'Good Night, and Good Luck' (CNN, 7 June 2025) – Part 1

 

[On Saturday, 7 June 2025, Cable News Network, the multinational news organization generally known as CNN, broadcast a live performance of the Broadway play about a period in the life and career of renowned newsman Edward R. Murrow, Good Night, and Good Luck, by actor, producer, and director George Clooney and Grant Heslov, a writer and producer.  

[The broadcast was the first time that a Broadway play had been performed live on television while it was still on stage in New York.  (In June 2016, BroadwayHD produced a live stream of the Roundabout Theater Company’s production of She Loves Me from Studio 54, earning the on-demand digital streaming media company a Guinness World Record for the first live stream of a Broadway show.  It wasn’t televised, however.)  It was also the first time CNN had presented a play of any kind, whether Broadway, Off-Broadway, or regional, or, indeed, any kind of scripted, dramatic performance, including films (other than documentaries).

[(Broadway plays, both musicals and straight dramas and comedies, have been recorded for broadcast, mostly on the Public Broadcasting Service’s outlets such as Great Performances and the now-discontinued American Playhouse and the WNET [PBS’s outlet in New York City] series Theater Close-Up.  See reports on Rick On Theater for “The Originalist (PBS)” [17 July 2017], “One Man, Two Guvnors (PBS)” [21 January 2021], and N/A [9 September 2026].  Other networks and streaming services have aired recorded plays over the years as well, such as Come From Away [2017-22] on Apple TV+ [10 September 2021] or Waitress [2016-20/2021] on Max [14 February 2025].

[(Live play performances were a staple of television’s early days, when everything was live, including scripts written expressly for TV such as Requiem for a Heavyweight by Rod Serling [1956; remade as a theatrical film in 1962 by Columbia Pictures] and Gore Vidal’s Visit to a Small Planet [1955; stage play: Broadway, 1957; film: Paramount Pictures, 1960], and have occurred even in recent decades.  The last live telecast of a performance of a Broadway play, as far as I know, was Annie Live! on NBC on 2 December 2021 [see “Annie Live! (NBC, 2 December 2021)” on ROT, 7 February 2022].

[(None of these productions, however, was shown while the play was still in performance on Broadway—and none was broadcast worldwide.  I discuss this practice in my report on Rogers and Hammerstein’s live Cinderella in “Cinderella: Impossible Things Are Happening (CBS-TV, 31 March 1957)” [25 April 2013].

[(While there have been no official announcements of broadcasting another Broadway play live on CNN, both the network and industry figures have expressed a strong interest in repeating the format.  The success of the GNGL broadcast has led to suggestions within the theater community that Broadway should consider live television broadcasts to reach wider audiences, and executives at CNN noted that the network is actively looking for more “innovative, experimental ways to move the needle,” though it wasn’t certain the next event would be another Broadway show.

[The GNGL broadcast, entitled Good Night, and Good Luck Live: CNN Special Event, was a one-off event; no repeats were scheduled.  The live performance of the show, however, was streamed on Max, the American on-demand subscription streaming service owned by Warner Bros. (current owner of CNN and distributor of the 2005 GNGL film), at the same time as the CNN broadcast, but no further showings were available.  (nb: The network was acquired by Paramount Skydance, now owner of CBS, in September 2026.)

[The TV broadcast was a live telecast of the penultimate performance of the Broadway show, not a specially mounted performance for TV.  Though CNN is normally a commercial station, the performance was shown without ads, in accord with Broadway practice.  (There were two shows on 7 June, a matinee at 2 p.m. and the evening performance, the latter of which was the one televised.)  That was a first for a Broadway production: the live broadcast on national television of a regular performance of a Broadway play as it was being performed at its home theater, the Winter Garden.

[The performance was broadcast with 21 cameras placed around the theater and a crew of 250 people (in addition to the regular Broadway stage crew) to capture the show for the home audience.  The viewers in the Winter Garden Theatre during the broadcast were ordinary ticketholders, according to reports, who’d purchased tickets to see the show.  The theater was open to the public as it would have been for any other performance.

[The stage play Good Night, and Good Luck, both a political play and a backstage drama, was adapted from Clooney and Heslov’s screenplay for the 2005 film of the same name and started previews on 12 March 2025.   It opened on 3 April and ended its limited engagement on 8 June (22 previews and 77 regular performances), the day after the telecast and the day of the ceremony for the 78th Tony Awards.  Good Night, and Good Luck was nominated for five Tony Awards (but didn’t win any), including Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Play for Clooney, who received a Special Theatre World Award for Outstanding Broadway Debut Performer/Playwright.

