The Newsroom (Season 18, Episode 16)
Premise: A news anchor accuses her network’s powerful chief of rape on live television, and SVU struggles to find colleagues willing to risk their jobs to back her.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 18, Episode 16
- Starring
- Lt. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Det. Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T), Det. Amanda Rollins (Kelli Giddish), Det. Dominick “Sonny” Carisi Jr. (Peter Scanavino), Deputy Chief William Dodds (Peter Gallagher), ADA Rafael Barba (Raúl Esparza), Judge Elana Barth (Jenna Stern), Judge Colin McNamara (Stephen C. Bradbury)
- Guest stars
- Christopher McDonald as Harold Coyle, Bonnie Somerville as Heidi Sorenson, Peyton List as Margery Evans, Mark Moses as George Thanos, J.C. MacKenzie as Counselor Richard Pace
- Ripped from the headlines
- Inspired by the allegations of sexual misconduct against Fox News founder and chairman Roger Ailes and Fox News host Bill O’Reilly.
- Director
- Jono Oliver
- Writers
- Story: Warren Leight & Robert Brooks Cohen & Céline C. Robinson; Story & teleplay: Brianna Yellen & Julie Martin
Summary
“The Newsroom” opens on the set of “HNT Morning Live,” where Benson is a guest alongside actress Davina Delucci, who says her director and co-star raped her on camera during a sex scene. When co-host George Thanos says he cannot imagine it, anchor Heidi Sorenson snaps that it never happened to him, and she says on air that network chief Harold Coyle raped her in his office in January. She then takes it back. The husband of Amy James, a former HNT publicist, tells the squad she killed herself after Coyle raped her and threatened to release tapes he had made of her, and that producer Steven Turner warned them off.
Deputy Chief Dodds, back at work, passes on a complaint from HNT and tells Benson to have a good reason. Pushed off the show in favor of younger anchor Margery Evans, Heidi comes to Benson’s home. She describes years of groping and taped private “fashion shows,” a coerced sex act when she went to apologize to Coyle, and a rape on January 3 after she asked for a promotion, and says Margery was the one person she told. Margery, with her lawyer present, denies it, and Thanos will not go on record. Benson and Dodds question Coyle and his lawyer, Richard Pace; Coyle denies everything and hints that HNT could dig into the internal investigation of Sgt. Mike Dodds’s death. Afterward Dodds apologizes for blaming Benson for his son’s death.
When Margery defends Coyle on air, former anchor Gwendolyn Gates and three other ex-employees come forward, but their claims are misdemeanors too old to charge, except an attempted rape of Alana Reed, 20, Thanos’s former assistant. Thanos agrees to testify. Coyle pleads not guilty and gets $2 million bail, and the judge rules that the other women’s accounts would be more prejudicial than probative. At trial Pace suggests Heidi is angling for a settlement, Thanos backs out after Coyle’s people threaten to expose his daughter’s juvenile drug record, and Margery testifies that Heidi was cheerful the morning of the alleged rape.
Spoiler, the ending: Confronted by Heidi, Margery goes to Coyle’s home and asks for the tape he keeps of her. Her hidden recording catches him ordering her to undress and kneel and then grabbing her; she fights him off and offers to correct her testimony. Faced with the tape, Coyle’s lawyer opens plea talks, and Coyle gets 18 months. Heidi uses her settlement from HNT to start a mentoring program for teenage girls, and Dodds admits to Benson that he has avoided SVU because he still expects to see Mike there.
Why it stands out
- Dodds apologizes to Benson for blaming her for his son Mike’s death, an accusation he made in the season premiere, “Terrorized.”
- Christopher McDonald guest stars as Harold Coyle, with Bonnie Somerville as Heidi Sorenson and Peyton List as Margery Evans.