..Gary Dretzka
..Noah Forrest
..Leonard Klady
..R.J. Matson
..David Poland
..Douglas Pratt
..Ray Pride
..Michael Wilmington

Maybe, it’s the trademark eye that makes CBS such big, juicy target for scandal and scrutiny. Or, perhaps, it’s the media giant’s self-propagated image of being the “Tiffany" network.

Nowadays, the only people who use the words “Tiffany” and “CBS” in the same sentence are pundits and politicians in need of a sarcastic quip or ironic take on once-great network’s hubris. The nation’s editorial cartoonists, certainly, aren’t reluctant to draw black circles around the eye, when the occasion warrants.  

But, what is it about this particular network that makes liberals, journalists and other media observers despair -- and conservatives rejoice -- when CBS behaves badly, as it did in the recent flaps about President Bush’s service in the Texas Air National Guard and postponement of the Emmy-winning made-for-TV movie, The Reagans? Why did Michael Mann make a movie about 60 Minutes and its capitulation to cigarette manufacturers, but ignore ABC’s onerous surrender to Philip Morris, which sued the network over a similarly devastating “Day One” report? (OK, maybe that had something to do with Disney owning both the network and distribution rights to The Insider.) And, why does everyone assume the sadly prophetic Network and Broadcast News were based on the news division of CBS, and not those at NBC and ABC?

The answer, in 2½ words: Edward R. Murrow … as in, “Ed Murrow must be spinning in his grave, right now” … as in, Good Night, and Good Luck, George Clooney’s new movie about the reporter who set the bar for every broadcast journalist who would follow in his wake. 

Forty years after his death from lung cancer, Murrow’s name remains as synonymous with quality journalism, as the Tiffany brand once was to the network that gave us Omnibus, Playhouse 90, Ed Sullivan, CBS Reports: Hunger in America, The Selling of the Pentagon, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman and dozens of other keynotes  of distinguished programming. Of course, this was when it wasn’t also airing Amos ’n’ Andy, The $64,000 Question, Mr. Ed, The Beverly Hillbillies, Hee Haw and The Dukes of Hazzard.

With the possible exception of Walter Cronkite, no single journalist has had as great an impact on the medium. That so many potential viewers of Good Night, and Good Luck will have no clue about Murrow‘s legacy, beyond his tenure as host of the patty-cake interview show, Person to Person, borders on a crime.

Clooney’s taut 90-minute drama benefits immensely from a stunning performance by veteran character actor David Strathairn, who captures Morrow right down to the wisps of smoke rising from the omnipresent cigarette between his fingers. Like the journalist himself, Strathairn’s portrayal seethes with intensity, purpose and integrity.

The San Francisco native had only a passing memory of Murrow when he was assigned the lead role. Assuming his family even owned a television in 1954, Strathairn would have been all of 5 years old when See It Now revealed that a wanna-be emperor, the junior senator from America’s Dairyland, wasn’t wearing any clothes during the widely televised Army-McCarthy hearings. 

“I was only aware of the McCarthy situation by proxy, nothing first-hand,” said Strathairn, early in a seemingly endless publicity tour for the film. “I wanted to capture Murrow’s unique on-camera persona … that presence. I studied tapes made for me by the Museum of Television and Radio.”

Murrow is familiar to most other Americans, those born after Elvis Presley first appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show anyway, through buildings and awards named in his honor, and scratchy black-and-white documentaries on cable TV. His prestige can be measured, as well, by the fact that Murphy Brown concluded its network run with a visit to Murrow, in a computer-generated heaven; the U.S. Postal Service printed commemorative postage stamps bearing his likeness; and, more recently, Fleetwood Mac recorded the song, “Murrow Turning Over in His Grave.”

“He may well be spinning his grave,” says Strathairn, agreeing with Mac’s virtuoso guitarist, Lindsey Buckingham. “But, I would hope that this movie would have rated a rare smile.”

The only excuse for denying Strathairn a Best Actor nomination would be another outbreak of premature senility among Motion Picture Academy voters. He’s that good.

Don’t expect a Best Supporting Actor nod for the man portraying Morrow’s nemesis, however. Even if he were eligible for such an honor, Sen. Joseph McCarthy -- the red-baiting cheeseball from Wisconsin -- probably would come in fourth-best in his own movie, behind Clooney, Robert Downey Jr. and Frank Langella, who, respectively, played CBS News president Fred Friendly, segment producer Joe Wershba and network boss Bill Paley. Unaware that Clooney had elected to use archival newsreel footage of the senator, instead of casting a professional actor, test audiences felt the fellow playing McCarthy was guilty of “overacting.”

Not so, the 56-year-old Strathairn, who was named Best Actor at the Venice Film Festival for his portrayal of Murrow.

Much has been written about the confrontation between McCarthy and the popular newsman, who publicly challenged the senator to produce facts and hard numbers about alleged communist infiltration of the army and most other government agencies, instead of hyperbole and fear mongering. By successfully calling his bluff, Morrow and Friendly single-handedly deflated the tires on McCarthy’s political momentum and all future witch hunts.

Not that Murrow didn’t pay a price for his tenacity and courage. After putting the full weight of his network’s clout behind the airing of the controversial See It Now episodes, Paley buckled under the pressure of advertisers who demanded he narrow Murrow’s influence at the network. See It Now would soon be forced off prime-time, and, eventually, killed. This left its host plenty of time to work on Person to Person and the occasional hard-hitting documentary.

Murrow's penchant for controversy made him an outcast at the network he helped build, beginning with his unprecedented radio broadcasts from Europe before and during World War II (“ This is London …”). In 1961, disillusioned and bitter, he accepted an invitation from President John Kennedy to head the United States Information Agency.

