Before The Morning Show became an Emmy contender (with 16 nominations for its current third season, including outstanding drama series), The Newsroom garnered the TV Academy’s attention by examining the fast-paced world of primetime cable news. The Aaron Sorkin show, which ran on HBO for three seasons starting in 2012, took a West Wing-type approach to TV journalism, presenting the challenge of covering real-life stories from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill to the Boston Marathon bombing.

Jeff Daniels led the cast as Will McAvoy, anchor of the fictional evening news program News Night, whose crew — played by the likes of Emily Mortimer, Sam Waterston and Olivia Munn — are on a mission to cover the news smartly and objectively, ratings be damned. McAvoy sets the tone for the series in its opening scene, with a monologue expounding on why “America is not the greatest country in the world.”

Despite Sorkin’s trademark witty dialogue,...