Dick Hubert’s Worldview: Good night, and good luck: Ed Murrow’s farewell, and mine
December 11, 2024 at 11:31 p.m.
On Mar. 15, 2025, I hope there’ll be the first Saturday matinee performance of the George Clooney Broadway production of Good Night, and Good Luck.
The show recounts the battle between the legendary CBS News correspondent Edward R. Murrow and his “See It Now” program and Wisconsin Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy, whose tendency to denounce the media and declare journalists (and everyone else who opposed him) enemies of the state and Communists led to a domestic terror I remember vividly from my high school days.
Murrow and his Executive Producer Fred Friendly’s historic show that took on McCarthy was televised on the CBS Television Network on Mar. 9, 1954. “Good night, and good luck” was the phrase Murrow used at the end of each of his broadcasts.
I say “I hope” because, although I have tickets to that Mar. 15 performance, I have absolutely no idea whether Clooney, who most surely is on Donald Trump and Kash Patel’s enemies’ list, will be able to get to the Winter Garden Theatre.
In short, the terror of McCarthyism is back with us again, and that’s what’s on the mind of every one of us who takes journalism seriously.
Trump’s lackey, Kash Patel,
and threats to journalists
Longtime readers of this column know that I subscribe to the Washington Post (WAPO) and follow its columnists, most notably David Ignatius.
In the late afternoon of Dec. 6, WAPO published an entire Ignatius column on Patel. For me, it was both devastating and courageous. Here’s how he began:
“Kash Patel described me as a “shameless Deep State mouthpiece” in his 2023 book, presumably because of critical articles I wrote about him. So readers should understand that President-elect Donald Trump’s new choice for FBI director is not a fan of my work.
There’s something to be said for not kicking a hornet’s nest. But the job of FBI director is so important to the country that I want to take another look at how Patel rocketed into Trump’s inner circle, and why he would be a poor choice for this powerful position.”
Ignatius proceeds to detail Patel’s government career under Trump and his determination to destroy everyone he believed was in his path.
To understand the full depth of the Patel threat, Ignatius writes:
“In April 2020, Trump wanted to appoint Patel as deputy FBI director. Attorney General William P. Barr warned the White House that the Patel appointment would happen “over my dead body.” He explained in a memoir: “Patel had virtually no experience that would qualify him to serve at the highest level of the world’s premier law enforcement agency. … The very idea of moving Patel into a role like this showed a shocking detachment from reality.”
So now that Patel is a Senate confirmation hearing away from running the FBI, WAPO’s editorial board has pleaded with lame duck Senate leader Chuck Schumer to get the Press Act passed—a bill that would protect journalists. In its words:
“The legislation—the Protect Reporters from Exploitative State Spying Act, or Press Act—would prevent the federal government from using legal tools such as subpoenas and search warrants to go after reporters’ information, except in cases in which doing so would prevent violence or terrorism. The measure would also bar prosecutors from demanding that third parties, such as phone companies or internet providers, hand over journalists’ data.”
It passed the House. But Republican Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas blocked a call for a unanimous vote to pass it in the Senate this past Tuesday, Dec. 10.
And where is Kash Patel in all this? Again, to quote the WAPO editorial:
“Kash Patel, whom Mr. Trump has chosen to replace Christopher A. Wray as FBI director, has said he would “come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections.” He added, “Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out.”
And that’s just the beginning.
The Atlantic’s McKay Coppins, on last week’s “Washington Week with The Atlantic” on PBS, warned us to take these threats and others from Trump world seriously.
CNN’s Brian Stelter, in his Reliable Sources newsletter of Nov. 22, has the following warning from former Boston Globe and WAPO Executive Editor Marty Baron on what to prepare for starting Jan. 20:
“‘I do think that the current environment is going to be much more difficult than it was even in the first term for Donald Trump," former Washington Post exec editor Marty Baron said Thursday on a Zoom call organized by Larry Tye.
Trump ‘clearly has decided to target any independent arbiter of fact, basically all of the institutions of government, ones that we've come to rely upon... In particular, he will endeavor to prosecute journalists, which is not something that has been done in the past, and not just prosecute leakers, not just investigate who the leakers were, but go after the journalists, and maybe even go after their institutions and really test the law in that respect.’
‘You can just tell by the nominees for cabinet positions and agency heads that this will be an administration of retribution,’ Baron added.”
What happens on a national level to journalists tends to filter down locally, so, even should our local voices not have an outlet for protest, it is incumbent on our readers to carry the torch of freedom, however difficult that may be in the next four years—and potentially beyond.
A word about press freedom locally—
most notably mine
I’ve had a longtime relationship with the Westmore News, as an outsider, a letter writer, and as a reporter/columnist.
I first came to the defense of the late founder of the paper, Bernard Abel, in public back on Dec. 21, 2003 when Debra West in The New York Times wrote about a furious battle Abel was having with Rye Town leadership at the time.
“Opinions are running strong on the debate, which is the topic of conversation from supermarket lines to PTA meetings, said Dick Hubert, who served on a committee that studied the prospect of the village of Rye Brook seceding from the town. Mr. Hubert believes The Westmore News is unearthing political corruption and cronyism.
''‘This has gotten pretty ugly,'' he said, noting threats of retribution and shoving matches at town meetings. ''The newspaper is under siege’.''
Once I joined this paper as an unpaid contributing columnist, I got a better understanding of what Abel was feeling.
Current Rye Town Supervisor Gary Zuckerman, former Rye Brook Mayor Paul Rosenberg, and current Port Chester Republican Chair Aldo Vitagliano have all called in public or in private, at one time or another, for my voice to be silenced. And those are the efforts I know about.
To their credit, Abel’s son Richard, and his editor wife Jananne, have stood behind me 100%.
As Corey Kilgannon wrote in The New York Times of Feb. 7, 2019:
“Richard Abel, publisher of the Westmore News, which publishes two paid weekly newspapers north of New York City in Westchester County, said an official from the Village of Rye Brook threatened to divert its public notices and asked officials in neighboring municipalities to do the same, unless he fired a critical columnist. Mr. Abel refused and ran a column scolding the officials for trying to squash them “via economic sanctions.” The villages never pulled the ads, he said.
“I told them what to do with their notices,” Mr. Abel said. “If I bend for that, then they own me. I’d rather go out of business than be subservient to them.”
So, a salute to the Abels and this newspaper’s readers.
In my long career in journalism, I have notably had executives at ABC-TV News and Group W--the Westinghouse Broadcasting Company—stand 100% behind my work when elected and appointed government officials came after me with all kinds of threats because of my documentaries and their visual reporting, let alone the scripts.
I have written here most recently that my longtime motto is “An Informed Public is the Foundation of Freedom.”
Keeping our public informed is a fight that must never stop.
We journalists will carry on our fight.
I only ask that you, our readers, never let up on supporting our profession.
Dick Hubert, a retired television news producer-writer-reporter living in Rye Brook, has been honored with the Peabody Award, the DuPont Columbia Award and the Robert F. Kennedy, Sr. Memorial Journalism Award.
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