Refilmed evidence rescued from the catalogue of privileged material that must remain beyond the reach of the distant viewer. Asylum is an animated version of one of those chalk outlines drawn on a sticky pavement around the body of an imagined victim. Those who are unknown, not part of the corporate sensorium, the Mediadrome, are, by definition, fictional. Hence the confusion about what is or not legitimate comment. Say the date is 2180 and the footage has been unearthed and someone has to try and make sense of it and piece it together, but it conforms to nothing that is known of late 20th-century television, which was concerned with biography as embalming.
Promotion is the name of the game.
Only the known are allowed to be known. The living and the dead share an equal status. Lingering reaction shots last longer than the sound-bites. There are no surprises. Writers shouldn't have to put themselves through this terrible self-impersonation, but that's the price of staying at the table.