I haven’t weighed on the controversy over ABC’s upcoming docudrama “The Path to 911.” But now it’s time to say it.
After what I’ve read, I won’t watch it for the same reason I wouldn’t watch a CBS made-for-TV bio of Ronald Reagan that conservatives screamed about three years ago:
It sounds like a filmed political editorial masking as a docudrama. And there ARE parallels…except this time conservatives and Republicans are hyping it and defending it.
Even before many people got to preview it — and apparently if your political affiliation had a D in front of it you were not allowed an advance copy, even if you were a…ahem…slightly prominent (see below) Democrat — it has become a ideological and partisan issue.
That’s not good news for ABC. The reason: they will be airing a film that may get great ratings but it is now as tainted as the Ronald Reagan biography that CBS PULLED due to conservative outrage was.
From the Nov. 3, 2003 CNN story linked above:
Based on snippets of the script that had leaked out in recent weeks, conservatives, including the son of the former president, accused CBS of distorting the legacy of Ronald Reagan.
While CBS said it was not bowing to political pressure, critics said that was exactly the case, and worried about the effects of such preemptive strikes on future work.
CBS believed it had ordered a love story about Ronald and Nancy Reagan with politics as a backdrop, but instead got a film that crossed the line into advocacy, said a network executive who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Then there’s this from that story:
Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-South Dakota, said CBS’ decision “smells of intimidation to me.”
But conservatives said it was a question of accuracy.
If you recall, at the time conservatives and GOPers on talk radio, on weblogs, etc. were livid because the CBS flick took liberties in portraying the Reagans, had scenes that were clearly done with dramatic license and not based on fact, and seemed to make Reagan look bad. They charged it was a film produced by people with sympathy for Democrats and was done from that perspective.
Now, we just KNOW someone will say, “Well, 911 was never a love story” which would be a tiresome attempt to deflect the main point: conservatives INSISTED on accuracy and not cheap political shots in the Reagan documentary and blasted those who had taken liberty with what they said were the facts.
But it’s election year now.
If you have conservative bloggers getting preview DVDs of the ABC film, and no liberal bloggers getting preview DVDs, you now have an ideological product that will “lose” a segment of not just the blogosphere but the American public.
If you have Rush Limbaugh and other conservative talkers hyping the film and saying how great and factually correct it is, and some former members of the Clinton administration insisting it is not entirely factual and charging it takes dramatic liberties that for some strange reason dump on the Clintonistas but make the Bushies look good, then you have a product that is going to lose a large chunk of the American public.
If you read the 911 commission report or accounts of it what’s clear is that MANY ADMINISTRATIONS of BOTH PARTIES dropped the ball on pre-911 national security in terms of preparing for or preventing a major terrorist attack.
Even worse: if you have scenes in there that are being blasted for being inaccurate or representing dramatic license but don’t show President George Bush reading “My Pet Goat” at all in a Florida classroom (no matter what a person’s interpretation of that may be — and not every scenario is that he was shellshocked) then you will be accused or running a P.R. piece, a hitpiece on the eve of mid-term elections when the GOP and White House are making a huge push to hammer away on the issue of national security. National security has been a GOP motif all along — but just look at Google and you can see it has been ramped way up.
ABC (rightfully or not) will now be accused of being a covert member of the White House/GOP imagery team — mainly because this docudrama somehow apparently (a) was only previewed by conservatives, (b) was not given to to Democrats who requested to see it, (c) takes dramatic license that makes the Clinton administration look nearly negligent and incompetent and portrays the Bush administration as being totally on top of the terrorism issue.
The most damning thing on this upcoming documentary is this post from TMP CAFE:
President Bill Clinton has finally broken his silence and weighed in on the controversy over the forthcoming docudrama on the attacks on the Twin Towers, “The Path to 9/11.” In response to our request for a comment on President Clinton’s opinion of the docudrama, Clinton spokesman Jay Carson emailed us a statement questioning the film’s depiction of Clinton’s record and suggesting that it wasn’t a “serious treatment” of the facts.
