'Good Night, and Good Luck,' airing June 7 on CNN, draws parallels between 1950s and 2025
In a scene from the 2005 movie 'Good Night, and Good Luck,' CBS News legend Edward R. Murrow is anchoring an episode of "See It Now" about Sen. Joseph McCarthy, the Wisconsin senator who shot to fame with his claims that more than 200 'card-carrying' communists had infiltrated the U.S. Department of State.
After reviewing McCarthy's unsubstantiated accusations and false claims for viewers, Murrow notes that the politician didn't create the climate of fear that exists in 1950s America, the era of the Red Scare. McCarthy is just exploiting it.
Quoting from Shakespeare's 'Julius Caesar,' Murrow says, 'The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves,' an eloquent way of saying that most people are too afraid of becoming his next target to confront McCarthy about his smear tactics.
The acclaimed movie starring and co-written by George Clooney is a stirring tribute to journalism and a cautionary tale of what leaders will do in their quest for power. The script is peppered with references to due process under the law, the right of habeas corpus and freedom of speech, all principles mentioned in the Constitution that were under assault by McCarthy.
When CNN airs a live broadcast of the Broadway adaptation of 'Good Night, and Good Luck' at 7 p.m. on June 7, the parallels to 2025 will be obvious to anyone who has been paying attention to the latest headlines. But the takeaway from Murrow's courageous stand may not be the same today as it was 20 years ago.
The fault, dear viewers, is not in our stars, but at least partly in our news media.
CNN is doing a fairly extraordinary thing by showing the hit play, which has earned five Tony nominations and been available only to those who are in New York City and able to afford the exorbitant ticket prices. A quick online search this week for June 6's evening performance revealed a handful of seats were still available for $329 to $849 each.
Clooney and his filmmaking partner, Grant Heslov (producer and co-writer of the original movie), are behind the production, which has broken box-office records. As in the movie, Clooney again leads the cast. Only this time, the older and grayer superstar has switched from playing 'See It Now' co-creator and producer Fred Friendly to portraying Murrow (a part filled on the big screen with melancholy gravitas by David Straitharn).
The CNN broadcast will be the first time a live Broadway play has been televised. So why would a cable news network be the one making TV history? Because this isn't "The Lion King" or "Sunset Boulevard." Although the narrative is set in 1954, the questions raised by "Good Night, and Good Luck" are similar to those being asked now about to President Donald Trump's attempts to redefine executive power as something so vast and unfettered that it overshadows the other two branches of government, Congress and the judiciary, and, possibly, the Constitution itself.
Like the popular phrase says, 'History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes.'
The movie version of "Good Night, and Good Luck," like "All the President's Men," is one of the best arguments for watchdog reporting ever put on the big screen. Yet watching it through the lens of 2025, there is a certain sadness The movie now feels a bit like an elegy for broadcast journalism and a critique of how TV news may be rushing its own demise.
In the movie, the standoff between Murrow and McCarthy begins quietly enough after a staff meeting, when Murrow casually asks Friendly, 'You ever spend any time in Detroit?'
Murrow brings up a Detroit News story on a man from Dexter, Michigan, Milo Radulovich, who has been thrown out of the Air Force because, essentially, his dad read a Serbian newspaper. The charges against him were kept in a sealed envelope and not shown to him or his attorney. 'He was declared guilty without a trial and told if he wanted to keep his job, he'd have to denounce his father and his sister. … He told them to take a hike,' says Murrow.
A CBS News team is dispatched to Michigan to interview Radulovich, even though the network's business side would rather leave the matter alone. Despite that and the military's stonewalling of requests for comment, Murrow stands firm on the need to do the reporting. 'I've searched my conscience. I can't for the life of me find any justification for this,' he says of Radulovich's predicament. 'I simply cannot accept that there are, on every story, two equal and logical sides to an argument.'
On the air, Murrow puts it in even plainer words. Referring to what was inside that sealed envelope that decided Radulovich's fate, he asks: 'Was it hearsay, rumor, gossip, slander or hard, ascertainable facts that could be backed by credible witnesses? We do not know.'
Murrow keeps on examining McCarthy's scare tactics, telling viewers that dissent must not be confused with disloyalty. "We must remember always that accusation is not proof," he says, "and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of the law.'
The movie's image of TV journalists is, admittedly, nostalgically romantic and severely outdated. Newsrooms are no longer limited, thank goodness, to white men in white dress shirts with rolled-up sleeves who smoke cigarettes and drink Scotch habitually. The technology and speed of news delivery has evolved beyond anything Murrow could have imagined.
Yet 'Good Night, and Good Luck' is also a reminder of how much influence TV news has lost as a trusted information source since the days of Murrow. Corporate media owners no longer care as much about the prestige of having a top-notch news team or the civic responsibility of staffing it adequately. When ratings go down, so does their funding.
Cable news has devolved into too much news talk and too many pundits arguing over the topics that drive ratings. Broadcast networks don't really focus on news anymore beyond their nightly 30 minutes and their puffy morning shows. So-called newsmagazines airing in prime time have become a vast wasteland of true crimes and celebrity scandals, aside from '60 Minutes' on CBS.
Even "60 Minutes," as popular as it is respected, seems under threat. This spring, its executive producer, Bill Owens, quit over interference in his journalistic independence. Not long after, CBS News head Wendy McMahon parted ways as tensions remain over Trump's $20-billion lawsuit against CBS News over a "60 Minutes" report on then-Vice President Kamala Harris.
It is difficult now to picture a modern-day version of 'See It Now' outside of PBS, which is facing its own existential woes with the White House's request to Congress to take back more than $1 billion in funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Who will be our Murrow, the person trusted enough by both sides of the political divide to encourage a national conversation that fosters unity? Can there even be a Murrow-like figure in an age when so many people are dismissing traditional news outlets as the lamestream media and relying instead on Tik-Tok, extremist podcasters, YouTube influencers and other dubious online voices as their main sources of information?
Murrow used to sign off the air by saying, 'Good night, and good luck.' If we're lucky, broadcast journalism will find a way to keep providing the steady drip, drip, drip of legitimate news that can wear down the voices of disinformation and conspiracy theories. That, or Murrow will have to keep rolling in his grave.
Contact Detroit Free Press pop culture critic Julie Hinds at jhinds@freepress.com.
A live performance from Broadway's Winter Garden Theatre
7 p.m. June 7
The broadcast will air on CNN's cable network and also stream live, without requiring a cable log-in, through CNN.com.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: 'Good Night, and Good Luck' airing on CNN at a dark time for TV news
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