Basically, I guess I wanted more, so in a somewhat grumpy mood, Rogie sez...

I think "sex, lies and videotape." had a period.

I studied television broadcasting in college so most all of the footage used in this movie was old hat to me as well. I did, however, like the idea of seeing the process of Murrow getting this story on the air and keeping the facts even-handed. Movies have a tendency to try and change history. I thought the use of real footage from the era allowed Clooney to show McCarthy as he was, which was more fair than hiring an actor to portray him. I think it is a good film for a new generation that has no idea about Murrow/McCarthy/and the politics of journalism.

So what did ya think, Ethan?

BTW, a letter-writer to Roger Ebert's Q&A column seems to channel Ethan's viewpoint:

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?categor y=ANSWERMAN

Ebert takes the movie's viewpoint and states that McCarthy could not possibly have known about Venona, and though his conclusions ended up being mostly correct decades after the fact, at the time his charges were made up out of thin air. Ebert also suggests that government intelligence knew about Venona and took care of business while leaving McCarthy out to dry.

I still haven't seen the film...we're in the middle of moving, and it's hard to get out and do anything fun.  But here's Ebert's response, and my response to Ebert's ideas.

"A. If McCarthy had that information, why didn't he cite it to save himself? Obviously, because it was not available until years after his death. "

The FBI had the Venona project as early as 1948.  It was the primary tip off about the Rosenbergs, and many other Soviet spies working within the U.S. government.  It was never, and couldn't be, cited as a source of information, because it would have tipped off the KGB that we had found out that they had slipped up and reused a few 'one-sheets' during the the use of their one-time pad coding system, which is usually thought to be unbreakable.  But the Soviets got lazy.  Anyhow, because of this, the American people were never let in on it, and were left in the dark.

Ironically, the FBI didn't really need to be so secretive, since A SOVIET SPY WITHIN THE DECODING ROOM named William Weisband informed the KGB of the cables that were decrypted, and the Soviets knew from 1950 on.  Still, Venona went on until 1980.

Continued...

"Evidence at the Army-McCarthy hearings and elsewhere indicated that he fabricated most of his charges out of thin air. Do you have any sympathy for the majority of his targets who were completely innocent? What about the blacklist that ended careers and destroyed lives because innocent people exercised their constitutional privileges?"

"Out of thin air"?  Even Ebert must know that this is a silly thing to say.  McCarthy may have had some bad information from time to time, but I doubt he was throwing darts at a phone book.  The rest of it is overly emotional and historically inaccurate.  If we'd like to discuss the Red Scare in general, I can certainly get behind the idea that those laboring in the Arts should be left alone to do whatever they want.  The Blacklist sucked.  But we're talking about Joe McCarthy in particular, and Joe's whole problem wasn't actually individual communists, it was the government officials who ALLOWED security and loyalty risks to keep their government jobs.  Soviet Spies are gonna happen, but once we find out and have good information about who and where they are, why aren't we purging them?  Who's stopping this from happening?

And Ebert says, "What about the blacklist that ended careers and destroyed lives because innocent people exercised their constitutional privileges?", cleverly confusing the frivilous and evil HUAC hearing and the Hollywood Ten with McCarthy's rooting out the Soviets from within the government, even working within the White House.  Because the people who pled the fifth, who sat down and said, "I refuse to answer on the grounds that it might incriminate me" for McCarthy weren't the lovable kind of liberal arts major who's infatuated with socialism.  It wasn't a teenage Ebert, in other words.

"It is significant that government security officials in possession of facts about spies did not choose to share them with McCarthy, who was a loose cannon. Presumably the security experts were taking care of business while McCarthy was disgracing himself. Edward R. Murrow is the public servant in this scenario."

It's not all that significant, since it was shared with no other Senator either.  It's also not a fact that McCarthy wasn't clued in to bits and pieces of info from loyal friends within the FBI taken from Venona without being let into the knowledge that the project itself existed.  McCarthy would have immediately spilled the info, in all likelihood, destroying Venona for good.  I don't think Joe McCarthy was a strong enough man to deal with the problem of spies within the government. He was too arrogant, too weak, too drunk, and often too stupid. He wasn't a hero.  But I'm not positive he was a villain either. 

Edward R. Murrow's broadcasts sucked.  They were really awful.  They were deceptive hatchet pieces that reportedly sickened a few of his anti McCarthy colleagues in the press.  I don't think he was a public servant in this case.  I don't think he helped make the United States safer from communist infiltration.  I think he stopped a wobbly, crazy, intoxicated senator already at the end of his career. The phrase "Goodnight and good luck" sounds sinister to me, coming from the cadaverous face of Murrow.