Movie Research Paper: Good Night And Good Luck

Name Instructor Course Date Movie Research Paper: Good Night and Good Luck People use various communication techniques to display information about a topic of their interest. One of the means to achieve this is through using a movie to describe a true-life event to report what really happened. For instance, Ed Murrow and movie producer Fred Friendly made a movie called Good Night, And Good Luck to describe cancer that existed in the American politics during the cold war. The movie shows a group of journalists who try to obtain evidence against McCarthy’s fault accusation against those whom he claimed had an intention to sabotage the government (Kendrick and Leslie 1769). During the time, the US and Russia were fighting over supremacy with the US being the socialist while Russia was the communist (Smith and Evan 681). The work focuses on a description of what really happened and how the movie depicts the event, including any discrepancies between the real-life and the movie. The intention of the journalists as seen in the movie is to defend the citizens’ right to freedom. However, they see McCarthy as an enemy to freedom that pretends to defend people’s rights, but actually bring injustice to the innocent citizens whom he regards as his enemies. McCarthy is a bully and a liar who is surrounded by several yes men. He calls his opponents traitors with an intention to destroy them with lies. The movie displays a real-life event on how Murrow who worked on a radio program known as ‘’Hear it now’’ with Fred Friendly contributed to ensuring that innocent citizens received justice (McNair and Brian 614). Murrow and Fred converted the radio program to a television program named ‘’See it now’’ to reveal the hidden truth about McCarthy’s strategy of gaining political fame. The program revealed McCarthy’s weakly supported campaign against anti-communists during the cold war. At the time of the cold war, McCarthy was a senator and he had several political enemies. He led the war against people who wanted to betray the country by leaking the nation’s secrets to its enemy which was Russia. However, he had ill intentions of targeting those who he considered to be his enemies by claiming that they were communists. The idea is clearly shown in the film. In the movie, McCarthy is seen as a powerful man with the majority of people supporting him in his claims. The film shows a situation where there is no freedom of speech because the people’s right to speak had been killed by fear during the cold war. McCarthy used the opportunity to kill the reputation of his opponents. The film shows that if McCarthy referred a person as ‘’Red,’’ then it was an instant guilt of being associated with the communists. Once a person has been proven to be a communist, then it was not only the individual who will suffer the wrath of the government but also those who were close to him or her including friends, colleagues, and family members. Don Hollenbeck, who is a character in the movie sees suicide as the only option after he was pointed out to be a communist by McCarthy. The suicide indicates the kind of terror and fear that the US people had with going up against McCarthy, who was a senator during the period under Truman’s admini...