It was funny in a sardonic way for me to see how, before and after the CNN showing of the Murrow play with George Clooney, the people interviewing and interviewed missed that they themselves have been fearful and lacking in courage in our time. The big issue of our time as US citizens is our nation's enabling, supporting, and egging on Israeli genocide of Palestinians in a misguided attempt to further our nation's strategic, imperial interests. Not one of the people interviewed before or after the showing of the play would dare to remotely speak in any way against what the US has enabled Israel to do and continue to do. Not. One. Of. Them.
CNN put on its post-play panel an outright hack like Bret Stephens, who had gleefully supported the lies the Bush/Cheney administration put out to get our nation to overthrow the Iraqi government in 2002-2003. That Stephen never even thinks of apologizing shows that supporting propaganda is the true way to national success as a pundit in legacy corporate media. And nobody on the panel, excepting Abby Phillip (good for you, Abby) even dared to challenge Stephens. Still, she was a long way off in speaking truth to Stephens' power.
It was also downright hilarious to hear Scott Pelley say that Murrow was a success because of what he did with Joe McCarthy. Even the play acknowledges he lost his weekly Tuesday night prime time slot, and was relegated to a relative few reports (called "CBS Reports") in the dead time of Sunday afternoons. For Pelley to have made a commencement speech in May 2025 telling students to stand up for free speech and speak truth to power when he himself has been and continues to be silent throughout the Israeli genocide the US has enabled and supported, and silent about the student protestors across the nation who have suffered (certainly they have not been "successful" in the way Pelley and that asshat Anderson Cooper assume), is the height of legacy corporate media hypocrisy.
Yes, CNN did a great public service last night in showing this outstanding play without charging anyone wanting to see it on their computers without signing up for CNN's streaming service. They showed it without commercial interruption. It was, again, great. But, CNN's attempt at context before and after almost completely failed.
As a postscript, I'm old enough to know Connie Chung and Tom Brokaw were, in their time, physically attractive airheads of the type the film "Broadcast News" was criticizing. Neither could have ever written the script Murrow did with a Shakespearean bent. They were and remain fairly shallow.
And really, CNN. The only historian you could dig up was Tim Naftali? Really? He showed what a schmuck he is when he said Murrow's report on McCarthy was at the "height" of McCarthy's power. Wrong, Tim. McCarthy's hearings against the military were already underway and ABC was showing those hearings every day. For the first time, housewives across the US saw how menacing, reckless, and sometimes drunk McCarthy was. Murrow still acted bravely, yes. But McCarthy was already beginning to slip when the first of the ultimately three shows aired. And I admit that whenever the story of Murrow and McCarthy is told, I cry every time for the late Don Holllenbeck. Every. Time. That was a man with courage whose own personal demons did him in.
I would also almost bet Naftali probably doesn't even know the one liner about "Annie Lee Moss" in the play was the playwright's acknowledgement that the Murrow report on McCarthy got that one wrong. The middle aged black woman, Annie Lee Moss, a federal public servant was most likely a Red. She played dumb before McCarthy's committee when called, and did so brilliantly I may add. But even the Murrow people just assumed the middle aged black lady was not smart enough to be a Red. She was certainly not a spy, however. She was, though, merely a low level civil servant in late 1940s through mid 1950s (and of course beyond) America who lived with a man who subscribed to the Daily Worker. Both knew very well the Communist Party was the only party that fully and consistently supported African-American civil rights in the 1930s through early 1950s. There are a whole bunch of historians CNN could have brought on who have written important works on McCarthy and the Red Scare overall. None, however, are generally allowed to appear in legacy corporate media.
So, ironies pile up upon ironies. Yes, the Trump administration is a danger to so many of our civil liberties. But there are clear boundaries of lies that cannot be countered if one wants a career in legacy corporate media.
