On monday and I went and caught Good Night and Good Luck. The film is a tribute to Edward Murrow and his team at CBS that went after Joe McCarthy and his Communist witch hunt. The film, directed by George Clooney, didn’t glorify Murrow or overtly sensationalize the story. It also sports a phenomenal ensemble cast who must have smoked 100 packs a day while on the set.
Anwyays, the movie starts with a speech Murrow gave to the Radio Television News Directors Association in 1958. I thought it was a warning we long missed…
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…
I began by saying that our history will be what we make it. If we go on as we are, then history will take its revenge, and retribution will not limp in catching up with us…
This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a box.