[The 1 hour-40 minute, intermissionless, one-act play is set in 1954, when on Tuesday, 9 March, at 10:30-11 p.m. (See It Now’s regular timeslot in those years), newsman Edward R. Murrow, in a live “Report on Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy,” attacked the junior senator from Wisconsin’s anti-communist crusade on the reporter’s television show,  a newsmagazine and documentary series on the Columbia Broadcasting System.  (The filmed response appearance of McCarthy [1908-57; U.S. Senator from Wisconsin: 1947-57] for See It Now, which is featured in the play, was on 6 April entitled “Address by Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy.”)

[The GNGL stage production was directed by David Cromer, a 2017 Drama Desk- and 2018 Tony-winner for direction of The Band’s Visit (2017).  (The TV director for CNN was Micah Bickham.)  The scenic design was by Scott Pask, the costume design by Brenda Abbandandolo, the lighting design by Heather Gilbert, the sound design by Daniel Kluger, and the projection design by David Bengali. 

[The play starred the then-64-year-old Clooney (b. 1961), who played CBS executive Fred Friendly in the movie, as Murrow (1908-65), who was 46 at the time.  (Murrow was portrayed in the movie by David Strathairn [b. 1949], who earned an Oscar nomination).  It was Clooney’s first stage role since 1986 and his Broadway début (see “George Clooney speaks about his Broadway debut in ‘Good Night, And Good Luck’” in “Film Stars Twinkle on the Great White Way, Part 2" (30 March 2025) on this blog; details about Clooney’s stage début are included in that post). 

[GNGL may have been a major point in Clooney’s stage career, but it wasn’t his maiden live TV performance.  On 25 September 1997, he appeared as Dr. Ross in “Ambush,” the first episode of season four of NBC’s ER.  On Clooney and Anthony Edwards’s (Dr. Greene) suggestion, the episode was aired live.  On 9 April 2000, the actor produced (and appeared as Col. Jack Grady in) a live television remake of the 1964 Sydney Lumet movie Fail Safe on CBS (the network at the center of Good Night, and Good Luck).

[The other cast members included Carter Hudson as Joseph Wershba, a reporter and writer for See It Now; Ilana Glazer as Shirley Wershba, a reporter and producer on See It Now; Glenn Fleshler as Fred Friendly, creator, with Murrow, of See It Now; Paul Gross as William F. Paley, CEO of CBS; Clark Gregg as Don Hollenbeck, CBS newscaster and commentator, and associate of Murrow and Friendly; Mac Brandt as Colonel Anderson, a fictional Air Force spokesman who tries to influence See It Now’s coverage; Will Dagger as Don Hewitt, first director of See It Now; and Christopher Denham as John Aaron, member of the production team of See It Now. Senator McCarthy was seen, as in the movie, only in archival video footage.

[For TV, CNN scheduled Good Night, and Good Luck: Pre-Show at 6:30-7 in front of the Winter Garden, with CNN’s chief investigative correspondent Pamela Brown interviewing special guests of the broadcast.  At the bottom of the screen during the introduction, CNN ran a chyron with the identities of the guests, as well as a count-down clock with the time till the curtain and the names and credits, ostensibly excerpted from the show’s Playbill, of the cast, crew, and creative staff of the Broadway production of Good Night, and Good Luck.

[The pre-show guests included John Berman, a CNN news anchor, who provided a profile of Murrow; CNN Chief Media Analyst Brian Stelter, who spoke about the state of journalism in the U.S. today and compared it to the atmosphere of the 1950s and Murrow’s concerns at the time; and Kara Swisher, a CNN Contributor who also hosts two podcasts: On with Kara Swisher, which features interviews with prominent figures in business, tech, media, and politics, and Pivot, co-hosted with Scott Galloway (public speaker, academic, author, podcast host, and entrepreneur) and offers commentary on current events in tech, business, and politics. 

[Swisher, who also returned later as a panelist on the post-show segment, discussed Murrow’s innovative reporting and broadcasting style and techniques from World War II through See It Now, emphasizing his use of live radio and television, which were pioneering practices in the ’30s, ’40s, and ’50s.

