Good Night, and Good Luck

—1. Overview (multimedia)
—2. Overview Basic (dial up speed)
—3. Reviews and Blogs
—4. Cast and Crew
—5. Photo Pages
—6. Trailers, Clips, DVDs, Books, Soundtrack
—7. Posters (George Clooney)
—8. Production Notes (pdf)
—9. Spiritual Connections
—10. Presentation Downloads

Civil liberties set aside for security reasons. Journalists afraid to report in ways that might be considered “un-American.� Television networks more concerned with the bottom line than their responsibilities to use the medium to inform and educate. Sound familiar?

Go back fifty years and all these issues were at play in the coverage of the Cold War search for Communism as manifested in McCarthyism.

The early 1950s were a time of great turmoil as America worried about the infiltration of Communists in our government. The threat was real. Senator Joe McCarthy took advantage of that threat to rise to power. He claimed to have lists of “card carrying� Communists in government positions. His tactic was to slander and smear people with hearsay, innuendo and intimidation. To oppose him was to become the target of his attack and to be labeled as a Communist or Communist sympathizer, and as such, un-American.

After a few years of this, many Americans were beginning to see through the charade of McCarthy’s tactics but few were ready to stand up to him. In late 1953, one of the most respected television journalists, Edward R. Murrow and his co-workers at CBS took the step to show what was going on. Good Night, and Good Luck is the story of that confrontation.

Director and co-writer George Clooney’s father was a local television anchor man. Murrow was one of the household heroes that Clooney grew up with. He comes at this story with a high regard for those journalists who put their jobs and reputations on the line to show the nation that what was happening in America was a violation of our ideals. We see in this film that McCarthy may have been, as Murrow implied, a treasonous danger disguised as patriotism, but the bigger danger was that so many people, out of fear, allowed him to go on.

Good Night, and Good Luck is filmed in black and white, in part to bring about the feel of that time before color television, but also to use archival footage of McCarthy. In a radio interview, Clooney said that having an actor play McCarthy would have been unbelievable – no one would believe that he was that over the top. By using the actual footage of McCarthy, we see just how far he was willing to go.

The film shows us something of the pantheon of early TV journalism: Murrow; his co-producer Fred Friendly; CBS President William Paley, who supported them in spite of loss of advertisers. They are portrayed as the heroes Clooney grew up with – those who helped to keep America from falling deeper into the paranoia of those days. It also addresses many of the issues we continue to deal with five decades after McCarthy’s fall.

The issue Murrow used to begin his exposé of McCarthy was the case of Air Force Lieutenant Milo Radulovich who was dismissed from the service because of secret evidence that his father and sister were Communist sympathizers. As we see the story that Murrow presented, we cannot help but be reminded of the current situation under the USA PATRIOT Act which was passed in response to the treat of terrorism. Many Americans contend that giving up our civil liberties in the search for security is a cost that is higher than we should pay – to cede our liberties is to lose the very life we seek to maintain.

Another issue examined in the film is journalistic ethics. Should all stories be balanced? Does there come a time when it is time to report what is obvious without having to show another side? Murrow et al. offered McCarthy time to respond, which he later did very ineffectively. Their original reports, however, were very much one sided. They knew they would be branded as un-American. Because of this, they lost sponsors. Murrow and Friendly paid out of their own pockets to air the show. One of the roles of the press in a free society is not merely to report, but to critique. Today, do the networks steer away from stories that need to be reported for fear of how they will be perceived and fear of losing advertising revenue? Are reporters up to the job of taking on issues that need to be addressed if it means they will be seen as unpatriotic or overly zealous?

The film raises these questions without giving explicit answers. Although I think the fact that they raise the questions and show us the early TV journalists as heroes does point in a particular direction.

The issue that is addressed more directly is the role of TV (and other media) in society. Does it have value besides the financial bottom line? Is it only for entertainment, or should it also educate and inform? Does it have a responsibility to be all that it can be, or only to generate as much money as it can for the shareholders? The film begins and ends with Murrow being honored by broadcasters a few years after the events of the bulk of the film. In his address, he chides them for the pattern he sees emerging in broadcasting. News is set aside for game shows. The money was becoming the only way to judge success. It has only become more pronounced since Murrow’s time.

The film certainly wants us to understand entertainment media (including both television and films) as being something that should be about more than entertainment and be judged on more than how much money they make. Clooney is, in a way, chiding his own industry (as Morrow did) for the attention that is paid to money-making fluff over substance. Good Night, and Good Luck is certainly the latter. It not only shows us a bit of our history, it calls us to see that history being replayed in our own day. It articulates a position that asks more for of our media and of ourselves.

—1. Overview (multimedia)
—2. Overview Basic (dial up speed)
—3. Reviews and Blogs
—4. Cast and Crew
—5. Photo Pages
—6. Trailers, Clips, DVDs, Books, Soundtrack
—7. Posters (George Clooney)
—8. Production Notes (pdf)
—9. Spiritual Connections
—10. Presentation Downloads