Good night, and good luck

I've been trying to figure out what it is about McCarthyism that I find so deeply disturbing. In terms of impact, the communist witch hunt of the 1950s was, after all, nothing like the rise of the Nazis in 1920s Germany, or the Russian Revolution of 1917. All I can say is that I can identify strongly with the victims and the country. Much as I criticize the USA, it remains a shining example of what democracy as an ideology can accomplish -- and of how fragile those accomplishments are.
As a defender of those accomplishments, Edward R. Murrow stands high, and "Good night, and good luck" does nothing more (but also nothing less) than show him in his finest hour: waging and winning a war of words with the powerful and dangerous Senator Joseph McCarthy. The film is as painstakingly accurate as to be basically a re-enacted documentary, which makes it slightly boring, but also very pure. Director George Clooney cries out for just such a voice today to protest and fight the forces of wartime absurdity.
But sadly, the new media landscape, which Murrow already warned about, can no longer produce such a person. Not because such people no longer exist (they do), but because such people no longer work for television news.