“The record shows that President Clinton was committed to and focused on stopping terrorism every day,” Carson emailed us, “and that his administration had many significant successes on this front, and he expects that any serious treatment of history would reflect that.”
Carson also confirmed for the record that the source who spoke to blogger Duncan Black earlier today was correct: Clinton’s office, Carson told us, requested a copy of the tape, but it was denied. Carson also confirmed that Madeleine Albright and Sandy Berger sent letters requesting copies, but they were denied, too.
(SEE UPDATE II BELOW: Clinton has issued a much STRONGER statement now — and demanded ABC update it or pull it.)
But apparently it has been seen by many prominent conservatives who have been praising it ahead of time and urging their audiences to see it.
My view?
I’ve become less interested in political docudramas in recent years.
But I won’t watch this one at all.
Why bother?
There has clearly been no real effort to treat both administrations and their supporters EQUALLY.
And given how GOPers (rightfully) screamed over the liberties taken with the Reagan film (which was banished to Showtime and critical pans), it’s one more example of the double standards practiced by political partisans in modern-day America:
If you have the power to do something you shove it through and do it.
But there may be some people who didn’t watch the Reagan film (like me) and will make sure they don’t tune to ABC to watch perhaps the one and only supposedly detailed account of what happened on 911 that leaves out where Bush actually was when he learned about the twin towers being hit.
The bottom line: if this was not a film with a political imagery agenda then why were Clinton and other members of his administration turned down when they wanted to see it?
Would they have been refused (when others who are critics of their administration were not) if there was nothing factual or that they would publicly question?
FOOTNOTE: Some people will say, “Well how can you judge if you don’t watch it.”
Why should I give ABC and its sponsors viewership when I wouldn’t watch the Reagan film for the same reason?
In the end, in television its the NUMBERS and RATINGS that determine if this show is a success. I won’t contribute to its success.
I didn’t support this kind of film when it came to Ronald Reagan, and I don’t support this kind of film now. (I have seen documentaries on the left and right that are controversial, including some of the ones by and blasting Michael Moore…but I see those mostly due to see what kind of new footage or unaired satellite feed material they offer. Moore’s films are unabashed ideological political editorials, even though some who agree with him insist every statement is 100 percent accurate and there is no manipulation in the way news footage is edited and characterized. There are whole books and websites that contend otherwise.)
Will “The Path To 911” help the GOP in the elections? Quite possibly.
Will it hurt ABC in the long run? Quite possibly.
Because now ABC will viewed by some (rightfully or wrongfully) as Fox News with Mouse Ears.
FIRST UPDATES (Wed night):
— Here’s how UPI sees this controversy.
—Patterico’s Pontifications reports that a L.A. talk show host says ABC is going to do some edits.
—Crooks & Liars has video of former Bush counterterrorism official, Roger Cressey saying parts of the film are out of “Fantasyland.”
—Tim F. at Balloon Juice has a reaction somewhat similar to yours truly.
Let’s say off the bat that somebody will get fired for this. After ABC has to eat its $30 million investment they might sack whoever decided to aggressively promote a fictionalization of the events leading to 9/11, written by a known conservative activist and promoted exclusively to rightwing blogs and allied news outlets like Rush Limbaugh and NewsMax. Sensible managers would cut loose the genius who decided to chase the evaporating FOX News demographic and influence an election with blatantly untrue efforts to shift the blame for 9/11 to a previous administration.
–Washington Post media writer Howard Kurtz:
Top officials of the Clinton administration have launched a preemptive strike against an ABC-TV “docudrama,” slated to air Sunday and Monday, that they say includes made-up scenes depicting them as undermining attempts to kill Osama bin Laden.
