I'm lucky enough to know Joe and Shirley Wershba as neighbors and friends. My family has been following the creation of Good Night and Good Luck and are thrilled with the great buzz and reception its getting. I recently forwarded a diary and comments from Daily Kos to Shirley so she and Joe could read Kossacks comments. Her reply to me is posted below.
...forwarded the comments from a blog you get [Daily Kos] and I read through them. It's great that people around the country are reacting so positively to the film. I'm particularly gratified by the younger generation which isn't hobbled by memories of the Cold War and its fear of communists.
Of course I agree that Murrow was very courageous to risk his career at that awful period, and I am proud to have been associated with him and CBS during that period. However, without diminishing his role in the downfall of McCarthy let us not forget he wasn't the only one who tried to speak out. There were many others, but their voices didn't carry the same weight. For a list of other courageous journalists read Haynes Johnson's new book, "The Age of Anxiety." It 's a primer on how it all came about --how McCarthy latched on to a "cause", made it his own and sold it with lies, bully tactics and a keen sense of how to manipulate the media by making outrageous charges just before deadlines which led to outrageous headlines.
The Big Lie, as,Joseph Goebbels knew, will be accepted because it is so outrageous. And then the damage is done. Denials wind up on weak inside pages. They don't make headlines.
There will never be another Edward R. Murrow, nor should we seek one. What we need are more citizens and journalists who believe, as he did, that "dissent is not disloyalty" and and that our constitution and Bill of Rights are not to be diluted or politiicized. As I said in the Report It Now section of the Participate.net website, "Just as fear is contagious, so is courage contagious."
Shirley Wershba
