{"id":127462,"date":"2025-05-24T07:59:10","date_gmt":"2025-05-24T07:59:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/127462\/"},"modified":"2025-05-24T07:59:10","modified_gmt":"2025-05-24T07:59:10","slug":"clooneys-timely-warning-from-history-about-trumps-authoritarian-america-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/127462\/","title":{"rendered":"Clooney\u2019s timely warning from history about Trump\u2019s authoritarian America \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Heady days in New York City<\/a>, with the Knicks basketball team enjoying their best summer in a quarter of a century and George Clooney<\/a> chief among the true-blue celebrities to be seen in midtown Manhattan. <\/p>\n

Since March, Clooney has been a fixture in and around the Winter Garden theatre, where he has brought his enduring winsomeness and a garish black dye-job to the role of Edward R Murrow, the 1950s CBS anchor who was, in that fractious decade, regarded as the most trusted man in America.<\/p>\n

The conceit of the play Good Night, and Good Luck<\/a> concerns Murrow\u2019s courageous stand against the bullying \u201cRed Scare\u201d senator Joseph McCarthy despite mounting pressure from his network to just play ball. <\/p>\n

Clooney, who has never hidden his fascination with journalism, was filmed outlining the theme of the play at a meeting with fellow cast members in a segment that appeared on 60 Minutes before the March opening night.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the other three estates fail \u2013 when the judiciary, the executive and the legislative branches fail us, the Fourth Estate has to succeed,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cHas to succeed,\u201d he repeated, offering a knowing point to the camera, \u201cas 60 Minutes is here now on our first day.\u201d<\/p>\n

But can it?<\/p>\n

On Monday, Wendy McMahon, the chief executive officer of CBS News, announced her resignation after four years, citing her disenchantment with the network\u2019s position in relation to a lawsuit issued against it by Donald Trump<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The legal action concerns the US president\u2019s accusation that 60 Minutes, the flagship CBS current affairs show for six decades, edited a Kamala Harris<\/a> interview to reflect favourably on her during the presidential election. <\/p>\n

Given the daily grotesquerie on display during the election rallies and interviews throughout last years, a complaint over editing standards seems almost quaint. <\/p>\n

But it represents the battle for control over the independence of US media for which the Clooney play provides a (staggeringly expensively ticketed) parallel. The Trump legal complaint states the editing was election interference and is demanding an astonishing $20 billion in compensation.<\/p>\n

In a resignation letter to her staff, McMahon spoke of the privilege of the role. \u201cChampioning and supporting the journalism produced by the most amazing stations and bureaus in the world, celebrating the successes of our shows and our brands, elevating our stories and our people … It has been a privilege and joy,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the same time, the past few months have been challenging. It\u2019s become clear that the company and I do not agree on the path forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

The past few months have been overshadowed by the pressure from Paramount<\/a>, the CBS parent company, to settle the Trump lawsuit even though CBS is adamant that it is without merit. Several legal experts have expressed the view that the network would win the case should it go to court. <\/p>\n

But Paramount is eager to complete an $8 billion merger with Skydance, for which it will require approval from the Trump-appointed chair of the Federal Communications Commission. Several Democratic senators have written to Paramount to express concern that it may be involved in \u201cimproper conduct\u201d.<\/p>\n

McMahon\u2019s departure follows the resignation of Bill Owens, the executive producer of 60 Minutes, who resigned in April after issuing a memo to staff stating that \u201cover the past months, it has become clear that I would not be allowed to run the show as I have always run it\u201d.<\/p>\n

Last December ABC News settled a lawsuit with Trump, then US president-elect, for $15 million. By then, the Washington Post was in the midst of a series of high-profile resignations after its owner, Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos, spiked the paper\u2019s planned endorsement of Kamala Harris. <\/p>\n

Among the recent slew of executive orders issued by the US president was a further blow to NPR and PBS, ordering the directors of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to cease funding, or \u201ccancel to the maximum extent\u201d as \u201cneither entity presents a fair, accurate or unbiased portrayal of current events\u201d.<\/p>\n

The attack is just an extension of Trump\u2019s long, slow war on mainstream media, which he both relentlessly pillories and yet of whose praise he remains curiously needy. Whenever a so-called \u201cfake news media\u201d publication or network offers positive comment on Trump, it will quickly be highlighted in the White House press briefings.<\/p>\n

But as the Clooney play, hailing Murrow\u2019s lionhearted stance, enters its closing weeks, the US media is facing into many long, dark winters as it covers the 47th president\u2019s second term in office.<\/p>\n

In his later years, Murrow resigned from CBS and accepted a role as the head of the US Information Agency, the parent company of Voice of America, the long-standing international news network which delivers news to countries with restricted press freedoms.<\/p>\n

On Thursday, an appeals court declined to intervene in the executive order issued by Trump which will see 600 Voice of America contracts cancelled, and its broadcasts in effect silenced.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Heady days in New York City, with the Knicks basketball team enjoying their best summer in a quarter…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":127463,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5311],"tags":[32,18558,12767,2175,8501,2590,49,978,659],"class_list":{"0":"post-127462","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-donald-trump","9":"tag-george-clooney","10":"tag-jeff-bezos","11":"tag-kamala-harris","12":"tag-new-york-city","13":"tag-paramount","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-us","16":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114561755693873548","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=127462"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127462\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/127463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}