Four years later, at 57, his longtime love affair with cigarettes would cost him his life.

The clash between Murrow and McCarthy is at the heart of Good Night, and Good Luck, which, in Clooney’s hands, becomes a race-against-time thriller. Not only is Murrow going up against one of the most powerful men in America, but he also must contend with network executives and advertisers paralyzed at the thought of being seen as soft on communism. It’s exciting, even if one already knows the outcome.

More to the point, perhaps, Good Night, and Good Luck uses the crusade  to demonstrate how today’s broadcast media have simultaneously betrayed the public trust and Murrow’s legacy. Clooney accomplishes this by book-ending the film with Murrow’s prophetic admonition to his peers, during a speech before the Radio and Television News Directors Association, in 1958.

In it he derides the media for being "fat, comfortable, and complacent," and television for "being used to detract, delude, amuse and insulate us."

It is an address that cynical viewers might think was conceived by Clooney and his co-writer, Grant Hezlov, specifically to bite the hand that’s been feeding them for more than 20 years. Perhaps, they’d stayed up late one night watching Network, in hopes of channeling Paddy Chayefsky.

Nope, Strathairn asserts, “It is verbatim … we didn’t change a word.”

After characterizing his media peers as “complacent,” Morrow added, “We have currently a built-in allergy to unpleasant or disturbing information. Our mass media reflect this. But unless we get up off our fat surpluses and recognize that television in the main is being used to distract, delude, amuse and insulate us, then television and those who finance it, those who look at it and those who work at it, may see a totally different picture too late.

“This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a box.

“There is a great and perhaps decisive battle to be fought against ignorance, intolerance and indifference. This weapon of television could be useful.”

One doesn’t suppose he was conjuring up visions of Growing Up Gotti, The Apprentice, Yes, Dear and The Simple Life as he spoke those words.

Strathairn, whose generally low-key demeanor belies his education at the Ringling Brothers Clown College, delivered the material in the same laconic manner for which Murrow had become famous, measuring each phrase for maximum impact and enunciating each word to prevent misunderstanding. He knew the audience was filled with men -- and, being 1958, the rare female news executive -- whose job it was to ease the evolution from World War II-era radio-based reporting to a journalism that emphasized visuals over words, images over punditry.

“Murrow was a words man,” Strathairn stressed. “He came from radio, and didn’t really want to do television. He thought visuals were distracting, and the camera was like the elephant in the room.”

The people in the movie’s smoke-choked CBS newsroom, he continues, “were like explorers in the wilderness. They were inventing things on the fly … carving their initials on a tree.

“It’s a slippery beast, this world of information. Today, bloggers are exploring yet another wilderness.”

Murrow’s confrontation with McCarthy came at a time when politicians were learning to use television to their strategic advantage. The cameras favored the demagogues, if only because they were better actors and in control of the microphones, lighting and seating arrangements. Protocols had yet to be established, and network executives appeared willing to sacrifice the First Amendment to the gods of Wall Street, as if the Bill of Rights didn’t apply to their medium.

That now-famous episode of See It Now, and McCarthy’s stumbling rebuttal, demonstrated that some journalists, at least, wouldn’t give up without a fight. In his review, New York Times' TV critic Jack Gould wrote, "last week may be remembered as the week that broadcasting recaptured its soul."

Maybe so, but, 50 years later, TV reporters covering Hurricane Katrina won the praise of critics merely for asking President Bush questions that didn’t involve his morning run, chopping wood at the Western White House or what he ate for breakfast.

Clooney’s father is a popular television personality in Cincinnati, as well as host of a show on American Movie Classics. Last year, he made an unsuccessful bid for a House seat in his native Kentucky.

His son grew up to be one of those apples that didn’t fall far from the tree.

Equally comfortable both in and out the spotlight, George isn’t reluctant to let his opinions be known on such hot-button issues as fair play and accuracy in the media, and the press‘ responsibility to the public. It explains why Good Night, and Good Luck succeeds both as an indictment of today’s media conglomerates, and as a portrait of a significant American.

Viewers will find it difficult to avoid the other elephant taking up room in Clooney’s movie. More cigarettes are devoured during the course of Good Night, and Good Luck than in all of Humphrey Bogart’s movies put together.

The resulting haze, combined with Robert Elswit’s period-perfect black-and-white photography, recalls a time when second-hand smoke and drive-by cancer came with the territory of most jobs. The movie reminds us that, once upon a time, celebrities and cowboys appeared alongside doctors to assure consumers of tobacco’s health benefits.

Oddly enough, despite its affiliation with Kent, See It Now aired the first TV report linking cigarette smoking with lung cancer and other diseases. The story prompted Murrow to put down his smokes for one airing. It wasn’t, however, powerful enough to convince him that it wasn’t "too late" for him to stop permanently.

“I loved that George used the Kent commercial … it’s ‘the thinking man’s cigarette,’” Strathairn said. “Joe and Shirley Wershba, who worked on See It Now -- and had to keep their marriage secret -- were on the set. They corroborated everything, including how much everyone smoked.

“Most of the actors weren’t smokers, and Robert ( Downey) had just quit. We used pipe tobacco, because it smelled better.”

This, of course, differentiates Good Night, and Good Luck from most other movies with  gratuitous smoking. Cigarette companies pay good money to have their products placed in the hands of attractive young stars, and there’s no way anyone’s going to substitute pipe tobacco, bidis, cat nip or marijuana for the real thing.

Anyone interested in the complete text of Murrow’s 1958 speech to the RTNDA can find it at,  www.turnoffyourtv.com/commentary/hiddenagenda/murrow.html .

October 6 , 2005
- Gary Dretzka

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