HBO

The Newsroom takes place roughly two years in the past, where the ACN News Night team strives to virtuously and judiciously report the news as it happens. By reenacting headline-making happenings, Aaron Sorkin's HBO series comments both on those happenings and the way they were handled by journalists. So it's worth asking: How does The Newsroom's version of events fit in with the way these events really unfolded in the media?

Not always perfectly--but not always incorrectly, either. Here's how the second episode of The Newsroom's second season compares to the real-life news coverage and media narratives of the time period it portrays.

The Newsroom: At a September 19 editorial meeting, staffers laugh off Neal's pitch on the emergence of a leaderless resistance movement known as Occupy Wall Street. On September 21, he is arrested at an Occupy Wall Street rally in Zuccotti Park.

The news: On September 19, much of the media perhaps was laughing at the notion of Occupy Wall Street being newsworthy. Keith Olbermann, though, was a step ahead. On that night's edition of Countdown With Keith Olbermann, he asked why major American news outlets had thus far ignored the protests in Zuccotti Park. "If this [were] a Tea Party rally in front of Wall Street about Ben Bernanke putting stimulus funds into it, that [would be] the lead story on every network newscast. How is that disconnect possible in this country today, with so many different outlets and so many different ways of transmitting news?"