Reid and Durbin's letter to ABC
Durbin cosigned the letter,
...the manner in which this program has been developed, funded, and advertised suggests a partisan bent unbecoming of a major company like Disney and a major and well respected news organization like ABC. We therefore urge you to cancel this broadcast to cease Disney’s plans to use it as a teaching tool in schools across America through Scholastic. Presenting such deeply flawed and factually inaccurate misinformation to the American public and to children would be a gross miscarriage of your corporate and civic responsibility to the law, to your shareholders, and to the nation.Wonder if Durbin watched it... or just has issues with development, funding, and advertizing... which sounds like none of the Fed's business really.
Update: ST has a quote from Durbin today on their website. They call him DERBIN though.
Derbin (sic) calls on affiliates to pull plug on drama
If ABC won't cancel "The Path to 9/11," Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said Friday, local ABC stations should.
[***]
"My hope," he said in a further statement Friday, "is that ABC station managers throughout Illinois will closely examine this miniseries and come to the same conclusion that many experts have already reached: This program is not based on the 9/11 Commission Report and it is factually inaccurate, deeply flawed and should not be aired."
Update: the left view on this over at Soap Blox Chicago.
16 comments:
"None of the Fed's business"
The public airwaves -- owned by the citizens of the United States and leased by the federal government to broadcasters for their use in the public interest -- are not the Fed's business?
..not the development, funding, and advertizing...
I wrote Hastert telling him to investigated CBS for peddling fake letters a few weeks before the election.
I thought that amounted to a subversion of an election.
Hastert declined because it was none of the Fed's business....
The TV critic in today's Chicago Sun-Times gave the program in question a rare "zero stars" rating, which means the program truly sucks, big-time.
Apparently you will have to muddle through several hours of garbage programming in order to make up your own minds as to whether or not this drivel is also biased grabage programming.
Bill,
Did the letter suggest a government sanction?
Are political leaders allowed to take moral stands?
sfc - true, but isn't it equally hypocritical for those on the left who cried "censorship" when the right wing launched an effort to stop 'The Reagans' to do the same for this production?
Scott,
Did the entire Republican Senate leadership write a letter to the Network about the show on Reagan?
Questioning the way it was developed, funded, and advertised?
I think that's unusual move.
There's a lot of history to be gone over... that Sandy Berger lost his security clearance and reputation stuffing some of the history down his pants shows maybe it's time to revisit it.
I'd prefer the History Channel, but if ABC wants to give it a try... fine.... Let History Judge, not Reid and Durbin.
If the Reagan miniseries had been funded, written and developed by a secretive left-wing cabal to intentionally undermine Reagan's legacy, then yeah that would have been a huge problem. That's exactly what happened with this ABC movie, only by the other side. This is nothing short of deliberate propaganda - the sort of thing we'd see in the old Soviet Union.
...a huge problem...
So huge Congress needs to step in to protect us?
Hastert declined to protect use from CBS; and they sure looked like they conspired to throw an election with faked documents.
It's a free market of ideas. Most are bad. But Reid and Durbin's letter was a bad way to engage in the debate.
Why shouldn't Senators like Reid and Durbin be able to express their opinion on the upcoming miniseries? Free country, right? Based upon what I've read about the series and the comments slamming it for errors from all sides of the political spectrum, I think it should not be broadcast. I'm tired of tragedies like 9/11 being used for partisan political purposes.
I'm tired of tragedies like 9/11 being used for partisan political purposes.
If Durbin had been concerned with the truth with Cynthia McKinney's (D-Ga) claims about Bush and 911 I might feel differently.
Senators should butt out of politics on TV.
Michael Moore gave us a film to watch; we watched an account of Ronald Reagan and now our elected officials want to "protect" us from a film that might make Dems look bad? As tolerant as some claim to be, using Freedom of Speech as their reason to air questionable material, if it makes them look bad, they trash that freedom and are eager to censor it before it airs. Some seem to use the "right to know" and "freedom of speech" only to their benefit.
Please do not mistake the "freedom" you speak of with outright fabrication and distortions served for purely political reasons. What many folks have forgotten is that with freedom comes responcibility. A responcibility to say that if you know you are lying, then say so. If ABC wanted to make this some sort of drama, then why do they use the real names and dates? If you want a shrill secratary of state, then call her Mary Adjunct, or any other name. But calling characters in a fiction actual peoples names is a deliberate lie.
The airwaves are owned my all americans, and thier use is granted to broadcasters for the good of the public trust. I, for one, expect my elected officials to do what we hired them for. Govern.
If that means that they have to write them a letter, then so be it. If they threatened to pull their broadcasting licens, that would be an entirely other matter.
Political Insider,
We're all not free to fabricate and distort?
If not, who judges?
Senator Durbin?
Dan Rather and Mary Mapes lied to throw an election... the people judged... I think that's best.
I have no problem with politcos complaining, but using their office letterhead and threatening the revocation of a broadcasting license is ridiculous and over the top.
Isn't this the same Disney that didn't want to distribute Farenhiet 9/11 during an election because it was too political? So much for the myth of the liberal media! At least that wasn't a work of fiction and Moore released a book to confirm its accuracy.
Having watched the broadcast, I can see why our leaders in the Federal government would consider revoking ABC's use of the public's airwaves.
Given all the libelous and defamatory material ABC just aired over the past two primetime nights, I wouldn't be surprised if they end up in court -- several times over.
American Airlines is already threatening suit, for one, due to false accusations made in this "true history" based on "true facts".
ABC exposed the myth of the liberal media as just that: another myth of the rabid right-wing, just like this entire broadcast (all the conservative screenwriter got right was the date, 9/11 -- heck, the right-wing's fact-checking was so paltry they spelled Madeleine Albright's name wrong).
Even my non-political wife has taken to calling the "mockumentary" as the "ABC Pack of Lies".
What can we expect from conservative screenwriters and movie producers next? The "true" story of how Jimmy Carter started the Cold War in a submarine? The "true" story of how Al Gore caused global warming with cow farts?
Conservatives are a joke.
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