Communication in "Good Night And Good Luck"

Over the Fourth of July holiday weekend, my wife and I rented a copy of the recent George Clooney movie, "Good Night, and Good Luck". It was a truly fine and moving film, and given that it was nominated for six Academy Awards and was made for only $7 million, pays tribute to George Clooney's skills as a director.

But even more interesting to me was the striking character of Edward R. Murrow's monologues. They were very formal, yet extremely understandable and accessible. The sentences were short and powerful. They moved the listener.

To add some analysis to my gut feeling, I calculated the Flesch readability score for this wrap-up of Murrow's for one of his shows:

No one familiar with the history of his country, can deny that congressional committees are useful. It is necessary to investigate before legislating. But the line between investigating and persecuting is a very fine one, and the Junior Senator from Wisconsin has stepped over it repeatedly. His primary achievement has been confusing the public mind as between the internal and the external threats of communism. We must not confuse dissent from disloyalty. We must remember always, that accusation is not proof, and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another, we will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason. If we dig deep into our history and our doctrine, we will remember we are not descendant from fearful men. Not from men who dared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were for the moment unpopular. This is no time for men who oppose Sen. McCarthy's methods to keep silent or for those who approve. We can deny our heritage and our history but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of the republic to abdicate his responsibilities. As a nation we have come into our full inheritance at a tender age. We proclaim ourselves as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom where ever it still exists in the world. But we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home. The actions of the Junior Senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and dismay amongst our allies abroad and given considerable comfort to our enemies. And who's fault is that? Not really his, he didn't create this situation of fear he merely exploited it, and rather successfully. Cassius was right, the fault dear Brutus is not in our stars, but in ourselves. Good night, and good luck.

The readability of this passage is 57. To put this in perspective, People Magazine is typically in the 60s and Sports Illustrated is often in the 50s. The New York Times has a Flesch score of around 34, an insurance policy about 10, and the US Tax Code is about -16. By any objective measure, despite the serious and formal nature of his material, Murrow communicated ideas simply and accessibly.

This thought struck me this morning as I was reading a Boston Globe article interviewing Geoffrey Nunberg, where he talked about who in the Democratic party is capable of creating a narrative everyone can understand (bold emphasis is mine).

I would say that John Edwards, whatever other shortcomings he has a candidate, has an intuitive understanding of this. Hillary Clinton certainly doesn't get it the way Bill did, though she's trying. Wesley Clark and Mark Warner don't seem to have a natural gift for this stuff. But the crucial thing is to have an overriding narrative that even people who aren't gifted storytellers can recount. For the Republicans, it isn't Reagan's success at being able to tell this story that matters; it's the fact that Sam Brownback and Bill Frist , who are not particularly gifted storytellers, can communicate this narrative.

The identification of John Edwards is no surprise. When we assessed the clarity and effectiveness of the 10 presidential candidates in 2004, Edwards was one of the top three communicators in the pack (as a side note, the democratic candidate, John Kerry, lagged George Bush in clarity of his message, which came back to haunt him in the election). But the key concept is having a simple enough message that others can repeat without extensive coaching. This is good advice for political campaigns, for corporate communications, for bloggers, and for anyone trying to influence a large number of people. This is why buzz-marketed ideas like "the death tax" have such power: anyone can tell their stories.

The bottom line: Good Night, and Good Luck is not only a great movie, but also instructs us to project and debate ideas powerfully and timelessly. It is ninety minutes well-spent.

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