Jim Harper says Mack is an American citizen because her father was British ambassador whilst Thatcher was Prime Minister, but "A person born in the United States to a foreign diplomatic officer accredited to the United States is not subject to the jurisdiction of United States law. Therefore, that person cannot be considered a U.S. citizen at birth under the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution.
The Deepwater Horizon fire started a couple of minutes before 9 in the evening, April 20, New York time. News Night runs from "8 to 9". This means that the program would already have been over when the news alert came in. Will - in the broadcast - states it as having started at around "2, Eastern Time".
After dismissing Jim Harper from the newsroom, Don walks away saying "there's a truck covering the Rose Bowl and I can't get in touch with them." The month is superimposed as April, however, the Rose Bowl is held in January.
Will states the US is 178th in infant mortality. The US at that time was 45th in infant mortality.
The letters on Mackenzie's notepad at the beginning of the episode, when she writes "IT'S NOT... BUT IT CAN BE," don't match the ones at the end of the episode. It's most noticeable in the words NOT and CAN.
During the newscast, we see the first reporter's name on the screen as Sherrie Stone. In the show's closing credits, it's spelled Sherri Stone.
Reference is made to a reporter having been embedded with troops in the Vietnam War, but embedding reporters did not start until after the Vietnam War. One of the first instances was the Falklands War in 1982. It was somewhat prevalent in the First Gulf War and the initial stages of the War In Afghanistan in 2001. Criticism to the lack of insight in these wars led to changes and it is from 2003 - the Iraq War - that the term "embedded journalism" came into wide use.
When Will McAvoy is interviewing Eric Neal from the MMS, he verifies numerous facts including the number of inspectors (56), the number of wells (35,591), and the fact that each well is supposed to be inspected once a month. Doing the math, McAvoy says that this is equal to 635 wells per inspector, which would require inspecting two wells per day, six days a week for a year. This statistic doesn't take into account that each well is supposed to be checked once per month. The real stat should have been that each inspector has to inspect 21 wells per day, 365 days a year.