Sit seven rows from the stage at “Good Night, and Good Luck” on Broadway, and you’re bound to catch a whiff of prop cigarette smoke.

Cigarettes — and the fading pulse of the Fourth Estate — took top billing during Thursday night’s premiere at the Winter Garden Theatre in New York. For every celebrity with a vape in hand, journalists in the crowd absorbed George Clooney’s call to arms under a sobering haze of scrutiny.

Among those in the room were Jake Tapper, George Stephanopoulos, Lesley Stahl, Chris Wallace, Rachel Maddow and CBS chief George Cheeks, seated alongside A-listers Drew Barrymore, Uma Thurman and Lorne Michaels. The red carpet, staged across from the theater’s towering marquee, had its own spectacle. Thousands of fans lined the street as Jennifer Lopez, Clooney’s “Out of Sight” co-star, turned heads in a black gown paired with a billowing white cape.

“Good Night, and Good Luck” is a near-verbatim adaptation of the 2005 film of the same name, which chronicles Edward R. Murrow’s televised takedown of Senator Joseph McCarthy at the height of the Red Scare. Yet, a handful of pointed additions draw a clear line to the woes facing modern journalism.

“The play is more emotional than the film,” Grant Heslov, Clooney’s longtime producing partner and co-writer, told Variety. “And the ending takes a very different direction.”

In a key exchange, CBS president William Paley delivers the familiar line: “We don’t make the news, we report the news.” But Paul Gross’ Paley goes a step further than his film counterpart (played by Frank Langella), questioning the precedent Murrow’s actions have set for the journalists who will one day sit in his chair.

That tension foreshadows the show’s “Babylon”-esque finale: a rapid-fire montage of broadcast news’ defining moments that flickered across the box TVs flanking both sides of the stage. It began with touchstones like the Moon Landing and Reagan’s “Tear Down This Wall” speech, but as it edged closer to the present, the footage grew louder, more chaotic, more sensationalized.

“It’s not just journalism. It’s a problem we’re confronting in a capitalistic society, which I believe in, but at some point you have to figure out what the overall objective is,” said Clark Gregg, who plays Pinko-branded journalist Don Hollenbeck. “Is it always profit? Is the truth always profitable? And shouldn’t the truth be number one?”

Clooney’s play arrives at a critical juncture for traditional journalism. As the Trump administration vows to slash federal funding for PBS and NPR, legacy programs like “CBS Evening News” battle for viewership in a fractured media ecosystem.

“We forget that when Murrow was broadcasting, there were like 40 million people watching,” castmate Andrew Polk noted. “There were only a couple of channels, and he was the guy. That’s unheard of today. So maybe that’s part of the answer. Everything is so dispersed, people really don’t know where to get the truth.”

According to Gallup, 68% of Americans said they had a “great deal” or “fair amount” of trust in the media in 1972. In 2024, that number hit a record low of 31%. One could point to the systemic issue Murrow faces in the play: the erosion of the firewall between corporate and editorial.

“I’m lucky because CNN is owned by David Zaslav and Warner Bros. Discovery, and they’ve been pretty great in terms of backing our ability to report the facts and the truth, even if it upsets whoever,” Tapper said. “But there are other places right now that seem to be acquiescing and buckling. It’s very concerning.”

One of the night’s most resonant moments came as Clooney’s Murrow, in one of the actor’s long, commanding monologues, debunked accusations of communist sympathies tied to a book dedication from British Socialist Harold Laski. “He did not insist upon agreement with his political principles as a precondition for conversation or friendship,” he says in character. The crowd responded with a low, approving murmur. The line clearly hit a nerve.

“The best thing you can do is read both sides,” guest Richard Kind said. “I hate Fox News, but I listen to it constantly. Go out and find the truth.”

After the curtain fell on his Broadway debut, Clooney made a brief pass down the carpet, his pepper-black hair still neatly in place. When asked about his wife Amal Clooney’s absence, he flashed a crooked smile and said, “She’s with the kids.”

Inside the elegant afterparty held at the New York Public Library, Clooney celebrated his big night with well-wishers and friends, including “ER” castmates Julianna Margulies, Anthony Edwards and Noah Wyle.