Media highlighted conservative complaints about less-than-flattering portrayal of Reagan in 2003 biopic, offer little coverage of ABC's 9-11 miniseries, reportedly riddled with falsehoods
SUMMARY: Major media outlets offered intense coverage of conservative complaints about a 2003 miniseries on Ronald and Nancy Reagan, ultimately leading CBS to pull the show from its broadcast network. The media have thus far not provided the same level of coverage to an ABC miniseries about the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that reportedly contains outright falsehoods and distortions.
The muted response by the media to ABC's decision to air The Path to 9/11 -- a miniseries about events leading up to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks -- stands in stark contrast to the reception the media gave another highly touted political miniseries: CBS' 2003 biopic The Reagans. While The Path to 9/11 appears to contain outright falsehoods and distortions, The Reagans generated a huge amount of news coverage, and was ultimately pulled from the network's schedule, impelled by conservative outrage over its portrayal of President Ronald Reagan, which they claimed was unfair.
A two-part series scheduled to air November 16 and 18, 2003 -- right in the middle of November sweeps -- The Reagans starred James Brolin and Judy Davis as Ronald and Nancy Reagan. However, about a month before the broadcast, portions of the leaked draft script were published by the Drudge Report website and The New York Times. Subsequently, the miniseries sparked a furor among conservatives, who saw the movie as presenting an unbalanced portrait of the Reagans.
While CBS' controversial decision to pull the show was hailed by the right as a victory of the conservative grassroots over the liberal mainstream media, in fact it is was the mainstream media itself that precipitated the furor. On October 21, 2003, The New York Times ran a 1,600-word article on the front page of its Arts section about the CBS miniseries and the concern among Reagan supporters about the movie's allegedly liberal tilt. Although the Drudge Report had reported on the CBS movie a day earlier, Drudge acknowledged in a November 3, 2003, interview on MSNBC's Scarborough Country, "The New York Times, in all fairness, was the first one to go out ahead of it."
In the weeks that followed, The Reagans -- and the conservative uproar over it -- was headline news. Though conservative bloggers and advocacy groups fed the controversy, it was the mainstream media -- particularly the New York Times -- that made it a national story. After the Times' October 21 piece, the issue became, in the word used by many articles, a "firestorm," garnering stories in dozens of newspapers and both broadcast and cable television.
A Nexis search for "CBS," "miniseries," and "The Reagans" from October 21, 2003, to November 4, 2003 -- the date CBS announced that it would pull the miniseries from its schedule -- yields 340 hits from all three major television networks, the cable news channels, and dozens of major print publications. Examining only major newspapers, the total number of hits that mention the The Reagans is 73. Limiting the search to just The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times yields six total stories over that same two-week period. A search of the major broadcast and cable news networks -- ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC -- during the same span, generates a total of 74 hits mentioning The Reagans. Whichever way you slice it, the miniseries was a major story.
By contrast, a Nexis search from August 20 to September 6 for "ABC" and "The Path to 9/11" yields only one mention of the controversy surrounding the ABC miniseries in a major U.S. newspaper (in The New York Times) and two mentions on cable news shows (the September 1 edition of MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann and the September 6 edition of CNN's The Situation Room).
The heavy coverage of The Reagans, fueled by right-wing grassroots activity but validated by mainstream media attention, had its effect. At first, CBS announced that some lines of dialogue that had generated protest would be cut. Then on November 4, almost two weeks before the miniseries was scheduled to air, the network announced that it was canceling The Reagans because "it does not present a balanced portrayal of the Reagans for CBS and its audience." Instead, the network moved the production to premium-cable network Showtime, like CBS a division of Viacom. All three broadcast networks featured stories about the series on their nightly newscasts when it was canceled on November 4; NBC covered it on the Today show, as did ABC on Good Morning America.
The show eventually aired on Showtime as a three-hour movie on November 30, 2003, followed by a discussion titled, "Controversy: The Reagans," in which the film was analyzed by a panel including conservative activist Linda Chavez, former Reagan aide Martin Anderson, liberal activist Hilary Rosen, Carl Anthony (one of the film's producers), television journalist Marvin Kalb, and Reagan biographer Lou Cannon.
