immediate information vector: the bartender cites the television bulletin about the bombing, which changes the characters' priorities. The news thus collapses the private into the public and redirects action.
Manifested via the bar's TV broadcast and the bartender relaying the bulletin.
Exerts agenda-setting power, interrupting intimate moments and forcing public actors to respond.
Demonstrates media's role in rapidly converting private political moments into national crises requiring official attention.
The News (media at large) functions as the constant background that links private and public moments — it carries the live feed, broadcasts descriptions, and provides the imagery (home movies on hospital TVs) that tether staff to personal memory even as they work.
By broadcasting the live feed and carrying images and commentary that keep staff and public informed.
Holds agenda-setting power; the White House must work with media to shape narrative, but the media also pressures for details.
Demonstrates media's role in amplifying crisis, shaping perception, and forcing administrative discipline; personal footage intersects with public story.
Editorial hunger for sensational detail vs. ethical restraint when dealing with family trauma (implied tension).
The News as an institution frames and amplifies the private moments (home movies) and the public briefing; it shapes staff perception and urgency, and its continuous coverage pressures the White House to control the narrative.
Through live feeds, home-movie clips on TVs, and the nonstop presence of reporters in the press room.
Amplifies or constrains White House messaging; exerts editorial pressure on officials through persistent questioning.
Highlights the press's role in shaping public perception and the administration's need to manage optics tightly during an emergency.
Competitive pressures among reporters to get the most sensitive details clash with official requests for restraint.
The News appears via television broadcasts in the hospital room, airing home movies of the Bartlet family; its coverage collapses public trauma into private spaces and functions narratively as the catalyst that interrupts Toby's intimacy.
Via televised home-movie montage and news coverage playing on the hospital room television.
The News exerts soft power over private actors by shaping perception and forcing public events into intimate settings; it operates above individual agency by controlling what images are seen.
The News collapses institutional boundaries, making private hospital rooms part of the national theater and pressuring staff to respond to public optics as well as operational needs.
The News organization factors into the event by broadcasting home movies of the Bartlet family, shaping the emotional tenor of the hospital room and triggering Toby's reaction; its editorial choices transform private footage into public narrative and emotional framing.
Via televised coverage and home movie montages shown in public spaces like hospital rooms.
Exerts soft cultural power by mediating private family images to a national audience and influencing emotional responses of individuals and institutions.
By turning private family imagery into public spectacle, the news shapes institutional responses, humanizes national leaders, and compresses private grief into a shared national drama.
Editorial decisions about what footage to run reflect newsroom priorities for emotional engagement and ratings; no internal hospital-like chain-of-command but competition for audience attention.
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Events mentioning this organization
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