Set during the McCarthy era, the play follows Murrow as he challenges the government’s sweeping, often evidence-light accusations of communism. In his embodiment of Murrow, George Clooney captures both the moral clarity of Murrow's journalism and the institutional resistance he faced — from advertisers, from executives, and from a public growing more comfortable with distraction than confrontation.

If medium is the message, then Clooney's craft and his placement as the central device for telling Murrow's story are a clear call for people to wake up. After all, it's easier to get an audience to care about the core message of a narrative if the messenger/medium is one of the most famous men on the planet.

Clooney deftly navigates this privilege. The script is packed with dialogue around the character's concern that hard-hitting news is sandwiched between saccharin and upbeat commercials for beauty products. Many of these ads are shown in the theatre, as bookends for the staged news segments. As a member of the audience it's easy to feel overwhelmed, and even sad, when you realize that ads for items such as soap, hairspray, and aluminum are what pay for Murrow's summer house, his dissent of McCarthy, and ultimately what still pay for our media today.

Though it depicts the 1950s, the stage production feels painfully topical. Especially this week, as 60 Minutes’ longtime executive producer resigned amid backlash over reports that CBS leadership, including Shari Redstone, directed the network to withhold stories critical of Donald Trump until his administration approves a major merger involving CBS’s parent company.

Murrow’s fears — that media would slide into entertainment, that journalists would be pressured to appease power, that audiences would lose their appetite for uncomfortable truths — are playing out in real time.