"Good Night, and Good Luck": Some Thoughts
George Clooney's modest, loving homage to crusading journalism, Good Night, and Good Luck, was never destined to win wide audiences or convert the unconverted. Still, the cinematic valentine to legendary newsman Edward R. Murrow is a nice reminder of a time when a journalism icon appreciated the responsibility of the Fourth Estate.
That might just be the single most salient theme of Good Night, and Good Luck, which centers on how Murrow (portrayed with crisp earnestness by John Sayles' utility player, David Strathairn) finally took televised aim at Commie-baiting Sen. Joe McCarthy.
While Murow's "See It Now" program on McCarthy was welcome and long-overdue, Clooney's film places the episode squarely in context with the TV news troubles that were just beginning to take form. David Halberstam's excellent examination of the news media giants, The Powers That Be, turns a jaundiced eye at Murrow's shot across the bow and what it meant for broadcast news.
From The Powers That Be:
"The new affluence was not by any means matched by public accountability. As for the McCarthy show itself, which CBS would later cite as one of its finest hours, no less an authority than Murrow himself felt it was a symbol not of the network's strength but rather of its unwillingness to accept responsibility. The show had been done by Murrow, not by CBS, he (Murrow) told his friend David Lilienthal somewhat bitterly. He thought CBS had backed away from it and he felt strongly that on an issue of this gravity the network should have accepted responsibility for the program.
"What he had feared, he told Lilienthal, was now taking place, a huge growth of power and influence without a comparable willingness to accept responsibility for it. Murrow's show on McCarthy had probably salvaged television's respectability, without it the medium would have been disgraced. Always sensitive to the charges that the networks failed in the area of public affairs, senior officials would later point to the McCarthy show. The implications were clear, that they did programs like this all the time ..."
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Slate's Jack Shafer has an interesting take on the media-fanned fire of Good Night, and Good Luck. A fair amount of it is just old fashioned bashing, but he does make some good points.
posted by Chase McInerney @ 3:04 AM
3 comments
3 Comments:
I'd caution against over-romaticising the past. Yellow journalism, sensationalism, and profits are as much a part of journalism's past as its present.
That's not to say there aren't journalistic heroes out there, more scrupulous than selfish, who understand their responsibility to the public. I think their existence, though, depends more on strengh of character than date of birth.
Two observations...
1. Halberstam's points about a fourth estate with growing power, but no willingness to take responsibility for it, came full circle in the Memogate controversy. Instead of taking on a demagogue intent on destroying lives (as Murrow did) Dan Rather blindly went after a sitting president on false premises -- and then refused to back down after the flawed journalism had been definitively established. Even now, Mapes is out hawking her lame defense in a book and "Vanity Fair" article.
2. As a Washington Post reviewer pointed out, the film is a bit saccharine in its view of the Murrow showdown as the defining moment of McCarthyism -- when, in fact, the real truth of McCarthy's evil was that through guilt by association the Senator forever tarnished the efforts of hardworking intelligence services to root out the very real Red threat (and yes, Virginia, there was one).
That Anonymous was Red Dirt and meant to comment as such, save for a odd and rare little hiccup on my Powerbook!
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