Despite the intense coverage, the "controversy" over the Reagan film was driven not by factual inaccuracies; a major complaint among conservatives was that the film was insufficiently laudatory toward Reagan. This sentiment was enough to generate coverage from major news outlets. Rutenberg wrote in the article that kicked off the firestorm:
"The Reagans," according to the final version of the script obtained by The New York Times, does give Mr. Reagan most of the credit for ending the cold war and paints him as an exceptionally gifted politician and a moral man who stuck to his beliefs, often against his advisers' urgings.
But there is no mention of the economic recovery or the creation of wealth during his administration, key accomplishments to his supporters. Nor does it show him delivering the nation from the malaise of the Jimmy Carter years, as his supporters say he did.
The details the producers do choose to stress -- like Mr. Reagan's moments of forgetfulness, his supposed opinions on AIDS and gays, his laissez-faire handling of his staff members -- often carry a disapproving tone.
In other words, the film portrayed both positive and negative features of Reagan's personality and term in office. Apparently for this, the film was "controversial," and Republicans were sought out to offer their condemnations. Rutenberg's article would provide the template for much of the coverage; he went on to write:
"The Reagans" takes sides on plenty of issues and incidents that are vigorously contested by biographers, and some that are historically questionable. In one early scene Mr. Reagan's talent agent, Lew Wasserman, tells him that his anti-Communist activism is hurting his career. "People know you're an informer for the blacklist," Mr. Wasserman says. Mr. Reagan replies, "I've never called anybody a Commie who wasn't a Commie."
Mr. Reagan was long suspected of supplying names to the Hollywood blacklist but denied it. F.B.I. records show he cooperated with agents investigating communism in Hollywood, but historians disagree about whether his assistance was of any real significance.
Here, Rutenberg characterized the fact that Reagan was an informer for the FBI in its efforts to find communist sympathizers in Hollywood -- something Rutenberg himself reports is proven by FBI records -- as the miniseries "taking sides," and offers disagreement among historians as to "whether his assistance was of any real significance" as though that question bears on whether Reagan was or was not an informant.
This is just one example of how a miniseries that portrayed Reagan in a light that was less than heroic became so controversial that CBS succumbed to pressure from conservatives and pulled the series from its broadcast network.
The contrast with the case of The Path to 9/11 seems obvious. In the film about terrorism, the filmmakers reportedly have invented events -- such as the fantasy that at one point a CIA agent and a group of Afghani tribesmen had a house where Osama bin Laden was staying surrounded but were called off by Clinton officials -- that no one, not even the Bush administration's defenders, claims to have occurred.
This is not the first time that the Disney corporation, which owns ABC, has been involved in a controversy over a political film. In 2004, the corporation ordered its subsidiary Miramax not to distribute Michael Moore's film Fahrenheit 9/11. As Time magazine reported at the time, "Moore says that his lawyer was told by Disney CEO Michael Eisner that distributing it would harm the company's negotiations for favorable treatment for its Florida theme parks from that state's governor, one Jeb Bush."
The relevance of one to another totally escapes me, they are not linked in anyway and this is nothing more than a manufactured stretch, by a longshot.
I was not in favor of pulling the Reagan movie and I wouldn't call for anyone to pull this 9/11 miniseries either. If you choose not to watch it, then don't. It is your choice.
Like it or not, screaming up and down either way only gins up the publicity and increases the viewers for curiosity.
Dude, right wing said the reagan film was full of innacuracies and demanded it not be played. It was eventually pulled. Now left wing says the 9-11 film is full of innacuracies and are demanding it not be played. The relevance is we have a group with a sizeable following making a claim and demanding to be serviced. Honestly, I don't recall the reagan "innacuracies" so can no longer comment beyond what I just said. But it is truly clear that the left has definitely proven a few innacuracies that could have an effect on November. It should be pulled as well.
