George Clooney’s ode to Edward R. Murrow: Eerily relevant, sadly outdated

[cartoon id="290965"] With Marines on American streets and fascist disinformation invading American minds, one is compelled to wonder what Edward R. Murrow would say. But that query is a tad irrelevant. There’s no space in today’s political media culture for an Edward R. Murrow. Granted, if you watched George Clooney’s play "Good Night, and Good Luck" (broadcast live last weekend on CNN), or if you’ve seen his streamable 2005 movie by the same name, chances are you were stunned and disturbed by the many parallels between 1954 and now. In Murrow’s time, right-wing pig Joseph McCarthy flooded the zone with serial lies that fouled our civic discourse and ruined countless lives. While most of the media went belly up for McCarthy, Murrow stepped up and used his CBS “See It Now” show to fact-check the demagogue in front of a mass audience – while fending off the CBS corporate jellyfishes who feared jolting Joe was bad for business. “The line between investigating and persecuting is a very fine one,” Murrow said on the air (and performed in the play by Clooney), referencing Joe’s relentless attacks on Americans whom he’d falsely labeled as commies. “The junior senator from Wisconsin has stepped over it repeatedly,” due to his “hysterical disregard (for) decency and human dignity and the rights guaranteed in the Constitution.” That commentary resonates in today’s MAGA sinkhole, where our tinpot dictator is ordering federal “investigations” of people who’ve publicly opposed him – people like Miles Taylor, the ex-Trump homeland security official who has assailed Der Leader in print. One resonant line in the play prompted rueful audience laughter. CBS journalist Don Hollenbeck said to Murrow, “I wake up in the morning and I don’t recognize anything…as if all the reasonable people took a plane to Europe and left us behind.” Clooney nearly broke character and laughed as well. More serious were Murrow’s historically accurate clashes with CBS chairman William Paley. Mindful of his network’s bottom line, Paley complained that fact-checking McCarthy was a biased partisan act that would alienate the aluminum company that sponsored Murrow’s show. “I can’t accept that on every story there are two equal and logical sides." Murrow retorted. That may ring a bell. Even Bob Costas, the renowned sports broadcaster, recognizes what should be obvious to all: “There really isn’t two sides to much of what Donald Trump represents…Certain things are just true. And regrettably, something that’s true in America right now is that the president of the United States has absolutely no regard, and in fact has contempt, for basic American principles and basic common decency.” But nobody in our contemporary culture has the audience and credibility Murrow enjoyed when he took on McCarthy in 1954. If Murrow was somehow cloned for today’s information marketplace, he too would have limited clout. Start with the cold fact the current “president” is far more powerful than “the junior senator from Wisconsin” ever was, and the current Republican Congress, unlike the 1950s era body, is little more than a rubber-stamping Reichstag. Lest we forget, also, 70 years ago there were only three broadcast networks; Time magazine, while lauding Murrow’s “brains, integrity, attractiveness and showmanship,” said that “From his pinnacle atop the nation’s TV antennas, Murrow commands a huge circulation” - the equivalent, in today’s America, of 10 million weekly viewers. Plus, Murrow’s stories and commentaries were often amplified by the few outlets, notably The New York Times, that dominated media discourse. But, by contrast, a contemporary Murrow would be fighting for a niche audience in competition with viral Internet trolls, Fox News’ amplification of propaganda, Tik Tok tripe, hot takes on our cellphones, under-the-radar Facebook groups that reboot MAGA lies - plus massive pushback from his own network (parent company Paramount wants to cave to Trump, settling a bogus Trump lawsuit against CBS, because it needs federal approval for a merger). And if he tried to jump to ABC, he’d wind up on the scrap heap beside Terry Moran (who got canned by ABC the other day for stating the fact that documented world-class hater Steven Miller is a world-class hater). In his gutsy McCarthy broadcast, Murrow made the case for courage: “We will not walk in fear of one another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason.” And in a 1958 speech (which Clooney recited, to close the play), Murrow urged Americans to challenge “ignorance, intolerance, indifference,” to resist “decadence, escapism, and insulation from the realities of the world in which we live,” and to “fight for the very soul of this republic.” Resonant rhetoric, all of it. But his wise words didn’t die with him. He said, “Our history will be what we make of it.” All obstacles notwithstanding, are we strong enough to heed him and write the next chapter? Good night, and good luck. - Copyright 2025 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes the Subject to Change newsletter. Email him at [email protected]