‘The Fourth Estate must succeed': Clooney's timely warning from history about Trump's authoritarian America

Irish Times

24-05-2025

Heady days in
New York City
, with the Knicks basketball team enjoying their best summer in a quarter of a century and
George Clooney
chief among the true-blue celebrities to be seen in midtown Manhattan.
Since March, Clooney has been a fixture in and around the Winter Garden theatre, where he has brought his enduring winsomeness and a garish black dye-job to the role of Edward R Murrow, the 1950s CBS anchor who was, in that fractious decade, regarded as the most trusted man in America.
The conceit of the play
Good Night, and Good Luck
concerns Murrow's courageous stand against the bullying 'Red Scare' senator Joseph McCarthy despite mounting pressure from his network to just play ball.
Clooney, who has never hidden his fascination with journalism, was filmed outlining the theme of the play at a meeting with fellow cast members in a segment that appeared on 60 Minutes before the March opening night.
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'When the other three estates fail – when the judiciary, the executive and the legislative branches fail us, the Fourth Estate has to succeed,' he said.
'Has to succeed,' he repeated, offering a knowing point to the camera, 'as 60 Minutes is here now on our first day.'
But can it?
On Monday, Wendy McMahon, the chief executive officer of CBS News, announced her resignation after four years, citing her disenchantment with the network's position in relation to a lawsuit issued against it by
Donald Trump
.
The legal action concerns the US president's accusation that 60 Minutes, the flagship CBS current affairs show for six decades, edited a
Kamala Harris
interview to reflect favourably on her during the presidential election.
Given the daily grotesquerie on display during the election rallies and interviews throughout last years, a complaint over editing standards seems almost quaint.
But it represents the battle for control over the independence of US media for which the Clooney play provides a (staggeringly expensively ticketed) parallel. The Trump legal complaint states the editing was election interference and is demanding an astonishing $20 billion in compensation.
In a resignation letter to her staff, McMahon spoke of the privilege of the role. 'Championing and supporting the journalism produced by the most amazing stations and bureaus in the world, celebrating the successes of our shows and our brands, elevating our stories and our people ... It has been a privilege and joy,' she wrote.
'At the same time, the past few months have been challenging. It's become clear that the company and I do not agree on the path forward.'
The past few months have been overshadowed by the pressure from
Paramount
, the CBS parent company, to settle the Trump lawsuit even though CBS is adamant that it is without merit. Several legal experts have expressed the view that the network would win the case should it go to court.
But Paramount is eager to complete an $8 billion merger with Skydance, for which it will require approval from the Trump-appointed chair of the Federal Communications Commission. Several Democratic senators have written to Paramount to express concern that it may be involved in 'improper conduct'.
McMahon's departure follows the resignation of Bill Owens, the executive producer of 60 Minutes, who resigned in April after issuing a memo to staff stating that 'over the past months, it has become clear that I would not be allowed to run the show as I have always run it'.
Last December ABC News settled a lawsuit with Trump, then US president-elect, for $15 million. By then, the Washington Post was in the midst of a series of high-profile resignations after its owner, Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos, spiked the paper's planned endorsement of Kamala Harris.
Among the recent slew of executive orders issued by the US president was a further blow to NPR and PBS, ordering the directors of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to cease funding, or 'cancel to the maximum extent' as 'neither entity presents a fair, accurate or unbiased portrayal of current events'.
The attack is just an extension of Trump's long, slow war on mainstream media, which he both relentlessly pillories and yet of whose praise he remains curiously needy. Whenever a so-called 'fake news media' publication or network offers positive comment on Trump, it will quickly be highlighted in the White House press briefings.
But as the Clooney play, hailing Murrow's lionhearted stance, enters its closing weeks, the US media is facing into many long, dark winters as it covers the 47th president's second term in office.
In his later years, Murrow resigned from CBS and accepted a role as the head of the US Information Agency, the parent company of Voice of America, the long-standing international news network which delivers news to countries with restricted press freedoms.
On Thursday, an appeals court declined to intervene in the executive order issued by Trump which will see 600 Voice of America contracts cancelled, and its broadcasts in effect silenced.