Good Night and Good Luck - An Analysis

 The battle between the press and the government is not something new in our history. It is the press' duty is to criticize and expose the government's wrongdoings, but when they do that, the government always resorts to the same tactic, suppression of the media. 

George Clooney's Good Night and Good Luck (2005) recounts an example of this in the era of McCarthyism, and following CBS host Ed Murrow's fight against Senator Joseph McCarthy and his unjust witch hunt for "communist spies" living in America. 

Murrow saw through the lies that McCarthy was feeding the American public and used his show "See It Now" to expose McCarthy and the corruption around The Red Scare. Even when the government tried using a chilling effect, suppressing speech before it happens, or when the executives at CBS threatened to pull him and move his show's time slot to a far less favorable one, Murrow stood his ground. 

Murrow's determination for the truth helped to combat the media blackout on true communist activity in America. And when he did show the public what the government was doing was wrong, and he was punished for it. The government pressured the entire network, sending members of the military to talk with an executive at CBS, going after Murrow's writers and colleagues, and making false claims about Murrow being connected to the communist party.

By the end of the film Murrow was able to persuade the Senate to investigate McCarthy and his practices. Showing the power of the press when they are able to properly do their jobs and stay strong in their reporting. But this needs to be an ongoing practice.

Now, anyone found to be voicing their opinion that goes against the mainstream is "canceled" and silenced, along with any other opinions like it. 

Cancel culture is a new name for an old concept. McCarthyism is back and worse than before. In an age when almost everyone is connected and information travels faster than ever, people's lives and careers can be ruined in an instant, and by anyone. Some notable examples of this include actors Kevin Hart and Chris Pratt being canceled. 

Hart was scheduled to host the 2019 Academy Awards, but a Twitter user found old tweets of Hart using homophobic language between 2009 and 2011. Hart was forced to step down from hosting out of public outrage even though he apologized for using that language. Those tweets were posted almost 10 years prior and Hart had tweeted thousands of times since those tweets. The person who found these tweets were not just scrolling on their feed, they had to dig through his profile to find one time Hart stepped out of line. 

There were claims that Pratt is a member of a famously anti-LGBTQ church, launching Twitter to ridicule Pratt even though the claims turned out to be false. They did not care, they saw someone doing something they did not accept and turned on them. Pratt is a proud republican, a minority among actors, and had people combing his social media to find any connection to political figures and ideas they did not approve of.

All of this was done without any actual evidence of these claims being true, just as McCarthy did in the 1950s.

Cancel culture is also forming a new chilling effect on speech. If people are afraid of cancellation for saying something wrong, they will not say anything to keep their reputation clean. If this new form of McCarthyism is allowed to continue, the future of speech is bleak for those who do not want to live in fear of what they say and keep others in check.