Commentary—

Where’s Edward R. Murrow When You Need Him?

By Donald Kaul

I’ve just seen George Clooney’s marvelous new film, Good Night, and Good Luck, a stylish recreation of the time, 50 years ago, when the greatest of all broadcasters, Edward R. Murrow, played St George to Joe McCarthy’s dragon and saved the Republic, more or less. And a grand time it was. (The title, by the way, is taken from Murrow’s signature sign-off.)

I suppose that the more youthful among you won’t remember either Murrow or McCarthy. Pity. You should see the film anyway. It is entertaining, inspiring and (dare I say it?) educational.

For the rest of us, it is a time machine that carries us back to an era when courage in a television reporter meant something more than standing out in a windy rainstorm, yelling into a microphone.

Murrow was the iconic star of CBS News, then the gold standard of television news. Handsome and urbane, he was a marvelous writer and possessed of one of God’s great voices — the whole package.

He’d made his name during World War II with his rooftop radio broadcasts from London while German bombs dropped around him. He came home a hero and almost immediately became the biggest news star of television’s infancy.

McCarthy was the obscure junior senator from Wisconsin when, in February of 1950, he waved a sheet of paper during a speech and announced he had in his hand a list of 205 Communists in the State Department.

He had no such thing of course, but the statement caused an immediate sensation, making him the darling of the out-of-power Republicans. When the Korean War broke out that June, he rode anti-Communism to national prominence and soon achieved a Torquemada-like status in our society, finding Communists under every bed and in every government office.

To be called a Communist by McCarthy, to be denounced as a Communist sympathizer by him, was to be judged guilty, without trial or opportunity to defend one’s self. People lost their jobs, their careers and more than a few were driven to suicide.

Nor did he lack for imitators. Before long, blacklists were being filled with names of Communists, real and imagined, some famous, some not. They became unemployable.

Into the teeth of this assault on civil liberties stepped Murrow, dragging a reluctant William Paley, head of CBS, behind him. In a historic broadcast, he denounced McCarthy for his methods, then did a very clever thing. He offered the senator a full half-hour of prime-time network television to answer the broadcast; in effect, calling him out. McCarthy took the bait.

That did him in. McCarthy was a five-minute performer, at best. Give him longer and he revealed himself as the mean-spirited hoodlum and bully he was. It didn’t help that he showed up drunk. From that moment, the fear he inspired began to recede and he was made vulnerable to his enemies.

Ironically, the McCarthy episode marked the beginning of the end for Murrow, too. His influence at CBS began to wane as the network turned to more lucrative entertainment interests, less to controversial crusades. He was to have other triumphs but none quite so momentous.

That, roughly, is the story the film tells. Shot in black and white, it’s tightly written, beautifully acted (particularly by David Strathairn who doesn’t portray Murrow so much as channel him) and directed with surprising sureness by Clooney.

In an absolutely brilliant stroke, Clooney does not use an actor to portray McCarthy. The senator, who was neither handsome nor urbane, is shown entirely via the actual film clips of his appearances on television. You get a chance to see his failed rebuttal to Murrow and feel your own revulsion or — if you happen to be a right-wing nut — sympathy for the man.

The film serves as a blessed reminder of what was once possible in the news business, when people still paid attention. You could bring evildoers low simply by exposing them.

People today would rather watch reality television than real television.

Good night, and good luck.

(Donald Kaul recently retired as Washington columnist for the Des Moines Register.)