Ethical Dilemmas in "Good Night, and Good Luck"

by Ashlee Monroe
am300404@ohio.edu

In the movie "Goodnight, and Good Luck" Edward R. Murrow faces ethical challenges that most journalists will face in everyday life on the job, but on a much larger scale. He plays watchdog for the public in his endeavor to expose Senator Joseph McCarthy for unfairly punishing people he suspects to be Communists.

This movie takes place during the heyday of the "Red Scare" and McCarthyism in the United States. In the portion of the movie shown in class, Murrow must first decide whether to go with a story that implicates the U.S. Air Force in unfairly dismissing an airman because McCarthy's committee presented confidential evidence that the man's father had Communist sympathies. Murrow and the Columbia Broadcasting System could have decided not to run the story with the pressure put on them from the Air Force. Murrow went with the story, deciding not to give into external pressures. This shows that his first ethical responsibility was to his viewers.

We then see CBS running another story about McCarthy himself, using only footage of his speeches and testimony. After this story, Murrow and others at CBS were presented with charges that they were suspected to be Communist. Where the movie left off, Murrow still did not give into the bullying tactics he was subjected to by McCarthy and his committee. He chose to keep presenting the most objective truth he could in his pieces about McCarthy, despite the legal danger he could face.

In this movie we can identify stakeholders in Murrow's ethical decisions as himself and his coworkers at CBS, the U.S. government and Joseph McCarthy. The viewers taking in Murrow's account of what is going on within McCarthy's endeavors to expose Communists in the U.S. are also major stakeholders in these ethical decisions. His main ethical dilemma, as I see it, is whether to go ahead with stories about what he perceives as corrupt activity, or to give in and save his coworkers from trouble with the government.

He would also be allowing the government to save face and continue with what they were doing. His decision to keep running stories about McCarthy's investigation into Communism shows that his most important ethical responsibility was to the public.