ABC, Scholastic injecting conservative misinformation into the classroom

"Discussion guide" suggests Iraq had WMD; miniseries blames Clinton for 9-11

In conjunction with the September 10 premiere of its flawed, partisan miniseries The Path to 9/11, ABC has teamed up with Scholastic Inc. to urge 100,000 high school teachers nationwide and their students to watch the controversial miniseries and then use Scholastic's "discussion guide" in class. A Media Matters for America review of the ABC/Scholastic material has found it to be rife with conservative misinformation.

The ABC/Scholastic material is deeply flawed because, in addition to omitting key information, it promotes conservative talking points:

• It tells students that the United States went to war in Iraq because of weapons of mass destruction -- but fails to note that, in fact, Iraq did not have WMD. Nor does it note the increasing evidence that the Bush administration knew this all along and manipulated intelligence in order to make a dishonest case for war.

• It falsely suggests a tie between Iraq and the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

• It gives unjustifiably upbeat accounts of reportedly dire conditions on the ground in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

• It suggests that military responses to Osama bin Laden by the Clinton administration could have "hinder[ed] the U.S. stance on the war on terror."

• It asks students to debate whether the media "hinder our national security."

The miniseries itself is also reportedly deeply flawed, with initial reviews and fact-checks showing 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. News reports even indicate that an FBI agent who was a consultant to the film quit during production "because he thought they were making things up."

For ABC and Scholastic to promote this egregious conservative misinformation to high school students around the anniversary of the 9-11 terror attacks is irresponsible and morally repugnant.

Click here to contact Scholastic and urge them to correct the conservative misinformation in their materials. High school students shouldn't be required by their teachers to listen to conservative lies.

Please also click here to urge ABC to hold off airing the miniseries until its flaws have been fixed.

Resources:

ABC and Scholastic release skewed Path to 9/11 "Discussion Guide" for teachers to assign to students

Posted to the web on Thursday, September 07, 2006 at 12:46 PM ET