the most shamefully dishonest movie i've ever seen

Rating: 9/10 (30 April 2006)

"Goodnight and Good Luck" is shown in gorgeous black and white. i would see the film again just to enjoy the cinematography.
however, beyond aesthetics, i think another reason for the use of b&w was to emphasize the filmmakers' dishonest portrayal of the controversy as a matter of 'black and white' in the figurative sense. indeed, at the beginning of the movie, Murrow is portrayed as saying something like: ~i don't believe every story has two sides; and, besides, the other side has had years to present its case.~
i don't believe Murrow (or any other honest journalist, for that matter) believed the former; i don't believe he ever said that; and, even if he did, the makers of this movie (who didn't give 5 seconds to the other side, incidentally) are well aware that, based upon the revelations in the Venona papers and revelations by the successor organization to the old KGB, there certainly were lots and lots of shades of gray to the whole episode.
see, for example, the very anti-McCarthy cold war historian Thomas Powers's concession that much of what McCarthy *originally* claimed (ie, that the State Department was shot through with Soviet Spies, the Truman Administration knew this, and that they were dealing with the problem silently, without letting the public know what was really going on) was largely true, contrary to the film putting the words into Murrow's mouth that "99%" of the people McCarthy was accusing were innocent {never mind its slyly trying to make it seem as if Alger Hiss was not proved to have been a spy}.
(google searches of "Venona" on the New York Review of Books, NY Times, Nova, etc will confirm this.)
that McCarthy was a nasty drunk and a scoundrel is not in dispute. but, nonetheless, the substance of his original charge is largely true, contrary to this movie's 'black and white' representations.
on his Sunday morning talking heads program, Chris Matthews said he had reservations about a film that was so one-sided. but, after seeing it, he realized this film is not about what happened then; rather, it is about what's happening now. that is, about the ways in which dissent is being equated with disloyalty. (for just one example, the very name "Patriot Act" implies that its opponents are, well, unpatriotic.)
but, in a subsequent show, aired the day of the Oscar awards ceremony, Matthews said "the problem with Goodnight and Good Luck" (as a candidate for Best Picture) is that this movie makes it appear "as if the other side was making it all up." (quotes to the best of my recollection.) contrary to the implicit claims of this thoroughly dishonest movie, the other side had no need "to make it all up".