Murrow Says He Was Ambitious
Jack Daly
Class of 2025
(10/2021) Two men, both prominent public figures, clash. The winner will be lauded, the loser disgraced forever. The year is 1953 and the men are Senator Joseph McCarthy and CBS reporter extraordinaire Edward R. Murrow. Their battleground consists of millions of living rooms across the country and the choice of weapon is rhetoric. The results: McCarthy is counted among the great villains of the twentieth century and Murrow is named the patron saint of journalism. Their battle is given new life through a thrilling albeit flawed dramatization in the 2005 Warner Brothers movie Good Night, and Good Luck.
After the Second World War, America was plunged into a renewed red scare. Thanks to the testimony of disaffected communists such as Elia Kazan and Whitaker Chambers, the public could be certain that subversive actors were attempting to influence the nation’s most esteemed circles from Washington to Hollywood. As a response to the soaring anti-communist feeling, predictable measures, such as loyalty oaths, were in place since the Truman administration, but that wasn’t enough. As in all moments of historical passion, the public craves an identifiable face and name, producing visible results to relieve the tension of the unknown: Joe McCarthy would be their man. From his seat on the Senate investigating committee, he turned hearings into theatre, drama that might at last give Americans a much yearned for release.
Whatever his intentions, it soon became clear that the senator from Wisconsin was the wrong man. In his zeal, he became a liar and a bully in the most consequential sense of the word. Throughout the nation, everyday people were rapidly waking up to see that McCarthy had to be stopped as he lashed out at new opponents clearly undeserving of ire. Herein lay the problem: real communists posed a real threat, but the man trusted to root them out had abused his station, while the public languished in confusion.
Enter Edward Murrow, a broadcaster who had made his name during the war. From the Anschluss to the liberation of death camps, he was never more than two steps behind the action. Among the first to make the switch to television, Murrow would appear to Americans every night as the avatar of journalistic virtj. If he had to be pinned down politically, Murrow would almost certainly be a liberal, yet well within the moderate consensus that existed at the time. He was a man of doubtless potency in skill and style, and illustrious in honor. As more and more voices of greater and greater renown began to speak out against McCarthy, the country awaited Murrow’s words to shift the conversation.
Good Night, and Good Luck recreates real episodes of Murrow’s program, linked together by segments of behind-the-scenes action unfolding in the CBS studio. The audience is treated to a nostalgic picture of mid-twentieth century network news. The last of the line of tough talking truth tellers surrounded, if not mellowed, by an air of professionalism. The movie serves as a glowing celebration of the press and its role in the American Republic. Speaking of McCarthy’s imminent counterattack Murrow, portrayed by David Strathairn, remarks, "He’s going to bet a senator trumps a newsman." His producer Freddy Friendly (George Clooney) instantly replies, "He’ll lose."
No bias, both sides, just the facts: these were supposedly the gold standards within the news world of yore. Still in the current media climate, one must wonder whether Murrow and his ilk were setting too high a bar with all their talk of "objectivity." In the film, Murrow all but makes the same point, when to quiet resistance to his taking a public stance he says, "We all editorialize."
As a work of cinema, Good Night, and Good Luck is fast paced and adrenaline inducing, but as a matter of ideology, the movie critically overplays its hand. When in original footage Margaret Radulovich, sister of Milo Radulovich an Air Force Lieutenant discharged because his family were suspected communists, states that her political conduct is her, "own private affair," she is simply wrong in that political action by definition concerns the public. Most bizarrely, the movie expects its audience to sympathize with Joseph and Shirley Wershba (Robert Downey Jr. and Patricia Clarkson), two married fellow travelers working for CBS. At one point Joe entertains the possibility that they might have, "protected the wrong side," only for his wife to immediately reassure him. Furthermore, Joe is only forced to leave CBS when their secret relationship is revealed because of a policy barring the marriage of employees.
McCarthy finally accepts Murrow’s offer to appear on television, the den of the "jackal pack." This is McCarthy’s last shot, and he’s aiming right at Murrow, right at the voice of opposition. His slanderous words can bring down the reporter, or ricochet to solidify his own undoing. The senator walks away wounded, and soon after commits political suicide at the hearings.
The actions of the senator permanently tarnished the anti-communist movement. Works of popular media such as Rod Serling’s masterful Sci-fi fable "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street" reinforced one side’s outlook on the era. Now fears of the subversive creed could simply be dismissed as gross expressions of the national id, and a kind of anti-McCarthyism in time became its own cudgel against opposition.
In the succeeding decades, McCarthy has come to be viewed as a maniac who made wholly baseless claims, but anyone with these opinions would do well to remember the serious threat posed by communism. The prevailing image of the senator is not only misleading in its lack of nuance, but also guilty of sowing the seeds of contention. To anyone ignorant of the full historical reality, but cognizant of fact that the accepted views on McCarthy are false in many respects, he becomes the perfect figure to lionize.
A few things can be gleaned from this snapshot of history. The first is that while many comparisons can be made of contemporary political bullies to McCarthy, there is no equivalence. The senator, villain though he was, at least ostensibly went after communists. The other is that the nation is once more awaiting the words of someone such as Murrow.
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