I had the rare luck to be in New York on the opening weekend of George Clooney’s stage adaptation of Good Night, and Good Luck a few weeks ago.
Yes, that George Clooney. Silver fox. Espresso salesman. Occasional director of films watched mostly by other directors. And now, it seems, Broadway dramatist. I’ll admit: I wasn’t expecting brilliance. But I was expecting at least a flicker of fire – and in that, Clooney didn’t disappoint.
The production, based on the 2005 film he directed, itself based on the righteous television crusade of CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow against the creeping poison of McCarthyism in 1950s America, is tight, slick and worryingly relevant. For a play set in a world of monochrome television screens, chain-smoking men in boxy suits and studio backrooms filled with cathode hum, it lands with the force of a modern slap across the face.
Because what struck me most as I left the theatre and walked into the honking chaos of Times Square – dodging tourists, bins, and overpriced pizza slices – wasn’t just the nostalgia for a time when journalism had guts. It was the inescapable realisation that somewhere between Murrow’s smoky sign-off and the arrival of TikTok news, we lost the fourth estate. Or if we didn’t lose it, we bloody well gave it away.
And look – I know this sounds like the usual hand-wringing of a middle-aged media junky (guilty), pining for the golden age of Woodward and Bernstein, and a press corps that didn’t get its political insight from someone’s Instagram story in a Pret. But it’s not just sentimentality. There has been a slow, grinding erosion of journalistic integrity, curiosity, and – frankly – courage. And it didn’t start with Twitter.
It started with fear. Fear of being shut out. Fear of losing access. Fear of being labelled “biased”, “fake news”, or – worst of all – “not impartial”. And so instead of asking the questions that matter, the British press (and I’ll include myself here) too often settled for the pantomime of the Westminster lobby, the Sunday spin cycle, and the weary ritual of ministers “doing the rounds” with their talking points on breakfast telly, unchallenged.
Take the Covid Inquiry. A moment – finally – for those in power to be held to account. For decisions that cost lives to be unpacked, explained, exposed. But what have we had? Carefully crafted apologies. The odd emotional wobble. And a press pack that largely reported it all like a dull episode of The Thick of It. Where was the outrage? The ferocity? The sense that this might actually matter?
The same applies to our relationship with MPs, councillors, police commissioners, NHS Trust heads, and all the rest of the laminated-card-wielding brigade of local power. Once upon a time, a backbench MP caught with his hand in the till or trousers round his ankles would be chased down the street by a horde of hacks demanding answers. Now we email their press officer and wait two weeks for a line that’s been “signed off”.
Clooney’s play reminded me of something more dangerous than apathy. It reminded me of complicity. Murrow wasn’t just speaking truth to power – he was speaking truth to his peers. “We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home,” he warned. And though he was talking about Communism and witch-hunts and the paranoia of a post-war America, you could just as easily apply that to our current predicament.
Because when journalists stop asking difficult questions, or worse, stop being allowed to, democracy falters. People tune out. Trust vanishes. And into that vacuum comes the conspiracy theorist, the populist YouTuber, the self-appointed truth-teller with a ring light and a Patreon page. And they thrive not because they’re more accurate, but because they sound angry – and anger, in the absence of integrity, is what people are left with.
I am as guilty as everyone here, and I accept that as on a different level, pre-Capital Business Media, between 1999-2004 we owned a local newspaper and magazine group which owned titles in London Docklands, West Essex and Cambridge and we did go soft of local investigations of planning decisions and restaurant reviews to name just two for purely commercial reasons. Like all media, from the CBS of Murrow to our Docklands News advertisers pay staff’s mortgages, rents and school fees so you need to be careful to not bite off the hand that feed you.
I’m not saying we need to turn every local paper into a remake of Spotlight. But maybe – just maybe – we need a bit more Murrow in the mix. A bit more discomfort. A bit more risk. And yes, perhaps a bit more George Clooney. Because for all his Hollywood gloss and obvious earnestness, what Clooney has done – whether he meant to or not – is to remind us of the stakes.
He’s reminded us that journalism, when it works, isn’t about access or awards or being first on X (née Twitter). It’s about scrutiny. It’s about saying what no one else will, at the moment it matters most. It’s about the courage to be unpopular – to lose friends, jobs, advertising revenue – in the pursuit of something bigger than yourself.
So yes, Good Night, and Good Luck does still have a point. A sharp one. It points directly at the vacuum where our national conscience used to be. And it dares us to fill it again – not with opinion or noise, but with truth.
Whether we will… well. That’s the real drama, isn’t it?
