Good Night, and Good Luck.

“No one familiar with the history of this country can deny that congressional committees are useful. It is necessary to investigate before legislating. But the line between investigating and persecuting is a very fine one, and the Junior Senator from Wisconsin has stepped over it repeatedly. We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof, and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear of one another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason if we dig deep into our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men. Not from men who feared to write, to associate, to speak, and to defend the causes that were for the moment unpopular. This is no time for men who oppose Sen. McCarthy's methods to keep silent or for those who approve. We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. We proclaim ourselves as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom wherever it continues to exist in the world. But we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home. The actions of the Junior Senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and dismay amongst our allies abroad and given considerable comfort to our enemies. And whose fault is that? Not really his; he didn't create this situation of fear, he merely exploited it, and rather successfully. Cassius was right; the fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves. Good night, and good luck.” - Edward R. Murrow

The media has a responsibility to tell us the truth, to speak up and inform the world, even when that truth is shameful, harmful to reputations, or not what those in our government want us to hear. This is especially important in that last example because the people need to know the truth about what their leaders are actually doing and how it will affect their way of life; knowing so can and should guide them when it comes to elections and whether they keep voting for someone who does or does not represent their best interests. 

But the media isn’t always that altruistic. Fox News lost a lawsuit for hundreds of millions of dollars for deliberately misleading their viewers, and their defense was that they were an entertainment show, not a news outlet, trying to pretend that what they did was justified simply by claiming they shouldn’t be taken legitimately. And not to just pick on Fox News, other networks such as CNN, MSNBC, and others have been accused of skewing heavily in favor of their demographics rather than dispassionately stating the facts no matter who they favor. It’s a sickness in the media that is unlikely to ever be resolved. 

There are few, if any, reporters out there anymore who would put their reputations, their jobs, even the possibilities of their freedom, on the line to do the right thing and speak up, even when their bosses tell them not to. So few would speak up and defend what is right in the face of journalistic integrity and the near certainty of losing their station. One such individual was Edward R. Murrow, a CBS anchorman who saw what was going on in American politics in the 1950s and decided to speak up, knowing that it would put a target on his back.

Back in 2005, when I was originally watching Good Night, and Good Luck, looking back at this time in history, it seemed incredible that something like this could happen in the United States, a place that has in its own constitution the guarantee of Freedom of the Press. Having an elected politician attacking the press for reporting on something that is backed up by facts and evidence seemed like something that would happen in Russia or China, not the United States. Watching this film in 2026, on the other hand, is far more disturbing because we are seeing the exact same war of words coming out of our politicians and reporters again with threats whenever a reporter asks the tough questions or reports on something our leaders do not like. Even worse, with the rise of social media, everyone has a voice and an opinion, and it becomes far more confusing to figure out what is truth, what is opinion, and what are lies. And everyone is pointing fingers at everyone else all the time. This little film from 2005, this Oscar-nominated movie set in the 1950s, could almost be a look at what is going on again in this country today.

Had this movie been made this year, people would be calling it a direct attack on the current administration in the guise of a historical drama, and they would be right. Writer/director George Clooney would have been unable to divorce himself from the parallels, and he would have been making an allegory of sorts on our current political climate. Because this film came out in 2005, though, he is free from that criticism, and we can look at this film without that clouding our judgment, at least in theory. There will always be those out there who cannot set aside biases and judge a picture on its own merits, absent their personal interpretations. I am not leaving myself out of that, either. There were times during my current watch-through that I found myself comparing it to current events, and it shaded things differently; it couldn’t be helped. 

The central conflict here was Senator Joseph McCarthy, who was being accused by Burrow over the air for overstepping his station in his dogged pursuit of Communists. His hearings were harsh, persistent, and anyone who had any political leanings even slightly off the beaten path was brought before a Senate committee where they were stripped of their rights, lost their way of life, and subject to intense media scrutiny. People were black-listed from their jobs; sometimes they were even imprisoned. The Red Scare was a very real thing, and McCarthy’s vendetta ruined people’s lives. 

