When The Eye Was In Focus

I saw the movie Good Night, and Good Luck today. It is the story of Edward R. Murrow's (and his producer, Fred Friendly's) reporting that helped discredit Sen. Joseph McCarthy's witch hunt against alleged communists in the U.S. Government in the 1950's. This is still a contentious issue to this day among some hardliners, although I think most on this side of Ann Coulter would agree that McCarthy was little more than a demagogue.

There will be an automatic assumption among many that since this film was directed by George Clooney, it will have a certain slant. Many on the Right regard Clooney with disdain because of his overt political positions. As a liberal, I'm obviously biased about this, but I believe that Clooney deserves more respect than that. Unlike many Hollywood types who practice drive-by politicking, Clooney actually puts his money where his mouth is and actively participates in the causes he talks about. I think that makes him worthy of respect (whether you agree with him or not), and he shouldn't be lumped in with the Barbra Streisands of the world.

I think that the film was written in a way that, in addition to covering its own material, tried to make it an allegory for modern times - the idea that disagreement and dissent gets you labeled as unpatriotic and dangerous. Other than that, it looked like a faithful representation of the period it covered. Joe McCarthy was not portrayed by an actor, just by his own archival footage from his appearance on CBS and from Congressional hearings. In fact, Clooney has said that he went out of his way to make sure not to show any clips of when McCarthy was under alcoholic influence and made to look worse than the damage caused him by his own words. Clooney was not out to do a character assassination of McCarthy, but to tell a story about Murrow and his reporting on the topic.

One theme that was prevalent throughout the film, and still is in real life today, was the charge of liberal bias against CBS News (and extended today to all mainstream media except Fox.) This is something liberals and conservatives can debate until the cows come home, and is more complex than a simple yes or no. But in the case of Murrow, I really believe that he was just interested in exposing an injustice. If somebody is conservative and does misdeeds, is it liberal bias to call him out for those misdeeds? I don't think so. But it took a lot of courage to do so, and Murrow and Friendly both paid a personal price. Corporate influences have stifled hard journalism right from the earliest days of television, and it has gone downhill from there.

We should all remember that nobody is perfect, and nobody has a perfect set of ideas. The quicker we accept where we have erred in our thoughts or judgments, the quicker we can move on and grow as people. Back in Murrow's day, the liberals were wrong about Alger Hiss and the conservatives were wrong about Joe McCarthy. And guess what: We're all wrong about things now too. The question is whether we have any more courageous journalists like Edward R. Murrow to set us straight, or any William Paleys to let them be heard when the heat is on. Good luck, indeed.