Former secretary of state Madeleine K. Albright called one scene involving her “false and defamatory.” Former national security adviser Samuel R. “Sandy” Berger said the film “flagrantly misrepresents my personal actions.” And former White House aide Bruce R. Lindsey, who now heads the William J. Clinton Foundation, said: “It is unconscionable to mislead the American public about one of the most horrendous tragedies our country has ever known.”
ABC’s entertainment division said the six-hour movie, “The Path to 9/11,” will say in a disclaimer that it is a “dramatization . . . not a documentary” and contains “fictionalized scenes.” But the disclaimer also says the movie is based on the Sept. 11 commission’s report, although that report contradicts several key scenes.
Berger said in an interview that ABC is “certainly trying to create the impression that this is realistic, but it’s a fabrication.”
Marc Platt, the film’s executive producer, said that although it “does contain composite and conflated scenes and representative characters and dialogue, we’ve worked very hard to be fair. If individuals feel they’re wrongly portrayed, that’s obviously of concern. We’ve portrayed the essence of the truth of these events. Our intention was not in any way to be political or present a point of view.”
If that’s the case, then why were top Democrats(and we’re not even talking about bloggers here) reportedly refused advance DVDs and why did only conservatives get to see advance copies — when conservatives got them? Kurtz notes that at stake is damaging Clinton’s legacy.” Kurtz details some of the objections over the accuracy.
He also reports that ABC is insisting it wasn’t only conservatives that got the DVDs (so it sounds like a lot were apparently lost in the mail, since this differs from other accounts on this controversy):
ABC said copies of the film were sent to media organizations and commentators without regard to ideology, and that Democrats and Republicans were invited to a screening in Washington. At the screening, Richard Ben-Veniste, a Democratic member of the Sept. 11 commission, assailed the film as inaccurate.
–A reader in comments says that Rush and other conservative talk show hosts have been panning the film. A Google search doesn’t turn that up (which doesn’t mean it isn’t the case). But all reports so far say this film is being hyped on conservative talk shows.
There is THIS LINK of a transcript where Rush talks about seeing the advance DVD (something Bill Clinton could not arrange even though he had served as President and is mentioned in the film). Read it and judge for yourself.
Are we MISSING SOMETHING HERE or doesn’t this sound like Rush is praising it (a small excerpt 4 U):
This thing is just incredible, and you watch it — if you get to see it uncut; I’m loathe to predict what ABC will do amidst mounting pressure from Bill Clinton and others who are going today to call Bob Iger at ABC to demand some of this stuff be edited out. I don’t know what specifically, but they’re not happy about this. This just caused a real ruckus at the screening, the private screening in Washington last week, and the week before last. When you watch this, when you see it, none of it will surprise you if you’re a regular listener to this program, because this is stuff what we have been told and we’ve known for the longest time. What surprises us is the whitewash of all this and how they were so successful at doing it at the 9/11 Commission.
—Media Matters also has a long post noting that conservative talk show hosts are defending and hyping it. Here’s its lead:
Summary: Media conservatives, including film blogger Govindini Murty, Rush Limbaugh, L. Brent Bozell III, and Andrew C. McCarthy, have all spoken out to defend the reportedly dubious portrayals of historical events in the ABC miniseries The Path to 9/11. In doing so, these conservatives have used strikingly similar themes, praising the miniseries’ “honesty” or “accuracy” and its “nonpartisan” nature.
A number of conservative media figures have leaped to the defense of the ABC miniseries The Path to 9/11, claiming that the “docudrama” — which has been widely criticized for its alleged fabrications — is “nonpartisan” and factually honest. However, initial reviews and fact-checks of the miniseries, which is scheduled to air in two parts on September 10 and 11, have shown that it twists and invents facts and storylines to create a false picture of the Clinton administration’s role in failing to prevent the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, while largely ignoring Bush administration failures.
UPDATE II (Thursday):
Bill Clinton has now issued a stronger statement to ABC and according to the New York Post he offers specific refutations of assertions made in the film, demands ABC fix it — or pull it.
