For the final blog post, we were assigned to watch Good Night, and Good Luck", this film dates back to the age of the 1950's. It depicts the relationship between the press and the government, this was during the time when Joseph McCarthy was a senator. Edward R. Murrow was the journalist televising McCarthy's accusations of communism.
Transhistoral
The term Transhistoric means the "quality of holding throughout human history, not merely within the frame of reference of a particular form of society at a particular stage of historical development". A simpler version of this definition for me would be something that stays throughout time, something that you see repeatedly over and over again in different periods and eras of history. A very known transhistoic moment would be between the press and government. This is a recurring conflict that never gets resolved. During the Civil Rights era, the president's administration wanted to confine what journalists were allowed to say and write about because they didn't want the government's agendas to get out. This again happened during the McCarthy Era when someone tried to speak against the government they were seen as the enemy. Today, we see that with Julian Assange, because he leaked videos that affected the government, and were being hidden. In return Assange paid for it. Basically, throughout time the government finds ways to shut the press down, but it never completely works, especially now that more people are seeing it happen. In current day, we also see our president on social media platforms going back-in-form with the press. He often calls them out for spreading "fake news."
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| One of the many tweets of Trump using the term "Fake News" |
The Chilling Effect
According to The First Amendment Encyclopedia the chilling effect "is the concept of deterring free speech and association rights protected by the First Amendment as a result of government laws or actions that appear to target expression." Wikipedia says something similar: "discouragement of the legitimate exercise of natural and legal rights by the threat of legal sanction." What this means is that the government uses their power to make laws, orders, and threats so that we don't use our rights, so we don't use our first amendment to our advantage. The chilling effect was used in the film, when many journalists did not want to cover what was happening in America because they were afraid, they would get prosecuted. In today's age, we can take whistleblowers being prosecuted as an example of what happens when you use your first amendment right to expose the government.
The Sixth Amendment
This is something that I have found very interesting, the fact that this is a part of the sixth amendment, yet it's as though this does not apply to The Press, tragic right? In the film Good Night, and Good Luck, everyone was afraid to talk about the government, therefore, talking back to the government was a no no. Murrow was one of the few that was able to do both because he knew it was what needed to be done. In a way Murrow was an advocate for the rest of the journalists who were afraid to get punished for speaking out. This reminds me of Jorge Ramos, the journalist I wrote about a few blogs ago. He called out the president at the time for breaking a promise, he did this because he knew he had to advocate for those who can't or don't have a voice.
In Conclusion
The film was very interesting and taught me a lot about this era, because before being assigned this blog I never knew of the McCarthy era. One thing that I noticed and was my biggest takeaway from it, is the fact that CBS was upset with Murrow because of his show and the way he was influencing the viewers. This makes me think that for big networks like Fox and CNN only show what makes the party they align with look good. Even though major networks are not affiliated with one particular party they tend to sway one way or another so they censor and remove anything that will have a certain party look bad. This goes to show that the government still tries to have certain power over our news sources.
Something else that I can grasp from this film is the fact that we are a democracy but sometimes don't act like it or support each other like we should. There should be a checks and balances for the government itself because they try to overstep, when the outcome Is not what they expected. Of course, communism is not the answer, because the way China runs it would not be a good idea for us.
Overall the film was great and has brought more issues to my attention, or more so added more to certain issues I already knew about.
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