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CNN Live Event/Special

CNN Airs Exclusive Broadcast Of "Good Night, And Good Luck"; Clooney: "We're Not Fearful... We Need To Remind Ourselves Of That". Aired 8:34-9p ET

Aired June 07, 2025 - 20:34   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST: You've been watching the exclusive live production of Broadway play Good Night, and Good Luck starring George Clooney here on CNN. The first time a Broadway play has been broadcast live around the world.

You can see the cast still up on the stage, including George Clooney, who's Tony nominated for his performance in this production. We're going to speak to some of them shortly.

I'm Anderson Cooper. Welcome to our post-show Special Good Night, and Good Luck: Truth and Power.

[20:35:03]

We're about a mile away from the Winter Garden Theater with a live studio audience of journalism and communication students and professors, all of whom watched tonight's performance. The world of journalism and media that they are studying and may soon enter is vastly different in many ways than Murrow's day, but there are, of course, parallels to what Murrow faced as well.

I'm joined here by a panel of renowned journalists and writers from the world of television, newspapers, and podcasts. I'll also talk exclusively with the former anchor of the CBS Evening News and the longtime 60 Minutes correspondent, Scott Pelley, about why he says journalism is under attack and about CBS's ongoing legal battle with President Trump.

With me right now, Walter Isaacson, Professor of History at Tulane University, former CEO of CNN. He actually hired me. He's also the author of numerous best-selling books about Leonardo da Vinci, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, and others.

Also here, Connie Chung, former co-anchor of the CBS Evening News. She was also an anchor here at CNN as well as ABC and NBC News. She's the author of the book Connie: A Memoir.

CNN contributor Kara Swisher. She hosts the podcast On and Pivot. Former Univision anchor Jorge Ramos, CNN's Abby Phillip, anchor of News Night, and Bret Stephens, opinion columnist for The New York Times.

Walter, what do you think the resonance of Edward R. Murrow is today? WALTER ISAACSON, PROFESSOR OF HISTORY, TULANE UNIVERSITY: When I saw this play, it sort of blew me away that they could have been planning this for so long and then it was so timely.

COOPER: It was written 20 years ago.

ISAACSON: I know. It was written 20 years ago for the movie. I'm sure the stage play was in the works for the past year or so.

And yet, it was so timely. The things, the institutions being attacked and the need for the press to stand up the way Edward R. Murrow did. And you're watching what's happening at CBS and they're trying to make that judgment. You saw what happened at ABC.

COOPER: Kara, what do you think Murrow would think about the times we're in right now?

KARA SWISHER, CNN CONTRIBUTOR (on-camera): Oh, I think he recognized them completely. And the thing is, Murrow was an innovator of his time in terms of technology and using technology in different ways.

And I think it shows that not much, well, much changes, very little changes actually. The idea of what journalists should do is hold power to accountability is something that doesn't ever change. And at the same time, the corporate difficulties of it is still the same story over and over and over again.

COOPER: It is amazing the corporate angle to this. I mean, it's got obviously great resonance with what's going on today.

CONNIE CHUNG, FMR CO-ANCHOR, CBS EVENING NEWS: You know, I actually came to CBS in 1971 and the Murrow impact was still fresh. It wasn't a distant memory.

COOPER: Eric Sevareid was there.

CHUNG: He was there.

COOPER: One of the original Murrow Boys.

CHUNG: Exactly. He was the quintessential Murrow boy and he was toweringly tall. His office was above the newsroom, which was appropriate because he was above us and he was intimidating. Even Walter Cronkite said he was intimidating. He was not comfortable in front of the television cameras at all.

I also worked with a dear friend, Marvin Kalb, who you'll be interviewing.

COOPER: Yes, he's going to be here later.

CHUNG: And he was a diplomatic correspondent. Ninety-five now.

COOPER: One of the last of the Murrow Boys actually hired.

CHUNG: Hired. Exactly.

