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* AwardSnub:
** Some would argue Creator/GeorgeClooney's role as Fred Friendly was better than his role in ''Film/{{Syriana}}'', for which he did win the UsefulNotes/AcademyAward.
-->"So I'm not gonna win Best Director?"
** Creator/PaulHaggis stated in an interview he feels this film was better than his own film ''Film/{{Crash}}'' and that it should have won Best Picture over his own film!
* CultClassic: Like other films about [=McCarthyism=] and the black list of Hollywood, this film is very popular among leftists and politically active people in particular.
* PeripheryDemographic: Although the film does not protect the Communists, but only criticizes the paranoid fears about them, it was very popular among the American left, as it was perceived as TakeThat for "government persecution". This also makes it attractive to modern Russians, who interpret anti-Russian sanctions and accusations against "Russian hackers and trolls" as "a new [=McCarthyism=] of the 21st century."
* StrawmanHasAPoint:
** The Roosevelt-Truman administrations ''did'' have Communist sympathizers in them. However, that doesn't change the fact that few of [=McCarthy=]'s claims were substantiated in the hearings. So more like "strawman's political maneuvering happened to align with reality." In fact, [=McCarthy=] admitted that the "list" he waved around at one speech was a mundane to-do chores list.
** The point is that only ''one'' of the people [=McCarthy=] accused, Mary Jane Keeney, was actually anything close to guilty. Even then, [=McCarthy=] accused her of being a Communist party member, which distracted from the fact that she was actually ''a GRU spy'' and suggests that any attempts to claim that [=McCarthy=] "was right" suffer from the Texas SharpshooterFallacy: a man shoots wildly into the side of a barn, draws a target around the bulletholes, and then says "look at my deadly aim!"
** InUniverse, Bill Paley notes that even Murrow was worried about looking like a Communist sympathizer by remaining silent about Alger Hiss. Murrow has no response to this. Instead, his defense is that at some point, a line ''has'' to be drawn.
* ValuesResonance:
** Granted, the mainstream media was this way even in 2005, but Murrow's unyielding desire to keep the public fully and honestly informed, even when the public at large prefers banal entertainment to news, still holds very true in TheNewTwenties.
** Ditto for the way Murrow and his team are able to highlight and rebut Senator [=McCarthy=]'s lies and whataboutisms, which helps turn the public opinion around on [=McCarthy=]. Those very same tactics are not only used in TheNewTwenties, but have become astonishingly mainstream in the political arena; a sizable chunk of social media is devoted to pointing out these politicians' tactics, just as Murrow did to [=McCarthy=].
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