Braveheart Clooney

Luca Perego, on Il Solitario, reports that the newspaper Repubblica defines George Clooney "a brave man" because he directed a movie about Edward R. Murrow (the movie was presented yesterday af the Venice Film Festival). Murrow was the host of See It Now, a CBS (yes, the Dan Rather's one) program that became famous after a special edition broadcasted in march of 1954 which basically destroyed Senator Joe McCarthy's political career. We totally agree with Luca's post on his amazing blog. And we only dare to add a brief extract (with translation, because the book was never published in Italy) by Arthur Herman's "Joseph McCarthy: Reexamining the Life and Legacy of America's Most Hated Senator", one of the best biographies written about Tail-Gunner Joe in the United States.

[...] Host Edward R. Murrow had spent two months putting together what he described as a "report on Senator Joseph R. McCarthy". Murrow and his staff had meticulously cut and edited film clips to put McCarthy in the worst possible light. The result was appalling [...] Despite CBS's pretentios, "See It Now" was not a report at all but a full-scale assault, employing exactly the same techniques of "partial truth and innuendo" that critics accused McCarthy of using. [...] However, most liberals loved it, and Murrow became a hero. (italian version)