It was a time when Walter Cronkite ruled the roost, but Murrow was there at the same time that Walter was. The reason why they have had power was because William Paley gave it to him -- to them. He was the founder of CBS and his right-hand man was a man named Frank Stanton, who would go to Capitol Hill and stand up for journalism that was under attack by Washington.

COOPER: Back then, I mean, Paley was head of the CBS --

CHUNG: Yes.

COOPER: -- Corporation. The news -- I mean --

CHUNG: And Stanton, it was just, you know, people I idolized. And to actually meet them and work for them was phenomenal.

(CROSSTALK)

BRET STEPHENS, OPINION COLUMNIST, THE NEW YORK TIMES: For me, it felt, this is the second time I've seen it now, both timely and dated. Timely, obviously, because demagogues then, demagogues now. Dated because the play works because Murrow has the public credibility to stand up to a political demagogue.

And when I watched it, it was with a sense of sadness that that credibility has bled out of the news media over many years so that it's hard to imagine, maybe present company accepted, but it's hard to imagine any major American journalist having the same kind of inarguable authenticity, trust of the public. That generation of Murrow's and Cronkite's and Abe Rosenthal's and others has just passed the scene.

[20:40:02]

And it's -- part of that, we have to acknowledge, is on us. It's not just social media or bad people in politics. Part of it is on what the media has done to itself.

COOPER: Let's drill down on that because a Gallup poll of 2024, 18 percent of Americans have a high degree of trust in newspapers. That's a very low number. Forty five percent don't. Twelve percent have a high degree of trust in TV news. Fifty one percent, don't.

JORGE RAMOS, FMR UNIVISION ANCHOR: That's something interesting is that there's a lot of comparisons. I mean we are here simply because of Trump. That's the reality. I mean McCarthyism and Trumpism have a lot of things in common. That use of power on one hand, the lack of due process. We have to say the attacks on journalists the attacks on politicians the attacks on activists.

And also, there are some kind of an ideology, ideology based on lies. Back then it was anti-communism. And now it's lies like saying that Trump won the 2020 election or lies like saying that immigrants are criminals and terrorists are part of the trend that I work which is not true. So, the comparison between McCarthyism and Trumpism is right here. And that's precisely why we are here.

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN ANCHOR (on-camera): But I think it's different.

(CROSSTALK)

CHUNG: We must create another McCarthy period. We must create another Watergate period the way Walter did. Cronkite stepped out of his comfort zone because he -- he believed in facts. Murrow believed in it. It's not opinion but it is an advocacy sort of journalism. He believed in speaking truth to power.

COOPER: But is the problem now too much advocacy?

PHILLIP (on-camera): No, I don't think. Go ahead.

CHUNG: There's a difference between opinion and analysis.

PHILLIP (on-camera): I also think you know going to Bret's point we have to figure out what actually came first. Was it the journalists lost credibility or that there was a concerted effort to demonize journalism such that almost no one can have that kind of universal so- called credibility in this media environment.

I think that if Murrow were doing what he was doing then today he would be attacked as a leftist activist. And I don't think that it's an indictment on what he was doing. I think it's more an indictment on how we see the role of fact finding, truth telling, having values, having an allegiance to democratic values because that's what was at the foundation of what he was doing.

You're right but I think it's a different media environment now. I mean CBS News was one of, you know, fewer than a handful of the games in town.

COOPER: There were three broadcasts.

PHILLIP (on-camera): That's it.

(CROSSTALK)

PHILLIP (on-camera): And nowadays we're just not in that kind of world. But I just -- I think we when we say that there's no trust in media we have to ask how we got here. And journalists have always made mistakes. They made mistakes in those days too.

The question is have politicians and certain figures on both sides of the aisle found it to be politically expedient to demonize journalism.

SWISHER (on-camera): But they've never not done that.

PHILLIP (on-camera): Because that are --

SWISHER (on-camera): They've never not done that. They've never not done that since the Revolutionary War.

