Kirstiecat | Blog

10/10

This one will probably be my film of the year. On the surface, it is an engaging profile of Ed Murrow, a CBS journalist and newscaster in the 50s. It’s also a film with some adept performances by Straithairn, Clooney, Clarkson, and Robert Downey Jr. with some great black and white cinematography that skillfully weaves old news footage within the fabric of this film and is frequently accompanied by the memorable singing of the very talented Dianne Reeves. But to simply leave it at that would be doing a disservice to everyhing that the film is really about and taking a stand for. What Murrow did was to take a big risk during an era of political witch hunt and criticise senator McCarthy and beyond this fight for legal rights for an accused. Murrow had a great deal on the line even being that he was a respected journalist and face in American homes. The power and fear McCarthy had inspired at this point was at a culmination. There were those who had grown tired and worried by McCarthy’s power and political paranoia but they certainly didn’t want to say something about it and end up being accused of being a communist themselves. Murrow was careful and used mainly footage of McCarthy to criticze him. However, Murrow’s own point of view could not be missed.

The film begins and ends with the same scene, a tribute for Murrow in which he warns against the type of journalism that is merely entertainment and not informative. Murrow states,

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. There is a great and perhaps decisive battle to be fought against ignorance, intolerance and indifference. This weapon of television could be useful.

It’s important to remember those throughout history who have demonstrated integrity but why this film is even more imortant is that we Americans find ourselves in somewhat similar political times. Certainly, we’ve moved farther ahead in terms of civil rights for minorities (we still have a long way to go) but the rhetoric we hear as justification for the abuses of right not only here but also abroad is rather familiar. We must fight for “freedom” and protect ourselves. Substitute the word, “terrorism” for the word “communism” and you might hear McCarthy’s echo in a few of Bush’s State of the union adresses. (In case you are a political nut like me, go here and read. There are literally 20 pages of results of speeches Bush has made where he talks about terrorism and freedom. Does he have to pay McCarthy any royalties, I wonder?)

As in the case of the McCarthy era, we’ve let rhetoric be a substitute for reasoning and logic. We’ve let our fear of a concept blind us to the human rights abuses committed in all of our names. We’ve allowed measures like the Patriot Act to pass at home and we’ve allowed people to stay in power that are responsible for human rights abuses abroad with the abandoning of the Geneva Conventions and the abuses in Iraqi prisons. We’ve allowed government officials to profit from a war that utilized weapons with depleted uranium, thereby punishing unborn generations. We’ve allowed our government to detain even our own citizens in Guantanamo and approve torture methods there and hold them without trial for two years. We’ve allowed a huge deficit to accumulate and for our government to be spending money on war vs. education, health care and properly funded levee systems. And in this time, what has the media done? I’d like to hear the background on the person who actually released the story and footage of the torture at Abu Ghraib but I see most of the criticism coming from overseas. It’s fair to say that, as in Murrow’s time, the journalists and newscasters are still very much afraid of being labeled or discredited as partisan or liberally biased (there were a fair share of Bill O’Reilly’s in Murrow’s time as well) or even unpatriotic and supporting of terrorists. Our media conglomerates are still concerned about corporate sponsorship pulling out and so we’ve basically become a country in which the ties between businesses and the government are many and what suffers is the actual truth and the citizens of this county. I’d like to see more Murrows come foth, undeterred by the great risks and do what he thought the job of a journalist was: to inform vs. insulate and entertain.

I’ve been a little encouraged by the polls that show a huge decrease in trust and support for Bush (let’s hope people start protesting more publically) as well as the Plame investigation but, as in the case of McCarthy, we may see Rove and Cheney being pushed to the back vs. removed from power. I hope not. I sincerely hope that, as Bob Dylan sang, “The times they are-a changin’”

If anyone would like to read more of an informed opinion on politics, I suggest you go here. This man has a history degree and has both an honest and somehow optimistic point of view on current politics. I usually don’t blog about politics because he does it so much better. Oh and he also happens to be my dad.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 5th, 2005 at 11:45 am and is filed under films, politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.