On June 7, 2025, CNN will broadcast—on tape, from a live performance direct from Broadway--George Clooney’s homage to Edward R. Murrow, Good Night, and Good Luck, which is welcome news for audiences who are not able, or willing, to fork over the $900 plus fees for a decent orchestra seat to the stage version of Clooney’s 2005 docu-drama Good Night, and Good Luck.
For American progressives wallowing in a deep Trump funk, the callback to the integrity of Murrow and his gutsy take-down of Sen. Joseph McCarthy on the pioneering news magazine See It Now may offer hope that journalism can repeat its treasured origin story. The legend is imprinted in the famous illustration by Ben Shahn, Edward R. Murrow Slaying the Dragon of McCarthy, a depiction of the noble paladin killing the beast who threatened the realm. In the Clooney iteration, no one needs a playbill to read McCarthy as a stand-in for Donald Trump, but Murrow has no obvious successor ready to suit up in the new media ecosystem. Morrow and his like have gone the way of vacuum tubes and rabbit ears.