This has been an issue. We had a brief period during Watergate where it was we were fantastic and I think we've always been under siege in some way. And as to a single person that's never going to happen.

ISAACSON: We were under siege during Watergate too.

SWISHER (on-camera): But yes, exactly.

ISAACSON: Don't forget how good Mrs. Graham (ph) was.

(CROSSTALK)

SWISHER (on-camera): But what I'm saying is there's never going to be a Cronkite again. There's never going to be a Murrow. There's going to be a lot of them. And I'm seeing so much entrepreneurship by media figures that are smaller and hitting at different places that we have to think of a new way to deliver news to people where we don't just have one singular figure on the Upper East Side of New York.

CHUNG: Well, we all should do it. In other words, it's not we shouldn't depend on one person. All of us are responsible for doing investigative reporting because that's going to save us.

COOPER: Bret, I want to read something that you have actually written. You said a news media that repeatedly betrays its promise to play it straight impoverishes and coarsens the discourse of democracy. A news media that tries to substitute capital T truth on hot button issues like race relations and climate change for the humbler truths of cold facts and diverse views will alienate the very audiences it most needs to win over.

STEPHENS: Yes. No. I mean and I think that's -- that's sadly true.

You know, the 19th century American journalism was advocacy journalism for better or worse. Twentieth century journalism after Walter Lippmann was mostly objective journalism. And I think one of the problems that we have in the media today is this to borrow a term from Jewish dietary laws. It's milk mixing of milk and meat.

There's too much advocacy journalism and what's supposed to be objective journalism. And then you see advocacy organizations also trying to do kind of objective -- objective reporting. And I think the public has become confused. It's difficult for them to understand what journalism ought to be.

[20:45:03]

I think news organizations like CNN, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal mainstream news organizations have to be exceptionally vigilant about keeping their opinions to themselves. Reporters should wake up every day and say, I am paid not to have an opinion.

And I think that trust has been too often betrayed --

CHUNG: I don't think the viewers --

STEPHENS: -- in the last -- in the last few decades.

(CROSSTALK) RAMOS: But sometimes you have to take a stand. Sometimes you really have to take a stand when it comes to racism, discrimination, corruption, public lies, dictatorships, human rights, the destruction of the environment.

You have to take a stand as a journalist. And if we don't take a stand, if we don't challenge and question those who are in power, then who's going to do it? And I think the trust depends precisely on that, not only on reporting reality as it is, but on challenging those who are in power. And if people, the audience --

COOPER: The question is, are you taking a stand equally when it's a Republican in office or when it's a Democrat in the White House?

RAMOS: We should. We should.

CHUNG: Of course.

STEPHENS: Yes. But of course, that doesn't happen. And that's part of the problem. And that's part of the legitimacy of the conservative complaint about too much news media. Both exhibit A being the health -- the health of our former president.

(CROSSTALK)

PHILLIP (on-camera): I don't think trust --

CHUNG: I don't think viewers or readers are confused. They want facts. And they believe certain organizations are giving them the facts.

We need to just abide by the truth, which is what Murrow did, what Cronkite did.

COOPER: Abby?

PHILLIP (on-camera): I do think that I have a little bit of a quibble with this idea that it's a desire for objective journalism that's driving down trust in media. Because what we've also seen in that same time frame is the rise of non-objective media, of opinion journalism really overtaking so-called objective media.

So, I don't think those two things can happen at the same time if you feel like people are going toward, you know, news sources that have no opinions or what you might think are no opinions.

So look, media is flawed. We're not going to get it right every time. We're not going to be perfect every time. The difference between what the media is supposed to do and what everybody on social media and on Substack and anybody who has a cellphone can do is that we have a mechanism, or we're supposed to have a mechanism for correcting our mistakes.

That's the difference. It's not the absence of mistakes. It's a mechanism for correcting them.

And yes, I do think doing a better job of playing it, calling the balls and strikes, let's put it that way, on both sides or all sides of debates is important.

