Good Night, and Good Luck

Good Night, and Good Luck is an Academy Award nominated film released in 2005 that centers around the standoff between journalist Edward R. Murrow and United States Senator Joseph McCarthy during the 1950s. The film was written and directed by George Clooney, and it stars David Strathairn as Murrow, Clooney as Fred Friendly (co-producer of Murrow’s show), and Robert Downey Jr. as Joseph Wershba (a correspondent for CBS News). The movie begins and ends with a speech given by Murrow warning his audience not to let the potential of television to inform and educate the public go to waste, and the bulk of the film chronicles the day to day operations of the See It Now program. This program dealt with a variety of controversial issues during its run in the 1950s, but it was most famous for its criticism of McCarthyism during the Red Scare.

The main plot of Good Night, and Good Luck begins with Murrow defending a lieutenant in the Air Force Reserve named Milo Radulovich, who was discharged from the service because he maintained close ties with his father and sister who were supposedly communist sympathizers. By bringing the ridiculousness of this case to the public on his program, Murrow invoked the wrath of McCarthy, who quickly came out and accused Murrow himself of sympathizing with communists. Even though this was at a time when such an accusation often met the immediate end to someone’s career, Murrow refused to fold. He quickly responded to McCarthy by denying the charges and then launching a counterattack, saying that the real danger to America was the Communist witch hunt and not the danger of Communist infiltration. After a series of back and forths between Murrow and McCarthy, Murrow and the See It Now team finally managed to convince enough people that McCarthy was the source of the problem, and this ultimately resulted in a Senate investigation of the senator. Unfortunately for Murrow, despite this success his show was moved to an unfavorable time slot and ultimately canceled due to its lack of ratings and the popularity of the new quiz show genre.

I feel that this film was very well written and put together, and from what I have read it is very historically accurate with only minor liberties taken for dramatic effect. The use of black and white film add to the historical feel of the movie, and the use of actual stock footage of Senator Joseph McCarthy give it an added realism. In addition, many of the film’s major themes are still extremely relevant today. Most prevalently, the struggle of Edward Murrow to remain on the air despite doing a great public service is something that can easily be related to in the present day. Networks are very reluctant to show programs similar to See It Now because they know that they can get much better ratings by showing mindless reality shows or other non-informational programs. Unfortunately, this seems to be an inescapable part of the American media, and we will just have to hope that journalists like Murrow keep coming around to show us that the media can be used to inform and educate just as easily as it can be used to entertain.