[On video, Brown also spoke with members of the company during the half-hour pre-show, including Clooney; actor Glenn Fleshler, who played Fred Friendly (the role Clooney played in the film); stage director David Cromer; and scenic designer Scott Pask.  At the end of the pre-show, CNN political commentator and anchor of the network’s Anderson Cooper 360°, Anderson Cooper, began the introduction to the play’s 7 p.m. performance.

[At 9 p.m., after the performance, was a post-show program, Good Night, and Good Luck: Truth and Power hosted by Cooper.  (The post-show actually started a little before 9, as the time allotted for the performance was two hours and the play only runs 100 minutes.)  Truth and Power focused on the themes of journalism and accountability and included a discussion with a panel of journalists and experts as well as interviews with stage director Cromer and members of the cast.

[On 30 March 2025, I posted “Film Stars Twinkle on the Great White Way, Part 2," a collection of articles and television segments focusing on Clooney and his imminent début on Broadway.  It includes the following pieces:

•   “George Clooney speaks about his Broadway debut in ‘Good Night, And Good Luck’” by Dave Carlin (CBS News New York [WCBS, Channel 2 in New York City], 7 February 2025)

•   “George Clooney shares thoughts on making his Broadway debut in ‘Good Night, and Good Luck’” by Joelle Garguilo (Eyewitness News [WABC, Channel 7 in New York City], 7 February 2025)

•   “George Clooney makes Broadway debut, telling the story of pioneering journalist Edward R. Murrow” by Jon Wertheim (60 Minutes [CBS News], 23 March 2025).

[There are notes and commentary in these posted articles bearing on Clooney and Good Night, and Good Luck.  (Part 1 of the two-part “Film Stars Twinkle” covers the production of Othello with Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal [23 March-8 June 2025].)

[All quotations from the play and the accompanying pre- and post-shows are from my own transcription of the dialogue as I recorded it on DVR on 7 June 2025 as I watched the live CNN telecast.  Quotations from other sources are footnoted in my file copy and are available on request (by leaving a Comment on the post) with an e-mail address to which I can send the citation list.]

GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK LIVE: CNN SPECIAL EVENT

[This performance report grew rather long, so I’ve broken it into three parts.  Below is Part 1; Parts 2 and 3 will follow on 27 and 30 September.]

After viewing the 6:30 Good Night, and Good Luck: Pre-Show on Saturday evening, 7 June, I proceeded to take in the live broadcast of the George Clooney-Grant Heslov docu-play derived from their 2005 filmscript of the same title.  This was a telecast of the second-to-last regular performance of the Broadway play, transmitted from the stage of the Winter Garden Theatre on Broadway at West 50th Street, with an actual theater audience in the house.

Filmed or broadcast plays are seldom the same as a live performance seen in person.  Probably the first difference theater people will point out is that an in-person show is three-dimensional.  That applies both to the actors and to the stage environment—the stage space and then the set that’s built within it.  TV is two-dimensional, creating the illusion of depth and roundness.

Then, too, in-person theater is viewed by a large audience—the Winter Garden seats 1,526 theatergoers, the sixth largest Broadway house (of 41) in New York City—all sharing the same encounter at the same time.  This creates a communal experience that watching a telecast at home alone or with a few others doesn’t.

This theater community, made up mostly of strangers, will have an effect on our response to the play that is less pronounced when we watch on television even with a group made up of family and friends.  And this is even without considering the event nature of going out to the theater, waiting till the doors open, then hanging out in the lobby before the house doors are opened, finding our seats, and reading the program until the lights dim and the curtain goes up or the first actor makes an entrance.  This is part of the magic of theater that can’t be duplicated in our living rooms watching a small screen (or even a large one).

As I’ll mention as well, close-ups, a film and TV technique we don’t usually get in live theater, are another significant difference, as are the 20-odd cameras each revealing a small section of the stage with the TV director, Micah Bickham, deciding on what to fucus the audience’s attention (instead of the actors and the action drawing the spectators’ notice), therefore determining what part of the stage we look at, is another.

(In Broadway’s GNGL, there are, in point of fact, film-style close-ups, especially of Clooney, since many of the simulated TV broadcasts—as distinguished from the archival video clips of actual telecasts—are close-ups on the monitors while the live actors are seen in full on stage.  In a meta-theatrical touch—somewhat ironic, I think—these video projections are live feeds from cameras in the stage set—as differentiated from the CNN cameras for the live telecast.)