But I do think that there are many people out there who are taking the reduction of trust in the media and using it as an excuse to spread falsehoods. And they're gaining huge audiences for that because I think it is incredibly comforting to people to hear things that reinforce their existing views, whether it is true or not.

COOPER: Are audiences more siloed now?

SWISHER (on-camera): Oh, totally. I mean, everywhere. They always were, though. This idea that everybody was consuming all this media.

COOPER: You've written about Ben Franklin. I read a quote recently. I think you quoted, was it Jefferson, who was complaining about, you can't believe anything you read in the paper these days.

ISAACSON: Well, you have to remember that John Adams was Ben Franklin's grandson in jail under the Alien and Sedition Act, so it has been bad.

But there was a technological change that happened after World War II where you couldn't just start a newspaper. Franklin starts the 12th newspaper in Philadelphia with only 3,000 people.

But after World War II, you had broadcast networks, and that's what allowed there to be three big ones. You ended up having more monopoly newspapers because department stores didn't want to advertise in 12 newspapers.

And so, you had to have a broad-based media. But as Kara has written about, that fragments when the Internet allows it to balkanize. And to get to a point that Connie said earlier on about becoming advocacy journalists, and it really is Bret's point as well, there's a wonderful line in the play where Fred Friendly, the great, sainted Fred Friendly, maybe you knew him, we knew him, says to Murrow, you're now becoming an advocacy journalist. And he says, as one of these did, we have to right now.

And he says, yes, but what happens when the other people get those microphones and people without our values?

SWISHER (on-camera): We're never really going to, and that's the power of what --

ISAACSON: Right.

SWISHER (on-camera): -- we have now is these tools are so inexpensive and so everyone can be prolific in some way. And I'm sort of more behind the Christiane Amanpour thing, which is truthful but neutral. No, (INAUDIBLE) not neutral.

And I think at some point you do have to come to a conclusion. And I've seen the more popular things are people that come to conclusions based on reporting, which is at the bottom of all of it. It's really --

COOPER: Is more popular, is that better?

SWISHER (on-camera): Some of it is, some of it isn't. But you're going to have to put up with it with an information environment where people get to pick and choose. And I think, especially young people, I mean the canard that they're not interested in news is just not true. They're not interested in certain news. They're not interested in the way things were or the collection of things. They're finding and picking and choosing.

[20:50:08]

But to say they aren't informed, I don't-- I don't know.

(CROSSTALK)

RAMOS: The concept of neutrality, I think, is really --

CHUNG: One of the -- sorry.

RAMOS: Go ahead.

CHUNG: Thank you. One of the biggest problems that the television networks have is that they were taken over by corporations, which are greedy, just plain greedy.

COOPER: News is expected to be a profit center for corporations, whereas --

CHUNG: Exactly.

COOPER: -- it seems like with, in those early days with Murrow --

CHUNG: That's right.

COOPER: -- CBS had the $64,000 question, that was making the money, and Paley was willing to let Murrow --

CHUNG: That's right.

COOPER: -- for a while go without --

CHUNG: Exactly.

RAMOS: You have social media, the internet.

CHUNG: You have, you have William Paley owning CBS, David Sarnoff owning, the founder of RCA and NBC, and Leonard Goldenson, the founder of ABC. They understood that they had a responsibility to protect the public -- the public source out there, public interests, whereas once ABC, NBC, and CBS were taken over by greedy corporations who just wanted them to be money-making machines, the ballgame was over.

(CROSSTALK)

STEPHENS: I think it's important to make a distinction between truth and facts. We have a responsibility to facts, and those are ascertainable, relatively objective, and we have a responsibility to assembling those facts in a way that is comprehensive, fair, coherent, and maybe has some predictive value in telling our readers what's important, what are they going to need to know tomorrow.

