Against a backdrop of gunfire Don gave a vivid description of the bitter battle raging about him as he stood on the shore with microphone in hand and a portable recorder on his back.

Founded in 1940 by department store magnate Marshall Field III and published in New York, PM was a left-leaning newspaper, and it garnered accusations of being sympathetic to Communism even though it was critical of the Soviet Union for the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and of the American Communist Party for supporting it.

The newspaper published work by authors such as Ernest Hemingway and Erskine Caldwell, photographers such as Weegee and Margaret Bourke-White, and cartoonists such as Dr. Seuss, Crockett Johnson and Walt Kelly.

Because of this affiliation, Hollenbeck was a target for columnist Jack O'Brian, a Joseph McCarthy supporter whose attacks appeared in the New York Journal-American and other newspapers in the Hearst chain.

This simply makes it easier for them to conceal their true nature, and to allege that the term 'Communist' is meaningless ... At the same time, we cannot let abuses deter us from the legitimate exposing of real Communists.

That prompted O'Brian in the Hearst newspapers (including the flagship Journal-American) to step up his criticism of CBS and especially of Hollenbeck, who, despite his news experience under pressure situations, was a sensitive man.

[5] In his 2008 biography, CBS's Don Hollenbeck: An Honest Reporter in the Age of McCarthyism, journalist Loren Ghiglione suggests that other reasons for his suicide may have included depression, his three failed marriages, and the frequent published attacks by Jack O'Brian.

He was portrayed through the film as a broken man, as a result of his wife leaving him and the allegations by O'Brian that he was a "pinko" communist-sympathizer who deliberately biased his news reports.

The movie shows Hollenbeck's suicide closely following Murrow's April rebuttal to McCarthy, but the two events were in reality separated by two months; in the film's commentary track on the DVD release, director George Clooney said that this was done for dramatic reasons.