“People want to enjoy themselves, they don’t want a civics lesson.”

Good Night and Good Luck (2005)

This work received Independent Spirit Awards for Best Feature, Best Director (George Clooney), Best Male Lead (David Strathairn), and Best Cinematography (Robert Elswit) in 2006.

The statement I’ve featured in the title, and the ring of truth it produces, has huge ramifications for the news industry. Contemporary discussion of the “news machine” and the profit-driven operations of major broadcasting companies are all echoed (or do they echo?) the conflicts and discussions in Good Night and Good Luck. The catalyzing agent of McArthy’s communist hunts simply make plain the human cost of these issues in terms of American lives and jobs. This, of course, is the problem, and as Murrow pushes forward against McArthy, he tells his crew this: “We’re gonna go with the story, because the terror is in this room.”

Following our class discussion on Wednesday of independent media in both film and television, I was reminded of this film, one of my favorite releases from the last 5 years. Our discussion of innovative reporting was focused on both the technical and institutional limitations of journalism, and in a film that takes place some 30 years prior to the 1972 Republican National Convention (which the footage viewed in class covered), characters are already discussing these topics with no small amount of personal interest and concern.

George Clooney, who wrote, produced, directed and acted in this film (famously for $1 and at scale) studied Journalism as an undergraduate. Good Night and Good Luck is frequently characterized as a “film about television,” and to that end it offers (intentionally) a sharp jab at the way the news is reported then and now. Edward Murrow was not only a celebrated journalist but a professor of journalism, and at the end of the film offers this wisdom to the audience at a dinner commemorating him:

To those who say people wouldn’t look; they wouldn’t be interested; they’re too complacent, indifferent and insulated, I can only reply: There is, in one reporter’s opinion, considerable evidence against that contention. But even if they are right, what have they got to lose? Because if they are right, and 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. 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. Good night, and good luck.

One of my favorite parts of the film is the always on-spot soundtrack, which is framed diegeticly through the proximity of Columbia Recording Company, in the same building as CBS. Dianne Reeves and an accompanying jazz quartet (Peter Martin, Christoph Luty, Jeff Hamilton and Matt Catingub) are shown performing, a few floors below, songs like “TV Is The Thing This Year,” “I’ve Got My Eyes on You,” and “Gotta Be This or That.”