The camera’s eye is also narrowing.  In person, we can scan the whole stage—I sometimes like to check out what the actors out of focus are up to while someone else is speaking—but in movies and television, it’s the director who makes the decision about what the spectator sees.  This same phenomenon means that I also never got a good view of the GNGL set in its entirety.

As Robert Lloyd, a Los Angeles Times television critic—and who better to make this observation—notes that “there are obvious differences between a movie, where camera angles and editing drive the story[, and a play].

A stage play . . . offers a single view (differing, of course, depending on where one sits), within which you direct your attention as you will.  What illusions it offers are, as it were, stage magic.  It’s choreographed, like a dance, which actors must repeat night after night, putting feeling into lines they may speak to one another, but send out to the farthest corners of the theater.

Good Night, and Good Luck Live: CNN Special Event, as the TV broadcast was called, starts with a camera at house left, apparently from a box up above the auditorium in front of the proscenium, looking down at the audience as they settle in their seats.  (We can see that the boxes along the house-right wall are unoccupied except by lighting instruments.) The house lights are still up and one can see a bit of the stage at the left of the television screen with the curtain closed.

(A word about directions in theater for ROTters who aren’t theater folk—or who are used to the non-English equivalents; other languages have their own jargon: in a proscenium theater, which, like most of its Broadway kin, is what the Winter Garden, built in 1911, is, stage directions are given from the perspective of an actor on stage facing the audience. 

(A proscenium theater is a performance space featuring an arch that frames the stage, separating the audience, which faces the stage directly, from the performers. In other configurations, such as arena [in-the-round] or thrust [audience on three sides], actors and directors have to find alternative ways of describing movements around the playing area.

(So, “stage left” and “stage right” refer to the actors’ left and right when facing the audience.  “House left” and “house right,” by contrast, refer to the spectators’ perspective.  [Though ‘house’ can refer to the theater building, short for ‘playhouse,’ it’s commonly used to designate the part of the theater occupied by the audience, also known as the ‘auditorium.’]

(In the interest of completeness, the rear of the stage area, farthest from the audience, is called ‘upstage’ while the front, nearest the audience—at the proscenium arch—is ‘downstage.’  This is because old proscenium houses commonly had “raked stages” that were higher at the back and sloped down toward the audience—so the back was literally ‘up’ and the front was ‘down.’  [If you’re curious about how this can work—or not—when you’re actually trying to perform on it, read my anecdote “A Hatful of Rain and the Disasters that Almost Were” in “Short Takes: Theater War Stories” (6 December 2010).]

(The area the farthest downstage, just behind or in front of the proscenium arch, including in front of the main curtain, is designated “in one” [see below].)

The view shifts to a different camera apparently in the front aisle at house left showing theatergoers from the front as the house lights come down and there’s the customary rustling as the spectators get ready for the play to start.

The hour-and-40-minute one-act starts with a jazz singer (Georgia Heers) at a recording session.  Initially, it’s dark with a dim light illuminating the closed curtain; we hear only a woman’s voice at first. 

(You can see already that the view through a camera has changed the way I’m seeing this performance as distinguished from the way I’d have seen it in person: I’d have been in the audience, not looking down at it from the side and then the front of the house.)

Then the lights behind the curtain, revealed to be a scrim, come up (the stage production’s lighting is designed by Heather Gilbert) and the singer appears in profile behind a large floor mic, dressed in a shiny (silk or satin, perhaps) lime-green gown and matching gloves.  She sings Victor Young and Edward Heyman’s 1952 ballad “When I Fall in Love.”  The program lists her as Ella—though I don’t believe anyone addresses her by name.

Ella’s a fictional character inspired by and evocative of jazz singers of the 1950s, especially Ella Fitzgerald (1917-96), whose voice played a significant role in defining the musicscape of the era.  Ella’s performances, interspersed throughout the play, contribute to setting the atmosphere and serve as emotional anchors throughout the play. 

She and the musicians don’t interact with the dramatic characters of the play, but they serve as a kind of commentary on and counterpoint to the central narrative.  It’s not quite background music because the dialogue and action are suspended during these interludes, and there is some banter among the musical performers. 

The songs do occasionally reflect what’s just occurred on stage or is about to occur.  After a plenary meeting about the McCarthy broadcast, for instance, Ella opens her third number with “There may be trouble ahead” (“Let’s Face the Music and Dance”; 1936; Irving Berlin [1888-1989]).  And when it’s revealed that the reading matter of one HUAC target has been scrutinized, Ella sings Cole Porter’s “I’ve Got My Eyes on You” (1939) evocatively.

The interludes, however, don’t usually further the documentary drama’s narrative, and they also slow down the play which is already short of strong dramatic energy.  Johnny Oleksinski of the New York Post even asserts that the musical interludes sap what little fire he found in the play (“this attractive but empty show”) as it is and David Gordon of TheaterMania estimates that “without them, the running time would be around 80 minutes.

Ella’s first appearance is solo, behind the scrim in a spotlight—in the rest of their scenes, the musical combo appears in a small set in the stage-left quadrant of the second-level in the newsroom complex and seems to be engaging in a recording session—and when she finishes her number, she “disappears” as her light blacks out from her head down like a zipper being closed. 

(A scrim in theater is a curtain made of open-weave fabric that appears opaque when lit from the front, but semitransparent when the front lighting goes out and lights come up on the scene behind it, allowing the audience to see through it.)

A spot light comes up on Edward R. Murrow, in the person of George Clooney, down stage “in one,” wearing a tux and with a cigarette dangling from the side of his mouth, in a position center stage behind a lectern.  In the telecast, Clooney’s shown in medium close-up from the waist up (another difference from an in-person viewing).

The lighting is slightly dim, and as it brightens, Murrow surveys the room in front of him.  He starts speaking when the lights are up fully: “This just might do nobody any good.  At the end of this discourse a few people may accuse this reporter of fouling his own comfortable nest, and you all may be accused of giving hospitality to heretical and even dangerous thoughts.”

He’s obviously addressing a group of some kind (for which the in-house audience stands in), though the occasion isn’t identified.  Except for the ending of the play, which is a continuation of this moment, all of Murrow’s other speeches are taken from television broadcasts, so this one stands out.

(This monologue turns out to be a version, slightly altered for Good Night, and Good Luck, of a historical speech Murrow gave to the Radio-Television News Directors Association [RTNDA; now the Radio Television Digital News Association (RTDNA)] as the keynote address at the 1958 RTNDA convention in Chicago.   Known as the “Wires and Lights in a Box” speech, it was delivered on 15 October 1958, 4½ years after See It Now’s “Report on Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy” aired and a year-and-a-half after McCarthy died.

(Some of the changes in the speech are almost certainly deliberate, to make it more universal—such as where Clooney’s Murrow says “media” instead of the original “television”—and to leave out digressions, but other instances seem more like just the way actor Clooney memorized the speech. 

(In a 2 June 2025 interview on NBC’s Late Night with Seth Meyers, Clooney acknowledged, “We gave away a thousand tickets to students [on] two different nights, and they all know these speeches.  I screw them up sometimes and they let you know.  I’ll say one word wrong and you’ll hear, ‘Nope!’”

(The linked online version of the speech purports to be the verbatim text, but the site, which is the webpage of the successor organization to the one to which Murrow addressed his remarks in 1958, doesn’t state what the source was—a contemporaneous recording that was later transcribed or a typescript supplied by Murrow’s office.  In any case, the quotations from this speech used in this report are from the play’s text as delivered from the stage, irrespective of the text of the speech as posted on rtdna.org.)

Murrow had used the speech to critique the state of television news of his day, warning against its potential to prioritize entertainment and superficiality over serious journalism and public enlightenment.  He feared that without a commitment to responsible and informative broadcasting, television could become “merely wires and lights in a box.”  

Clooney and Heslov use the speech, to which Murrow returns at the end of the play, to bookend the narrative of Murrow’s confrontation with Senator Joseph McCarthy and the climate of fear and censorship during the McCarthy era.  (Some of the changes are clearly meant to emphasize the parallels with today’s media issues, at least as Clooney and Heslov see them.)  It sets up the debate the play enacts.

Though, as Jon Wertheim (b. 1970), a correspondent for 60 Minutes since 2017, comments in his 23 March 2025 interview of the actor for the CBS News program, “Clooney and Heslov conceived of the story of ‘Good Night, and Good Luck’ in the early 2000s, when the U.S. went to war in Iraq.”  (Operation Iraqi Freedom began on 19 March 2003.  It ended on 15 December 2011 when combat operations in Iraq ceased.)  “I just thought it was a good time to talk about when the press held government to account,” explained Clooney on 60 Minutes. 

When the collaborators decided to revise the screenplay into a stage drama, that translated into “Trump throwing Washington into a tumult,” noted the New York Times.  “You take a narrative, you make it up, don’t worry about facts, don’t worry about repercussions,” said Clooney, so the play “feels more like it’s about truth, not just the press.  Facts matter.” 

Nonetheless, there are a great number of invocations of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and the First Amendment in the commentary before and after the CNN performance, and not a few interviewees cite the citizenry’s responsibility “to speak out” whenever these rights are being infringed—by blatantly McCarthyist tactics, I might add. 

As Clooney, himself, put it in the Wertheim interview: “When the other three estates fail, when the judiciary and the executive and the legislative branches fail us, the fourth estate”—the press—"has to succeed.  Has to succeed . . . .”

It’s interesting, I must say, that a film script written 20 years before the play’s début and 10 years before Trump entered politics, could still encapsulate the timbre of today’s times with respect to journalism so perfectly.  In 2005, Clooney and Heslov couldn’t have predicted a Trump administration, and when the play was announced in mid-March 2024, Trumps re-election (5 November 2024; took office: 20 January 2025) hadn’t happened yet.

Of course, there’s a connection between McCarthy and Trump that could account for similarities of tactics and behavior, making the eras of the two men comparable: both were advised and heavily influenced by Roy Cohn (1927-86; lawyer and prosecutor; McCarthy’s chief counsel, 1951-54; attorney to Donald Trump, 1973-86).  Trump reportedly asked, “Where’s my Roy Cohn?” in 2017 when he felt he needed a lawyer who would protect his interests and aggressively defend him, as Cohn was known to have done for his clients, often employing unethical tactics.

This is, as it happens, emblematic of the main reason I was disappointed in this highly praised play—but I’ll get to that later.

The telecast attracted a viewership of 7.34 million across various platforms, including 2 million U.S. TV-watchers and 1.7 million viewers abroad.  Good Night, and Good Luck was the number one program on cable television in the U.S. on 7 June.  155,000 theatergoers saw the show in person during its run at the 1,526-seat Winter Garden.

The performance that was broadcast was well received by the in-house audience.  There was boisterous applause at many moments during the performance, usually after one of Murrow’s fervent speeches.  Of course, the theater audience was aware that their attendance was part of a televised event, and they knew cameras were present for transmitting.  I wonder how much the response might have been generated, or at least enhanced because theatergoers were cognizant that they were being broadcast worldwide.

I got the sense, furthermore, that the audience wasn’t just responding to Clooney’s delivery—which was quite fine, by the way, especially his facial expressions (which got a lot of close-ups on the TV monitors)—and not even for the passion Murrow had put into them when he composed them, but for the socio-political points the monologues made with respect to today’s conditions in journalism and politics.

Broadway’s audiences have often been labeled largely “liberal,” and if they are, they certainly showed their colors on 7 June.  Of course, they got a lot of stimulus from the Clooney-Heslov-Murrow script.

This, ironically, is endemic to Good Night, and Good Luck.  (Confession: I haven’t seen the 2005 movie, so I can only assume the same characteristics that pertain to the play also were in the film as well.)  GNGL presents two debates intertwined, and Clooney and Heslov’s dramaturgy exemplifies the second one—perhaps unwittingly and perhaps deliberately.

The first debate is the McCarthy-Murrow confrontation, and that conclusion is foregone.  History has already declared McCarthy the villain of this Red Scare episode and Murrow the hero.  It’s a done deal: McCarthy Bad – Murrow Good.  -30-.

But the other question is still in contention: What should journalism be?  Just facts, with no opinion, or, as William Paley (1901-90; Paul Gross on stage) puts it to Murrow in the play, “news with a dash of commentary.”  Paley, who built the Columbia Broadcasting System and became its longtime president (president: 1928-46; chairman of the board: 1946-83), and Connie Chung (b. 1946), a former co-anchor of CBS Evening News; former CNN, NBC, ABC anchor; and a member of Anderson Cooper’s post-show panel hold the first view: facts without opinion.  Murrow and Abby Phillip (b. 1998), another panelist and anchor of CNN’s NewsNight, espouse the second position: news with attitude. 

