O’Connor, John E. “Murrow Confronts McCarthy: Two Stages of Historical Analysis for Film and Television.” (2007)

Historian John O’Connor revisits and updates a method for analyzing films – or as he calls them “moving image documents.” Using Edward R. Murrow’s See It Now: Report on Senator McCarthy (1954) and the film Good Night and Good Luck (2005) about Murrow’s private and public conflict with Senator McCarthy, O’Connor presents two stages of analysis, with the second stage containing four frameworks. His extensive analysis of these two moving image documents range from questions about content, production, and reception, to considering how they represent history and are evidence of social and cultural history. O’Connor proposes that employing his stages helps students to make sense of documentary and feature films based in history.