George Clooney is a busy man, but amid his Jay Kelly awards chasing and Good Night, And Good Luck Broadway boards treading, he’s much more concerned with the state of American journalism than his Oscar chances. Speaking to Variety, Clooney decries the “dismantling” of CBS News, an organization he valorized in his stage adaptation of Good Night, And Good Luck, based on his Oscar-nominated film. Currently under the inexperienced stewardship of America’s foremost champion of the ruling class, Bari Weiss, who was installed by Paramount Skydance’s billionaire owner David Ellison to toe the ideological line, CBS News’ reputation has collapsed in recent months. In other words, “Bari Weiss is dismantling CBS News as we speak,” Clooney says. That’s a bigger problem to Clooney than the consolidation of movie studios, even as he stars in an awards contender made by the streamer currently trying to consolidate things further. But Clooney chooses country over career. “Am I worried about film studios?” he continues. “Sure. It’s my business, but my primary loyalty is to my country. I’m much more worried about how we inform ourselves and how we’re going to discern reality without a functioning press.”
Clooney believes that without a free press (not to be confused with Weiss’ The Free Press), this country is cooked, especially with the proliferation of AI, which has succeeded at making the misinformation America’s greatest cultural export. “What’s going to happen when we get an AI-generated video of Putin saying he’s launched the first strike?” Clooney asks. “And do we have responsible enough people with their fingers on all the triggers to look at this and separate what’s real from what’s fake? We used to say, don’t believe everything you read, but we always believed what we saw. Now you can’t do that.” It’s incumbent on the fourth estate to make up for the foibles of the three branches of government. But as Clooney rightly notes, many of the pillars of American journalism bent to President Trump’s whims almost immediately and have nothing to show for it except an unchecked authoritarian insurgency. “If CBS and ABC had challenged those lawsuits and said, ‘Go fuck yourself,’ we wouldn’t be where we are in the country.” Unfortunately, CBS and ABC told us to go fuck ourselves and have been used to stifle press freedom. ABC faced a right-wing assault to cancel one of its biggest stars, and CBS canceled an investigation into CECOT.
“It’s a very trying time,” Clooney says. “It can depress you or make you very angry. But you have to find the most positive way through it. You have to put your head down and keep moving forward because quitting isn’t an option.”