By Ezra
Spent last night at the movies seeing Clooney's Good Night, and Good Luck, his black and white hagiography of CBS's Edmund Murrow. For those who don't know the story, Murrow was a newsman who cut his teeth during World War II, becoming a famed correspondent and parlaying the notoriety into a television show. Fast-forward to the McCarthy era when Murrow, using his perch at CBS, publicly took on McCarthy, making him look both a bully and a fool.
It's a good film. A bit overblown, sure. Murrow's hand in McCarthy's downfall has become part of the period's mythology, but was not necessarily such a crucial element of the senator's self-destruction. But in some ways, that's not the point. The more interesting portion of the flick is the idea of the news anchor as advocate, the concept that enormously trusted, unelected individuals could be beamed into millions of homes and use their status and reach to shape tomorrow's stories, not just publicize yesterday's tales. That was real bias. But maybe it was better.
