brainrow

Once upon a time, I wanted to become a journalist. One of my role models was Edward R. Murrow, a CBS reporter whose live radio reports from wartime London brought the early days of World War II home to Americans. His television shows in the 1950s helped shape the nature of broadcast journalism. He set the bar high.

Murrow made a career of confronting liars and exposing lies. His career is the stuff of legend. One of the most legendary — and most inspiring — episodes was his 1953 confrontation with Senator Joe McCarthy, the man for whom McCarthyism was named.

So, I’m looking forward to seeing George Clooney’s new movie, Good Night and Good Luck. It won’t be in theaters until October 7, and I’m champing at the bit.

David Carr of the New York Times has a preview:

“Good Night” is about journalism, not as a subject of parody, but of inquiry. With various reporters and news anchors splashing into fetid waters to save victims of Hurricane Katrina, “Good Night” serves as a reminder that it may take a different kind of journalistic courage, a willingness to risk career and more, to bring government to account. At a time when the news media are being denied access to everything from pictures of imprisoned foreign nationals to critical government security documents, Mr. Clooney, without pressing the analogy, has made a movie that reminds that government needs a vigorous, even oppositional press to find its best nature.

Like Murrow’s reports, the $8 million film, distributed by Warner Independent Pictures, uses McCarthy’s own words to demonstrate that his stated effort to save the United States from Communist infiltration was itself a far more insidious threat….

In “Good Night,” David Strathairn renders Murrow as a reluctant hero, and a twitchy, dark one at that. His Murrow, with the fatalism of Eeyore, is a journalist who reflexively expects the worst, but responds by doing his best, steeling those around him even as McCarthy’s gun sights are trained on his forehead.

In the movie, McCarthy is shown only in archival footage. Director Clooney thought no actor could do him justice. Modern audiences who have never seen this man, once one of the most powerful men in the U.S. government, are in for a shock.

Mr. Clooney has an odd relationship with the press — he reveres its role, but has been a victim of some of its less noble reflexes….

“In this and all the rest of journalism, I think the issues are complicated,” he said. “I don’t think that there are truly bad guys or truly good guys…. There is always a split in these things, but hopefully the need for entertainment does not push news off the screen.”

Murrow said as much in a famous speech he gave at the Radio-Television News Directors Association annual meeting in 1958. Part of the speech, a reminder that television should and could produce important journalism, closes the film:

“To those who say people wouldn’t look; they wouldn’t be interested; they’re too complacent, indifferent and insulated, I can only reply: there is, in one reporter’s opinion, considerable evidence against that contention. But even if they are right, what have they got to lose?

“Because if they are right, and this instrument is good for nothing but to entertain, amuse and insulate, then the tube is flickering now and we will soon see that the whole struggle is lost.

“This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise, it is merely wires and lights in a box.”

The movie’s trailer is available, in several formats, here.