A furious Bill Clinton is warning ABC that its mini-series “The Path to 9/11” grossly misrepresents his pursuit of Osama bin Laden – and he is demanding the network “pull the drama” if changes aren’t made.
Clinton pointedly refuted several fictionalized scenes that he claims insinuate he was too distracted by the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal to care about bin Laden and that a top adviser pulled the plug on CIA operatives who were just moments away from bagging the terror master, according to a letter to ABC boss Bob Iger obtained by The Post.
The former president also disputed the portrayal of then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright as having tipped off Pakistani officials that a strike was coming, giving bin Laden a chance to flee.
“The content of this drama is factually and incontrovertibly inaccurate and ABC has the duty to fully correct all errors or pull the drama entirely,” the four-page letter said….
The letter, written by Bruce Lindsey, head of the Clinton Foundation, and Douglas Bond, a top lawyer in Clinton’s office, accuses the ABC drama of “bias” and a “fictitious rewriting of history that will be misinterpreted by millions of Americans.”
Clinton, whose aides first learned from a TV trailer about a week ago that the miniseries would slam his administration, was “surprised” and “incredulous” when told about the film’s slant, sources said.
Albright and former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger also dashed off letters to Iger, accusing the network of lying in the miniseries and demanding changes.
ABC spokesman Jonathan Hogan last night defended the miniseries as a “dramatization, not a documentary, drawn from a variety of sources, including the 9/11 commission report, other published materials and personal interviews.”
“Many of the people who have expressed opinions about the film have yet to see it in its entirety or in its final broadcast form,” he said. “We hope viewers will watch the entire broadcast before forming their own opinion.”
Saying “watch the film” is like saying “give us the ratings so our film is a success” even though we skewered it against you.
A lot of people are going to pass on watching it– and that will include many Americans who feel administrations of BOTH PARTIES let the country down in the days before 911.
Lower ratings than expected will ensure that docudramas — particularly those put on right before elections — using the power of filmmaking on hotly debated issues to provide political advantage to one side in a polarized nation while being marketed as information using an entertainment form are done with more care and balance in the future.
SOME MORE READING ON THIS CONTROVERSY:
—House Democrats Demand ABC Fix Inaccuracies.
—Watching the Watchers blasts ABC.
—Blue Crab Boulevard asks a pointed question.
—Did Scholastic yank it’s links to the ABC film?
—Right In A Left World sees this as Democrat CYA.
–My Concerns With “The Path To 911” by Dean Barnett on Hugh Hewitt’s blog.
—Think Progress mini-bombshell: ABC Insider Assures Right-Wing Bloggers: ‘The Message of the Clinton Admin Failures Remains Fully Intact’
—American Future sees hypocrisy on the left.
—Taylor Marsh thinks ABC may be on shaky legal ground.
—Glenn Greenwald takes a detailed look at the Republican stance on terrorism under the Clinton administration. (A hint: it wasn’t as vigorous as it is now).
–And Red State takes a detailed look at Bill Clinton’s record.
—Americablog notes that the filmmaker admits dramatic license was inserted in some key scenes that might not have happened. (The key point here is: from all reports so far this is a politicaly skewered film because when there is dramatic license it is favorable to the Bush administration and unfavorable to the Clinton administration).
–In a must-read post QandO says “Fake But Accurate Isn’t Good Enough” and notes:
A succession of administrations, both Democratic and Republican, failed. And those failures were egregious enough that I would think the truth would be damning enough, without resorting to blatant inaccuracy.
If this was just marketed as a movie, based on historical events, that would be one thing. But ABC has printed up and distributed educational materials, for use in classrooms, to accompany the docu-drama. ABC is, in effect, saying this is the true story, when in fact, it is, at least in this case, factually incorrect…ABC’s leadership has no one to blame but themselves.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.