The film dramatizes not only Murrow’s reporting, calling out McCarthy for his actions, but also the drama behind the scenes as Murrow has to battle his superiors who don’t want him to go through with this line of news, but also are feeling the pressure from the government, and McCarthy specifically, to censure themselves. McCarthy even goes on the air and throws out his own accusations, lies and half-truths about Murrow, in an attempt to discredit the reporter. You can practically hear the phrase “Fake News” when he goes after him. McCarthy’s response to Morrow, seen in the film via archive footage, is ridiculous, too. It is all easily disproven, but the average viewer isn’t going to take the time to do that. Likewise, though Morrow goes down the list of accusations McCarthy makes, answering each one, not everyone will believe him or take the time to verify anything. Those who supported McCarthy won’t care that he was trampling on the rights of U.S. citizens; all they’ll care about is that Murrow was going after the man they were rallying behind to rid them of something they feared. 

This battle of words is amazingly played out on screen by David Strathairn. Morrow had a dry, yet resolved sensibility that David has replicated here nearly perfectly. But he’s not alone in this picture. George Clooney has arranged for a lot of talented actors and actresses to fill out his cast, people that can take smaller roles and turn them into fully fleshed-out characters. These are fully realized beings stuck in a system that seems to be against them. For instance, Joseph Wershba (Robert Downey Jr.), one of the writers and editors for CBS, has to hide that he is married to Shirley (Patricia Clarkson), another writer, because of a company policy prohibiting married couples from working there. When they are eventually called out for this by their boss, Sig Mickelson (Jeff Daniels), director of CBS News, one of them has to choose to quit or be fired. It matters not that they are both great at their respective jobs.

Ray Wise has the most emotionally charged character, though, despite only having a few minutes on screen. He is playing Don Hollenbeck, a journalist for CBS News who has been accused in the press of being a “pinko”. He was targeted by McCarthy for his supposed Communist leanings, which eventually led to him committing suicide. While Ray is barely on screen, what he does with that time makes you care for him and feel empathy and sorrow when he turns on the gas in his house and lets himself die. Clooney has an eye for talented actors and has surrounded himself with some of the best.

As a director, George Clooney is surprisingly fleet in this picture. It barely runs ninety minutes, giving us just enough material to keep us interested without feeling overstuffed. In our modern world, there would be an instinct to pad it out, giving us unnecessary character backgrounds and padding that runtime beyond two hours long. Clooney has instead narrowed the focus down to inside the newsroom with very little time spent elsewhere. Yet we never feel short-changed or like we don’t understand these characters. It’s a brilliant bit of writing. It’s also claustrophobic thanks to the same reasons. Because there is little time to breathe, it really feels like we are a fly on the wall inside this newsroom, watching things play out virtually in real time, observing only those moments inside that building. This choice narrows the scope, but it also opens up the story to other formats including a Broadway production that launched in 2025 and ran for a year.

A ninety-minute movie that amounts to people talking rapidly back and forth nearly the entire time sounds like it would be boring, yet this film is anything but. This is a fascinating bit of history that we were not taught when I was in school. It made me want to find a book or a documentary on the subject and learn more about the fall of Senator McCarthy and what he did to get himself in so much trouble. He was never removed from office, but he did get his wrist slapped and relegated to a spot in the Senate that ultimately stripped him of any real power. This part of history is largely not taught, but it is a fascinating subject. While this movie failed to make much of a splash at the Oscars, failing to secure even a single win, it invites conversations and questions, which ultimately is the goal of cinema of this kind.

Academy Award Nominations:

Best Picture: Grant Heslov

Best Director: George Clooney

Best Actor: David Strathairn

Best Original Screenplay: George Clooney and Grant Heslov

Best Cinematography: Robert Elswit

Best Art Direction: James D. Bissell and Jan Pascale

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Release Date: October 7, 2005

Running Time: 93 minutes

Rated PG

Starring: David Strathairn, Patricia Clarkson, George Clooney, Jeff Daniels, Robert Downey Jr., and Frank Langella

Directed by: George Clooney