A Letter to George Clooney

Dear George,

Of course, we have never met. You are a famous actor, currently headlining Good Night and Good Luck, one of the highest-grossing Broadway shows of all time, based on a 20-year-old movie you co-wrote about famous newsman Edward R. Murrow. In a couple of days — June 7, 2025 — you’ll be live-streaming your next-to-last performance on CNN. So your movie about television has been adapted to a play that will be on TV: you are truly “platform agnostic,” as they say.

I am a less agnostic audio story editor. But I’m also someone who is fascinated, as you seem to be, with the history of broadcasting and its relevance today. Hence my humble newsletter Continuous Wave — which does not charge admission prices of up to $849 but does cover some of the same ground as your Murrow project. I was inspired to rewatch your 2005 film. Back then, David Strathairn was the actor playing Murrow, going eyebrow-to-eyebrow against anti-communist Senator and general terror-of-the-nation Joseph R. McCarthy. You played the role of Murrow’s lead producer, Fred Friendly.

So why am I writing to you, a person of infinitely more fame, money, and cheek-bone definition than I will ever know? It’s because I noticed something while watching your movie and the series of broadcasts it’s based upon. Everyone who’s interviewed you or reviewed your Broadway production has noted that it ends with the fat finger of irony pointed at the present. Ed Murrow and his team are meant to be avatars for journalistic courage, especially for the way they challenged, via their weekly CBS newsmagazine See It Now, the never-ending Red Scare that consumed Washington. 

You told Maureen Dowd this play “feels more like it’s about truth, not just the press. Facts matter.”

Indeed they do! Even now, in this era of semantic misery, most Americans say they want facts from the media and they consider facts to be a signifier of “news,” as opposed to “commentary” or “entertainment.” The problem now, of course, is any agreed definition of what constitutes “truth” and “facts.” Unfortunately, that comes down to trust.

Let me put it more clearly, George Clooney. You may feel that Good Night and Good Luck is about stuff like truth and facts — but really, it is about whom we choose to trust and why. Even you, a famous person and Democratic donor in rooms with Presidents, cannot see the whole world with your own eyes. You need witnesses to report back. We need the media, and we need to trust what the media tells us, for this “facts” business to function.

To my mind, a lot of this comes down to the editorial process, which is just a fancy phrase for handling decisions at any media outlet, regardless of size. How do we balance the constraints of deadlines, ethics, verification, and our treatment of sources with the need to generate income, and to fit material into established formats? Consistent editorial judgment builds trust over time. The editorial process is what stands between fact-based media and other media that act simply as a series of pipes to squirt random rhetoric, bullshit and/or vibes across the land.

Of course I would say that as an editor. But I suspect you’d agree because your dad was a trusted local news anchor for decades. So, just to edit your words a little, I think you mean to say that your production is about the importance of the editorial process. After all, Edward Murrow himself was called the “editor” in the intro to See It Now. (He was also called “distinguished reporter and news analyst” because they liked to lay it on thick.)