Published on The Smirking Chimp (http://www.SmirkingChimp.com)
Behind the Selling of a "Crockumentary"
By Danny Schechter
Created Sep 11 2006 - 8:14am
The last time a docudrama triggered a such a sh*t storm was not that long
ago, when CBS was offering a fictionalized dramatization of the live and
loves of Ronald Reagan. That was back in November 2003. Right wing
organizations went ballistic with websites like insultspunished.com blasting
it as biased and an unacceptable attack on a living President. Other outlets
compared it to a media assassination.

Remember what happened then? CBS first defended it as accurate but then as
the heat grew, yanked the whole series, no ifs and buts, and put it on
Showtime, another Viacom-owned outlet.

Contrast that reaction with ABC's response to criticisms of its two-night
prime time Path to 911 "fact-based" movies that came under fire from
Democrats, 911 truth activists and media reformers.

At first, ABC played cagey, claiming that the program was accurate.

The program was covered initially as if it was a real documentary, with ABC
claiming it's editing has not been finished yet. Then, advance excerpts were
sent to right wing bloggers who loved it. (There was no response from Disney
when Mediachannel.org, the site I edit, requested a coy). The critics were,
as usual, marginalized.

When those "Big Cahunas" Bill Clinton and Madeleine Albright denounced their
portrayal, the challenge to the Disneyfication of 911 suddenly turned into a
major issue and Disney's Mouse House went from outright denial into a full
scale carefully massaged PR defense, (Disney's chief PR maven has earlier
been a flack operative for Republican Governor George Pataki.)

Disney anticipated some of this criticism by "deploying" a 'partnership"'
with Scholastic magazines to have a program widely characterized as a
'crockumentary' legitimated through distribution to classrooms. That is
being done by using the controversy as a selling point and turning a
liability into an asset.

Scholastic President Richard Robinson presents it all as a clash of equally
valid viewpoints as if there are no objective facts, only interpretations in
a letter posted on the educational publisher's website:

"Our mission is well-captured in our credo and editorial platform which
includes the statement: "Good citizens may honestly differ on important
public questions. We believe that all sides of the issues of our times
should be fairly discussed-with deep respect for facts and logical
thinking-in classroom magazines, books and other educational materials used
in schools and homes.".

"In that context, because the ABC docudrama The Path to 9/11 will be watched
by many people in the U.S., including some of your students, we believe we
should provide you with teaching ideas and background information on this
series which will provide a "teachable moment" for an important issue of our
time."

But there is another context here that neither Disney mentions or Scholastic
fully acknowledges; the political agenda behind the program and its timing.

Even as tens of thousands of viewers flood Disney with letters of disgust,
the media context as put forth by Tim Karrr of Free Press. "These media
protests have had an impact, but the root problem will remain unless we act
now to stop media giants from becoming even more powerful.

"Rampant media consolidation over the last two decades has put control over
the media in the hands of a few large corporations. We see it in action now.

"Local stations have been instructed by ABC -- and its corporate owners at
Disney -- to air "The Path to 9/11" a five-hour "docudrama" that is riddled
with falsehoods . Media ownership matters. It is time to rollback rampant
media consolidation and defend localism and public service."

The political dimensions of conflict have received more exposure especially
by bloggers and GOP critics. Daily Kos fleshed out what Hollywood calls "the
back story," when it comes to the stories they do, not the story behind it.
One posted explained, ""The Path to 9/11" is produced and promoted by a
well-honed propaganda operation consisting of a network of little-known
right-wingers working from within Hollywood to counter its supposedly
liberal bias.

"This is the network within the ABC network. Its godfather is far right
activist David Horowitz, who has worked for more than a decade to establish
a right-wing presence in Hollywood and to discredit mainstream film and TV
production. On this project, he is working with a secretive evangelical
religious right group founded by The Path to 9/11's director David
Cunningham that proclaims its goal to "transform Hollywood" in line with its
messianic vision."

The political agenda is what troubles writer Glenn Greenwald: "It is its
intended impact on the imminent election which is what makes Disney/ABC's
conduct so uniquely appalling here..

"What possible justification, then, exists for ABC to broadcast this
mini-series now, as opposed to, say, three months from now? Jane Hamsher and
others have suggested that delaying the 9/11 broadcast until after the
election would be a fair compromise -- it would allow ABC to broadcast this
propaganda if it really wants to while avoiding undue influence on a major
national election by injecting into it a bunch of fictionalized propaganda
manufactured on behalf of its entertainment division and one of the two
political parties contesting the election.

"Major networks are trustees of the public airways, and the last thing they
ought to be doing is trying to sway imminent elections by taking sides --
via a work of admitted fiction -- in the most critically important political
disputes our country has."

Disney is the company which publicly at least refused to distribute Michael
Moore's Fahrenheit 911 (while quietly profiting from it later, and also
releasing a patriotic documentary which just as quietly fizzled.)

This issue is not just about partisan politics, but ideology-shaping
worldviews and positioning ideas in a conservative framework.

Significantly many conservatives are unhappy with the distortions in the
film even as they see far less of a problem of distortions of news on their
"fair and balanced" network. John Podhoretz, the conservative columnist and
Fox News contributor found "The portrait of Albright an unacceptable
revision of recent events?" Bill Bennett the conservative author admits,
"The Path to 9/11? is strewn with a lot of problems." Right wing analyst
Brent Bozell says, "CUT: "I think that if you have a scene, or two scenes,
or three scenes, important scenes, that do not have any bearing on reality
and you can edit them." Even Bill O'Neil is bothered; " it puts words in the
mouth of real people, actors playing real people that they didn't say and
its wrong."

Ironically, this outpouring of trash talk on the right just gives Disney ABC
a new argument to deflate any suggestion of partisan intent. Just as Rupert
Murdoch's publications urged readers "to judge for themselves" when they
published the forged Hitler Diaries, Disney realizes that "controversy
sells," as in "if everyone hates it, it can't be that bad."

--
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"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson