Good Night and Good Luck

Journalism movies are not hard to come by. Watching How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days or Shattered Glass is intriguing and holds some sort of allure to it. Journalism becomes romantic.  But the reason I like Good Night and Good Luck, directed by George Clooney, is because it depicts the field of media in in its ethical dilemma. 

“Our history will be what we make it. And if there are any historians about fifty or a hundred years from now, and there should be preserved the kinescopes for one week of all three networks, they will there find recorded in black and white, and in color, evidence of decadence, escapism and insulation from the realities of the world in which we live. We are currently wealthy, fat, comfortable and complacent. We have currently a built-in allergy to unpleasant or disturbing information. Our mass media reflect this. But unless we get up off our fat surpluses and recognize that television in the main is being used to distract, delude, amuse and insulate us, then television and those who finance it, those who look at it and those who work at it, may see a totally different picture too late.” 

Often times as a Communication Arts major I have found myself struggling with the tension between observing mass media and fixing mass media. What is my role as a student of communication? Where do am I able to know the flaws that exist and the solutions to those problems?

The film asks these questions, if not broadly, specifically. Television has the ability to portray a reality that may or may not exist. My role is to be ethical in how that reality is portrayed. 


More importantly, Good Night and Good Luck forces the audience to grapple with what is portrayed and how it is portrayed. Whether the reality concerns Joseph McCarthy or Barack Obama the media is the watchdog and should be held to a greater standard.