The Thing About Goodnight and, Good Luck

"Hidden Opportunities"

Goodnight and Good Luck showed the disagreement and dysfunctionality of the 

Government and Journalists in the News. Throughout this movie, CBS Journalists specifically Edward R. Morrow was committed to taking down Senator Joseph R. McCarthy for a foolhardy campaign to root communists in the United States.

Throughout history, journalists did not get much love when it came to gaining information to write about, especially when they tried to get it from the government. It seemed like every time when a journalist makes a thoughtful statement about the government , the government would  try to censor the news station in any way possible. That was the case for the CBS news station when trying to expose Senator McCarthy for being a communist secretly while being a part of the U.S  government. 

Edward Morrow was the only journalist that was truly confident enough to go against the government while everyone just watched him in fear and disbelief.The other journalists were scared because of the idea of Chilling effect where the government would try to take journalists out because they expose something about the government that they don’t wanna be spread to the public.However, Edward Morrow didn’t care about the chilling effect and went against the government and Senator McCarthy for being communist which lead to Senator McCarthy to accuse Morrow being a communist.

I thought it was really interesting how Edward Morrow used Senator McCarthy’s words against him in 1954 with the help of his coworkers Joe Wershba, Don Hewitt and Fred Friendly to record him speaking on the matter as they were still trying to avoid the chilling effect from the government. 

Adding on, I thought it was wild how much effort the CBS journalists did to get Senator McCarthy out of office as with McCarthy also trying to shut down CBS for running their mouths a little too much about his personal business. 

This issue of chilling effect is shown within the modern day like when the Covid-19 pandemic became serious in 2020. Many doctors made claims and statements talking about the pandemic not being as big of a threat as the government claims it is and journalists started spreading the information around within the media. When the government got word of what was going on, they immediately went after the doctors and journalists and shut down their claims.

The government really is greedy when it comes to making Americans follow claims knowing good and well that most of the information could be falsely interpreted or could be over exaggerated. They also love to hide information for some reason implying that there could be some groundbreaking discoveries that could be hidden from the world right now that would probably break down the government all together if journalists got a hold of what the government was hiding. 

All in all, “Goodnight and Good Luck” opened my eyes to realize that there are many troubles when it comes to journalism and getting information out to the public. It taught me that even though someone is trying to censor you from bringing out information that you have, you are not obligated to listen to them because it’s your story for the media and its what you make of it that counts.