Another Generation of Good Luck?

Apparently Good Night and Good Luck, the George Clooney film about Edward R. Murrow, is just now opening in England, and so it is the occasion for a fascinating article in the Guardian, which I will be quoting at length.

As it happens, I've just seen this movie for the first time myself-- on a double bill with Capote, which seemed to me to be a better film but not as important and endearing. But Good Night is a good movie, terrific to look at, gritty but glowing, and good storytelling, with even an odd B story about a couple keeping secrets that counterpoints the general paranoia of the McCarthy era, yet pays off with a joke at the end that reveals another aspect of Murrow's personality.

I left the theatre once again marveling at my good fortune in growing up when there were real models for excellence in journalism, especially on television. Murrow was one. I was very young in the years depicted in this film, but I remember his programs (including "Person to Person" in which he appeared just as bored as depicted in this movie.)

I especially recall what turned out to be one of his final CBS programs, the documentary "Harvest of Shame," when it was first broadcast. As a high school student pondering my future, I recall being especially stunned and awed by one fact: that no child of a migrant worker had ever been to college.

To think now that I expected journalism like this on television regularly! And for awhile, there was a good deal of it. CBS Reports, NBC White Papers, Howard K. Smith's half hour---and daily news from Huntley-Brinkley and Walter Cronkite. Nearly every journalist I respected then was directly or indirectly a student of Edward R. Murrow.

Of course, there was a lot of sententiousness and stodginess, leading directly to the 1960s news satires like That Was The Week That Was, or even the satirical turns comics like Steve Allen did on the news in the 50s.

But thanks to George Clooney and company, Murrow has returned to at least suggest a model for a new generation. (I mean, who do we have besides Jon Stewart and Keith Olbermann, who make fun of the news, and Amy Goodman, who does her radio show on TV?) That's what impressed me the most about this Guardian piece: the sense of somebody standing up and bringing this sort of commitment to today, from Murrow's generation (and, as it turns out, Clooney's father) to today's.

Excerpts from the article below, after the photo.

---MORE----