George Clooney & Me, Part 2

In an earlier post, I mentioned that I would be attending a preview screening of George Clooney’s new movie, Good Night, and Good Luck, about the confrontation between newsman Edward Murrow and Senator Joseph McCarthy.

The screening was held recently at the Bing Theater in the Los Angeles County museum complex at Hancock Park (next to the La Brea Tar Pits). There was a large and rowdy contingent of students from the USC Annenberg School of Journalism, and three of the five after-screening panelists were facultymembers of USC. The remaining two panelists were George Clooney and his collaborator on the film. The make-up of the audience, and of the panel, resulted not so much as a lively after-screening discussion as a self-congratulatory echo chamber.

The film itself is acceptable work, in black and white, with enough atmospheric cigarette smoke to promote lung cancer in everyone attending. David Strathairn does an excellent job playing Edward R. Murrow, though I say this without having seen enough archival footage of the real Murrow to judge the accuracy. Senator McCarthy appears in archival footage. One of the principal characters, Joe Wershba played by Robert Downey Jr., has a webpage about Murrow that I included in my earlier post.

My non-blogging husband’s principal complaint: not enough background was given. He wanted to know the nitty-gritty on how Murrow’s team dug up their information. Indeed, from this movie you’d have to guess that Murrow’s group mainly read regional newspapers looking for their story ideas, forcing me to ask how they differ so much from today’s bloggers?

I have two complaints.

One, the audience is supposed to feel that Murrow’s team is risking “everything” — at least their livelihood as reporters — in opposing Senator McCarthy. However, no follow-up is given on the fates of anyone, not even Senator McCarthy, who died without finishing his second term. From my own background research, I would have to say that none of Murrow’s team suffered from their opposition; Murrow himself was more a victim of his uncompromising ideals crashing headlong into the economics of an entertainment medium.

Second, the tagline of the movie (“In A Nation Terrorized By Its Own Government, One Man Dared to Tell The Truth. ”) conflates the junior senator from Wisconsin and his committee investigation with the entire United States government. The movie itself does little to dispel the confusion. Candidate Eisenhower, for instance, did not feel able to denounce Senator McCarthy; however, President Eisenhower worked behind the scenes to aid in the Senator’s downfall through the Army-McCarthy hearings.

The movie lionizes Edward R. Murrow, who seems to merit such treatment. His legacy these days is more honored than followed, however, as the lamentable coverage of Hurricane Katrina exposed. During the panel discussion after the movie, more than one of the panelists brought out the point that Senator McCarthy shot himself in the foot by attacking the patriotism of Edward R. Murrow. The public judged Murrow as The Real Thing based on his broadcasts from London. They knew that he was underneath the falling bombs, or accompanying bombing runs over Europe. He testified from firsthand knowledge, not hear-say. Compare that to the rumor-mongering rampant in the reportage of Hurricane Katrina, from Mayor Nagin’s wild casualty estimates to lurid accounts of rapes and murders that never occurred at the SuperDome. Nobody actually went themselves and checked out the stories before splashing them all over the airwaves. Subsequent on-the-spot reporting by the New Orleans Times-Picayne and the Los Angeles Times put the lie to most all of it.

Mr Clooney’s self-stated reasons for making the film are to berate current journalists for caving in to pressure to turn news into entertainment, and to encourage them to “speak truth to power” — the latter undoubtedly referring to standing up to The Government. Both are worthy causes, but the movie is unlikely to move them forward. Idealism continues to founder on the rock of economics; and Mr. Clooney conflates the many layers of American government without distinction. That lack of finesse delegitimizes his message.

Rating: 3 out of 5 Doohickeys (worth scheduling time to see, whether in a theater or at home).

Note: no overt sex or violence but enough cigarette smoke to set off a Stage 1 smog alert. Frequent reference to alcohol and its consumption. An implied suicide. Adult themes: children would not be interested.

UPDATE (10/06/2005): Jack Shafer at Slate writes about the movie along similar lines.