The past is always seen through the prism of the present. You pay attention to any event because of why it is important today. Clooney filmed what everyone in the US knows in detail. The finale of the film is known in advance. But why? The Second World War ended and the influence of the USSR in the world grew. There was a red panic. Dreaming of finding a quick way to the top, upstart politician Joseph McCarthy tried to attract attention with various scandalous statements without much success. This approach only worked when McCarthy discovered a red panic. They started talking about him. True, politicians shrugged off the vociferous inadequacy. But McCarthy was helped by the Korean War. Suddenly, it became impossible to argue with McCarthy. Many people knew that McCarthy was a hypocrite, but they could not resist him. After all, they were totally against the Red Threat, and they just didn’t support conspiracy theories. But the Korean War was over, and consensus among the elites began to form against McCarthy. President Eisenhower himself was in charge. But how could one criticize McCarthy without risking accusations of communist sympathies? We needed someone with an impeccable reputation who was hard to blame. McCarthy was first attacked by a journalist and an ardent anti-communist. In terms of redness, he was flawless. His accusations were obvious: McCarthy is only making a mess, which hinders the real search for Communists. And he was already supported by the respected and more influential Edward Marrow. McCarthy misjudged the situation. He attacked Marrow and began to lose popularity. Politicians noticed that McCarthy was staggering, and attacked him openly, simultaneously silencing his supporters in the Senate. McCarthy continued, in the spirit of his hoax, to throw public accusations at his colleagues, but it did not work. He was found guilty and his committee disbanded. And the upstart demagogue's career is over. Biographers later showed that McCarthy was not interested in communists. He just wanted power, maybe even the presidency in the future. And McCarthy’s lawyer, out of politics Roy Cohn (he is also in the film) became Donald Trump’s lawyer.
In both the story and the film, Clooney McCarthy and Marrow act as role models. How it shouldn't be and how it should be. Clooney perfectly reproduced the chain of events without the fashionable now "this is a work of art" and "I see so." He shot in 2005, when American television, especially Fox News, aired a caustic propaganda for the war in Iraq, for Bush Jr. and against his opponents. Clooney returned to McCarthyism to speak on Marrow's behalf about the future of television. Zero TV.