Movie Brings into Focus a Clash: Power vs Truth

Chalisa Magpanthong
cm204403@ohio.edu

Edward R. Murrow

In the 1950s, Edward R. Murrow emerged as the United States’ most prominent and respected broadcast journalist. His closing signature line “Good night, and good luck” serves as the title of this film that chronicles the confrontation between demagogic politician Joseph McCarthy and the investigative reporting of Murrow’s news team. McCarthy’s tactic was to allege that various persons—government staff members, military officers, Hollywood movie workers, among many others—were Communists and were thus responsible for undermining American democratic values.

Despite advertiser pressure to drop the story of McCarthy’s reckless and false accusations of public figures, and despite the timidity of CBS executives, Murrow steadfastly carried on.

The film more-or-less accurately portrays what actually occurred in this historic confrontation between an ill-motivated politician and a crusading journalist, and the film incorporates clips of news footage of Senate hearings that McCarthy used to attack his opponents. In these hearings, McCarthy makes wild accusations of officials using these public events as a grandstand to project himself into headlines. This caused a tremendous furor and public attention became riveted on the live televised hearings.

The key ethical issue in the movie, one that serves as the principal dramatic motif, is whether journalists should maintain their efforts to expose wrongdoing even when commercial interests in the media want to downplay stories. The movie shows that CBS is persuaded by Murrow to air his pivotal broadcast exposing McCarthy’s errors and falsehoods, even though network executives feared reprisals by advertisers and McCarthy’s political allies.

In the end, CBS won much acclaim for its courage in presenting an accurate account of McCarthy’s failings. The film ends with Murrow’s address at an RTNDA conference in which he sharply criticizes the media for their failure to achieve their potential for social good, a message one supposes the filmmakers wanted to underscore in this movie.

Another important ethical issue recalled by the film is the practice of blacklisting. This is the weapon wielded by McCarthy—to threaten media companies with financial harm and public attack if they refuse to dismiss staff members identified by McCarthy and his subordinates as “subversive elements.” These were not idle threats as many were labeled in this way, mostly without justification. The movie recounts the suicide of one of Murrow’s journalists whose “Communist connections” were about to be exposed by McCarthy. Murrow was portrayed as torn by his wish to protect his staff but unwilling to yield to the senator’s bullying.

It is interesting that the Edward R. Murrow story still captures the public’s imagination, because events the movie portrays occurred long before most of the film viewers were born. I am sure to many in the audience, the days of the Communist scare seemed as distant in history as the American Civil War.

For me, as a Thai citizen, it is difficult to grasp the mentality of the time when being identified as a Communist, falsely or not, would be the end of one’s career and would surely lead to social and political ostracism.

The photo shown above is an image I borrowed from Walker Art Center.