As justification for Paley’s standpoint versus Murrow’s, Paley asks: “What happens when it isn’t Edward R. Murrow minding the store?”  I think we’ve seen the answer to that now. 

(Has anyone forgotten the volatile 2017 discussion of counselor to Donald Trump Kellyanne Conway’s invocation of “alternative facts” to explain away false statements by White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer?  If that’s too far in the past, what about J. D. Vance, the Republican vice-presidential nominee in the fall of 2024, defending his false claims about Haitian immigrants eating pets by asserting that he had to “create stories so that the American media actually pays attention”?  He continued to make these claims even after they were debunked by local officials, who stated there was no evidence to support them.

(On the other side of the political divide, when questions arose concerning Democratic President Joe Biden’s mental capacity either to be an effective candidate or to handle the presidency if reelected, his supporters and members of his White House and campaign staffs swore up and down that he was in complete control.  The media either parroted these testimonials or questioned them, always depending on where the reporters or commentators stood politically.

(Biden’s disastrous performance at the debate on 27 June 2024 put the lie to Biden’s professions and the testimony of his supporters.  It became clear that, whatever the state of the incumbent’s mental health, he was an ineffective and inadequate presidential candidate, though, except for the Trump supporters, few media outlets took any kind of stand. 

(As calls for Biden to end his candidacy increased, George Clooney, a staunch Biden supporter, published an op-ed column entitled “I Love Joe Biden. But We Need a New Nominee” in the New York Times of 11 July 2024, and the president dropped out of the race on 21 July.  It became clear that members of the White House and campaign press corps knew or should have known of Biden’s decline but never pressed it until it had become an open issue.

(In the 60 Minutes interview, Clooney made this Murrowesque statement with respect to his op-ed:

I was raised to tell the truth.  I had seen—the president up close for this fundraiser, and I was surprised. And so I feel as if there was—a lot of profiles in cowardice in my party through all of that.  And I was not proud of that.  And I also believed I had to tell the truth.

(George Clooney’s father, Nick Clooney [b. 1934], is a former anchorman and television host, who started his broadcast career in 1958.  But George Clooney isn’t Murrow—or Cronkite or Huntley and Brinkley or MacNeil and Lehrer.  He doesn’t have the standing to be the model for national journalism.  In Paley’s analogy, there was—is—no one “minding the store.”)

Nonetheless, this debate is still ongoing, though it ebbs and flows as times and sentiments change and then change again.  The ’50s were still in the news-with-disinterest mode, with Douglas Edwards (1917-90) on CBS (1947-62) and Chet Huntley (1911-74) and David Brinkley (1920-2003) on the Huntley-Brinkley Report on NBC (1956-70). 

Viewers saw these professional journalists as trusted voices of clarity and integrity, and highly credible and neutral reporters.  Edwards’s successor, Walter Cronkite (1916-2009), anchorman for the CBS Evening News from 1962 to 1981 and the prime exemplar of this philosophy in the post-Murrow era, was dubbed “the most trusted man in America” in the 1960s and ’70s. 

In an exchange during the post-show discussion, Chung, whose career started in 1971 and flourished in the latter ’70s and the ’80s, asserted that when she was a field reporter, she found that “the Eastern liberal establishment press was alive and well,” but that reporters remained “unbiased and they were objective in their coverage because . . . we buried our partisanship.”

Cooper (b. 1967) wondered, “[C]an people really bury it?” remarking that “it comes out in different ways,” on which Bret Stephens (b. 1973), conservative New York Times opinion columnist, expanded, “Sure, your choice of stories, your choice of adjectives—who are the good guys, who are the bad guys.”

Today, we’re solidly ensconced in the era of commentary journalism, with whole networks existing to inculcate a point of view.  In addition, as panelist Kara Swisher (b. 1962), podcaster and CNN contributor, asserted, with the rise of “non-legacy” news outlets such as podcasts, video sharing platforms like YouTube, social media, and blogs and vlogs, consumers have a vast selection of outlets as news sources, most of which interweave commentary and opinion.

[This concludes “Good Night, and Good Luck (CNN, 7 June 2025) – Part 1.”  Please come back to Rick On Theater for Part 2 on Sunday, 27 September.]