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Showing a renewed commitment to journalistic fairness in the aftermath of Aaron Sorkin's shocking exposure of their anti-Sorkin agenda last week, in which the Studio 60 showrunner decried the paper's unacceptable reliance on negative quotes from "disgruntled" individuals whose level of entertainment industry success falls far short of his criteria for having a valid opinion, the LAT today offers equal time to those who have self-published positive words about Studio 60 on the internets:

Dan Hindmarch is a 32-year-old TV writer who has written for "The Unit." On Dec. 5 Hindmarch posted a blog on his MySpace page titled "In Defense of Studio 60." In an e-mail interview Hindmarch said he routinely has to defend the show from his friends who work in television comedy. "Similarly 'House' and 'Grey's Anatomy' must be defended from people who work in medicine," he wrote. "It should be understood: 'Studio 60' does not represent television reality any more than 'The West Wing' represented political (reality)." [...]

In the blog Hindmarch applauds Sorkin for deeming the TV writing profession worthy of television depiction, and for taking risks with subject matter. "If 'Studio 60' goes down, it means that everybody on TV's gotta be doctors or lawyers or cops or related, and that's a slight to the medium of television," he wrote. "... It means that writing should be procedural, that experimentation is verboten, and that failure will be predetermined by focus groups." These things, he wrote, "cannot stand."

We certainly hope that Sorkin finds the professional resumés of his newly discovered defenders adequate, allowing all parties involved to move on from this regrettable episode, and freeing the celebrated, peer-beloved writer from taking yet another swipe at the Times by encouraging Sorkin-endorsed "real comedy writers" Stephen Colbert, Tina Fey, and Seth Meyers to take out a full page ad in Variety offering their presumably glowing endorsements of his show.