Good Night and Good Luck (2005) (Japanese Subtitles)

Good Night and Good Luck (2005) (Japanese Subtitles)—This excellent dramatization of Edward R. Murrow’s (1908-1965) challenge of Joseph McCarthy (1908-1957), shows the challenges of for-profit media companies. William Paley (1901-1990) had worked incredibly hard to make Columbian Broadcasting System (CBS) a profitable venture, after he became manager in 1927 at the tender age of 26. The film here shows the intricacies of the give and take—of reporting the news as it is while balancing the need to please the audience with entertainment. Paley was a liberal and supported Murrow completely—but this was weight against audience backlash. Murrow was born in North Carolina, from a Quaker background, and had raise public awareness of the “hidden” slavery still in the South—that of the system of sharecropping, which governments had supported. Murrow himself entered these conditions. He and Fred W. Friendly (1915-1998) produced a weekly news digest called “See it Now,” which was enormously popular. This dram brings this out. The central event is from 1954, when Murrow interviewed McCarthy and exposed his duplicitous tactics to a national audience. He is credited with McCarthy’s downfall and denting the anti-Communist hysteria.