Leadership in "Good Night and Good Luck"

The film “Good Night and Good Luck” takes place in the McCarthy era as a journalist goes up against Senator McCarthy on his broadcasting show. The journalist, Murrow, supervised by his producer, Friendly, at the network CBS, run by Paley the CEO, faced many uphill battles in his efforts to stand up against the “conform or be called a communist” mentality of their time. All three of these characters were leaders in the crisis of McCarthyism, yet they had many differences in their leadership tactics.

Paley

Paley, the CEO, was the leader with the most power in the professional sense, as he was the head of the entire network. This meant that, despite his personal views on the matter of McCarthyism or Murrow, he had an entirely different thought process for his decision making. Paley was mainly concerned with the network as a whole. When thinking about the outcomes of Murrow running the story against McCarthy, Paley had to consider what their stakeholders would think, how their viewers would take it, what light new outlets would portray the network in, any legal issues, and how it would affect the company overall. At one point Paley tells Murrow to let the whole thing go because it could jeopardize hundreds of jobs. He even leveraged Murrow’s salary at one point in an effort to get him to stop. While these actions are not the most noble from a leader, especially considering the harm McCarthy really was doing to society at the time, Paley did have a lot of money riding on his decisions which most certainly created a pressure to stay in line and not poke the bear. After running the program the network did lose a sponsor because of how political the story was, which does demonstrate Paley had good reason to be cautious. Even though there were a few scenes where Paley very clearly tried to get Murrow to back down, at the end of the day he did not censor the program or stop him, even though it can be debated Paley knew Murrow was going to do it anyways and he had the ability to entirely stop him if he wanted to. I think Paley understood the importance of the story and wanted Murrow to do it, but had to physically say no because if he did not it would go against the duties and responsibilities he promised to uphold in his job position. Personally, I think Paley walked the thin line between his responsibilities as a boss (prioritizing the well-being of his employees and the network as a whole) and his responsibilities as a leader (not putting a stop to what was right for the sake of profits) well, but was more of a boss than a leader.

Friendly

Friendly, who was the producer of the show, was also a good leader, but in a very different way. Friendly always supported Murrow in his quest to run the McCarthy story because he knew it was the right thing to do even if they would face backlash. Since Murrow was the main leader in that effort Friendly’s role as a leader seemed to be one of more comfort. Whether it be Murrow or the rest of their reporting team, Friendly was always the one providing reassurance that things would be okay and what they were doing was right. He kept the team on track and tried to alleviate their worries as much as possible. I think one of Friendly’s best qualities as a leader is that he was able to take a step back and listen rather than being bossy. Even though he was Murrow’s superior and was not entirely sure of the story at the beginning, he did not shut down any ideas from his team and instead listened to them before making up his mind. He was a true leader for his team.

Murrow

Lastly, Murrow, the journalist, was a leader for society. He was not superior to his team or of Friendly or Paley, but he did possess the leadership qualities to convince them of his beliefs and get them to follow him in his efforts. Especially in a time where it was so dangerous to speak out against McCarthy and communism, possessing this ability was astounding. Murrow also led the entire country to break the mold as broadcasted his program. Leadership is not about bossing people around, but rather getting people to believe your story and want to follow in your pathway, and Murrow had the intelligence and persuasiveness to accomplish this. Key to his leadership was that he was incredibly ethical. Murrow was not leading people down a rabbit hole, such as Senator McCarthy was doing with his harsh speech, but instead he wanted the country to see how this was wrong and that people deserved due process. Murrow is a great example of an effective and ethical leader.