But I think one of the ways in which we have gone wrong is we have mistaken facts for truth. That is to say, we're responsible for standing up for one moral issue or another. Now, in our private lives, that's how we may feel and feel very strongly. But when we arrogate that kind of truth enterprise to ourselves, we are disrespecting our audience. We ought to be presenting them with facts so they can make up their own minds, and when we don't do that, they feel cheated, misled, and they become distrustful, and that distrust is what has led to this world of sort of alternative facts, everyone's own truth, a kind of anarchy.

SWISHER (on-camera): Because it's flooded, Bret, because it's flooded the zone. I mean, it's like, you know, I just -- Mountainhead, if anyone's watched it, is terrific. One of the lines is, information cancer, and that's what's happened. There's all this cancer. One of the characters is an AI person. He says, I have the cure, and --

COOPER: That was a new show on Max.

SWISHER (on-camera): New show on Max, which is terrific.

(CROSSTALK)

SWISHER (on-camera): Right. And we are in a situation of flooding the zone, and so it's not the same thing, and I don't think they sit there -- they're flooded almost constantly. And so one of the points is to pull it out and try to give people some guidance, and I do think that it's a very different information environment now with all the misinformation, especially when it comes from the top.

PHILLIP (on-camera): Well, Bret, I feel like I want to understand better what you think is the distinction between facts and truth. What is a truth that is not also a fact?

STEPHENS: Oh, I mean, I can -- a truth is essentially in the eye of the beholder. A truth is a subjective moral concept about what set of facts you assemble into a reality that's your own, and that's for philosophers to discuss. What we should be doing --

(CROSSTALK)

PHILLIP (on-camera): Well, let me give you a hypothetical scenario.

RAMOS: That's his truth, Bret.

STEPHENS: No, no, that's his truth, and we're in the business of offering facts.

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: Let -- let --

PHILLIP (on-camera): Can I offer a hypothetical scenario?

STEPHENS: Please.

PHILLIP (on-camera): I mean, what about the concept of rule of law? Is that a fact, or is that a truth?

STEPHENS: Well, of course -- well, rule of law is a value which I care deeply about, and I hope all of us do. Within the rule of law, you can contend about what actually ought to be the rule of law. This is -- but that kind of value advocacy ends up when we substitute our points of view about what the rule of law ought to be for what other people might think it ought to be. That cheapens the currency that we're dealing with --

PHILLIP (on-camera): I think -- I mean --

STEPHENS: -- because people will look at -- people will look at what someone in the news presents as, you know, as a truth. Usually, it comes with an adjective. It's racist, it's misogynist, whatever. Right? And they'll say, well, hang on a second. I have a different view based on a set of facts, and this is a legitimate difference of opinion. And when we stop serving just as sort of the purveyors of what is sort of the bricks of fact, trying to build a kind of idea of what we're doing brick by brick by simply saying --

[20:55:05]

CHUNG: Opinion has no place in the news. Opinion has virtually no place in the news. We cannot have opinion when we're providing information.

PHILLIP (on-camera): But since we're talking about Edward R. Murrow, and in this play, there's some real concrete examples here. The first case that they talk about is the case of a man who was being discharged from the military, not because of his own actions, but because of those of his family members.

And so, the question that they raise in the broadcast is whether this is a violation of his rights, and whether his due process rights are as important, maybe more important, than the threat of communism.

To me, that is a quintessential question that goes at truth, not just a set of facts. It asks a question about values. And so I do think, you know, I think it's an interesting point that you're making, and I think it's something that I'm still thinking about.

But if we are also talking about the Murrow Era as the golden age of this type of journalism, you have to contend with the fact that he was dealing with values, and not just with throwing out facts to the audience, but he was asking the question of Americans, what is more important to you, and what should be aligned with democratic principles? Because we live in this democracy, and he's broadcasting in the context of this democracy (INAUDIBLE).

(CROSSTALK) STEPHENS (on-camera): But the power of that scene is that he lets the airmen speak for himself. He doesn't interpose his own view on that scene.

