“I want Snowden here by noon. Have Lester cover the CIA hearings. And give the White House to Doris.”

By Gary North

“I want Snowden here by noon. Have Lester cover the CIA hearings. And give the White House to Doris.”

This bit of dialogue in Network, the black comedy written by Paddy Chayefsky, appears about 9 minutes and 45 seconds into the movie. This introduces us to the working day of a news team of a television network.

Chayefsky was the greatest television screenwriter in the golden age of television. With Network, he became the greatest screenwriter in anti-television history. There has never been anything like it in terms of dialogue. The movie won four Oscars: best original screenplay, best actor, best actress, and best supporting actress for the shortest scene that ever won an Oscar. It should also have won best supporting actor: Ned Beatty’s “Mr. Beale” speech, which I regard as the greatest dialog scene in the history of the movies. Beatty got a nomination for the scene.

But in terms of prophetic accuracy, nothing matches this: “I want Snowden here by noon. Have Lester cover the CIA hearings. And give the White House to Doris.”

The movie was about the audience ratings for a network news department, and what a news department was willing to do to get higher ratings. The Obama White House now faces the possibility that by extraditing Edward Snowden and putting him on trial for espionage, it will create a network news sensation: a media circus that will keep this story in front of the public for months. The White House does not want that. But America needs it.

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