If “this instrument is good for nothing but to entertain, amuse, and insulate, then the tube is flickering now, and we will soon see that the whole struggle is lost.” — George Clooney, as Edward R. Murrow
The other night, my wife and I watched the live-on-TV stage production of Good Night, And Good Luck, with George Clooney in the role of Edward R. Murrow. As a former newspaper journalist, I always held Murrow’s work as a news broadcaster in high regard. Clooney brings the story of Murrow vs McCarthy into even sharper focus in this production, and without saying it out loud, he and the other actors in the play remind us of the times we live in now, when those in power attack the press and those in the press either bow to those demands or fight the good fight and bring the abuses to light.
Alas, I don’t know who is today’s Murrow nor which news organization is that day’s CBS’s Paley and Friendly, men in power who gave Murrow the buffer he needed to do his programs that exposed McCarthy for who he really was.
And then there the ending sequence of the play, which unnerved both my wife and I, in which a video montage of how misinformation and conspiracy theories play out in the news media landscape over the years, starting back in Murrow’s time and coming into our own present day, right to now. Clooney, as Murrow, gives a final speech about the role of media (Television, back then, but the Internet, now) and of us – all of us — in ferreting out the truth, and making sure those in power are held to account. If we are silent, the fault lies is with us.
“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves” — from Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar.
The play was fascinating, terrifying and enlightening — all at the same time. Slate had a good piece about the play, ending with: “The pressures that deformed the news in Murrow’s day have only grown more intense, and its defenses weaker. The last line of protection is those people sitting in the dark, watching George Clooney remind them what they have to do.”
Indeed.
Peace (on the stage),
Kevin