(CROSSTALK)

STEPHENS: And that's why it succeeds with the audience.

COOPER: I do want to go -- we're going to continue this discussion.

I want to check in with Pam Brown. She's outside the Winter Garden Theater with two of the actors from the show.

Pam?

PAMELA BROWN, CNN INVESTIGATIVE CORRESPONDENT (on-camera): We're just chatting away over here, Anderson.

I'm with Fran Kranz and Clark Gregg, and we were just talking about how exciting this has been for them, and just the historic nature. They just got off stage.

Tell us how it was.

CLARK GREGG, ACTOR, "GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK" ON BROADWAY: It was extremely exciting.

(CROSSTALK)

GREGG: I mean, it's already exciting to do this for 1,600 people in one of the biggest, classiest old Broadway theaters, but then to suddenly have that become in the millions a show that we care about and that audiences have been connecting with, it's a thrill.

So thank you, CNN.

FRAN KRANZ, ACTOR, "GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK" ON BROADWAY: Yes, thank you. It was amazing. I mean, the show keeps exceeding expectations, and George, his enthusiasm to keep pushing it, you know, his passion for this project is incredible. So, this has been kind of a cherry on top of an incredible experience. But, yes, this weekend, just wild. Just wild, yes.

BROWN (on-camera): You said it had opening night energy.

KRANZ: Opening night energy. No, for sure. I mean, that's the best way I can think of it, but more so, more so.

I mean, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't nervous, you know, but it was good. It was good energy.

GREGG: You didn't seem nervous, bro.

KRANZ: I didn't seem nervous?

GREGG: No. BROWN (on-camera): They can tell you making his (INAUDIBLE) --

GREGG: You were in the pocket.

(CROSSTALK)

GREGG: Did you have a line you messed up?

KRANZ: I thought I had a line I messed up.

GREGG: Nobody noticed, man.

BROWN (on-camera): Yes, yes, yes.

GREGG: People mess up lines in life.

KRANZ: Since the cameras came in Friday, it was definitely the best show of the weekend.

GREGG: Yes.

KRANZ: For sure. We were and getting -- I think everybody just gets to settle in, but it takes a second, you know, when you know the cameras are on, especially now. Yes.

BROWN (on-camera): And, you know, Don, you had a character that really had this pivotal moment in the play, Don Hollenbeck. Tell us about playing him and, you know, the tragic ending.

GREGG: Don Hollenbeck is an amazing central character in this. He was a contemporary of Ed Murrow's. He was a truly respected journalist that they bonded when they were doing amazing broadcasts from the European theater in World War II. And he was another of the CBS early days stellar news people, and Edward R. Murrow was the most trusted man in America.

So when he started to take on McCarthy, McCarthy and his cohorts, they couldn't really attack Ed Murrow, but they could attack Don Hollenbeck. And this is the '50s, and men kind of kept their feelings to themselves or, you know, drank them away. And Don Hollenbeck didn't handle all the attacks. He handled them until he didn't. And it was --

BROWN (on-camera): He died by suicide.

GREGG: And he died by suicide, yes.

BROWN (on-camera): Yes. And there was the moment in the play as well where everyone was asked, look, if you have any ties --

KRANZ: Yes.

BROWN (on-camera): -- to communists, you have to disclose it now.

KRANZ: Yes. But it was very real. I mean, Red Scare, very real. People would disappear from their jobs, and they wouldn't be heard from again, and the rest of their colleagues wouldn't get any sort of notice or reason why they were gone.

So this -- the fear was a real thing, and it's kind of a fantastic part, a little part, because, you know, you get to sort of play that.

You get to kind of live through that and the experience of it all. So.

BROWN (on-camera): And your character --

KRANZ: Yes.

BROWN (on-camera): -- actually disclosed. My wife had some talks about your character (INAUDIBLE) --

[21:00:01]

KRANZ: Yes, yes, yes. And it was a real moment.