were facts RW morons like tommy-boy cannot stand
it claims it's based on the 9-11 report and it's being presented as fact. franken played rush today talking about this "amazing scene" in the movie in which the cia has osama's house surrounded but sandy berger and clinton won't give the order to move in. but rush didn't mention nothing like that ever occured. total lie. berger should consider filing suit since abc is knowingly repeating a falsehood. and it supposedly has condi rice portraying bush as "very worried" about the aug. 6 pdb "bin ladin determined to strike inside u.s." bull. here's what the commission said on page 260 of the report: "he [bush] did not recall discussing the august 6 report with the attorney general or whether rice had done so." page 262: "we have found no indication of any further discussion before september 11 among the president and his top advisers of the possibility of al-qaeda attack in the united states." the producer of this propaganda "docudrama", cyrus nowrasteh, also told frontpagemag.com on aug. 16 that the 9-11 report "only goes back to 1998". total lie, it goes back years before that. this is really going to be the time when the myth of the liberal media is exposed for what it is, a myth. this is nothing but a false attempt to paint the democrats as weak on national security. but the opposite was true. clinton paid a lot of attention to bin ladin, bush didn't. abc has revelealed itself as a partisan shill and liar for the right wing. and would you find something else to do beside constantly telling people what they should ignore? you don't decide. so shut up already.
oh hell, you saw it.
--"Like it or not, screaming up and down either way only gins up the publicity and increases the viewers for curiosity."--
In other words, your advice is to 'do nothing'. Be apathetic. Don't send emails, don't post anything on the subject. Don't make your voice or opinion known to anyone.
Unless, that is, you are Tommy. Tommy won't take his own advice and simply look the other way. He must scream up and down. and must make his opinion known.
I'm just wondering, cause if he did my bet is he was a "remington raider". Saving America one keystroke at a time...
I recall someone posing the question to Tommy once, and he said no, he hadn't served and didn't intend to.
Please do not respond if you must lie, either intentionally or just to mislead. I have never said either way whether I have served in the military or not. It is an irrelevant question.
As for the topic at hand, if you want this broadcast pulled and you did not call for the same on the Reagan biopic, then you are being hypocritical.
--"Please do not respond if you must lie, either intentionally or just to mislead. I have never said either way whether I have served in the military or not. It is an irrelevant question.--"
I didn't ask the question and frankly don't care that much whether Tommy served or not. I simply answered the poster's question honestly by saying "I recall...". I stand by that recollection. If, as you infer, I am "lying", feel free to answer the poster from the horse's mouth on whether Tommy served or not.
Lastly, you dodge the fact that you're consistently hypocritical by chastising and antagonizing other members of this forum for being proactive and responsive, and not ignoring what they don't like. Yet you don't ignore what you don't like.
Now you're going to tell me to simply ignore you. I suggest you take your own suggestion yourself and simply look the other way at items and messages you don't care to read. Either that, or don't expect others to do it.
That you fail to apologize for lying about you "recall", when it clearly is inaccurate. Why would I answer the person who simply asked the question, you answered it with a blatant lie and you are not man enough to either back it up or apologize. How pathetically sad. But I wouldn't expect any more from you, so I don't wait for it.
As for your other remarks, you also failed to address my point about intellectually honesty and whether you were so "involved" in the Reagan movie to asked it be pulled?
You can ignore or stomp up and down to whatever you deem worthy, I have no interest either way, frankly. And I will do the same.
But the hypocrisy you display on this issue is very evident.
"That you fail to apologize for lying about you "recall", when it clearly is inaccurate."
Now this is interesting. You've previously argued that you can't accuse someone of lying unless you can prove they know they're saying something untrue. But now, once the subject is YOU, you have developed the mind-reading abilities you claim one would need to make such an accusation.
And the topic was hypocrisy, which makes this especially ironic!
Feel free to defend Dave if you so choose. He answered a question with a false statement and when I told him it was untrue he didn't take responsibility for it, nor offered any backup, nor did he apologize.
If you want to defend that, be my guest. I would have guessed that was beneath you, apparently I was mistaken. I usually don't respond to people who operate that way and appreciate if they give me the same respect and ignore my posts. This time I did, against my better judgement.
--"He answered a question with a false statement and when I told him it was untrue he didn't take responsibility for it, nor offered any backup, nor did he apologize."---
I take responsibility for my recollection. It is what I recall from a forum discussion of a year or more ago. I stand by it. I am willing to be proven wrong, but frankly that's what I remember, and honestly I don't care whether you were in the military or not. It wasn't my question to begin with. And as I say below, I don't owe you any apologies for anything.
Furthermore, you can simply answer the poster's question whether you did or did not serve instead of overreacting in this manner. For some reason, you are reluctant to answer. That's your choice.
And I stand by a recollection from a forum awhile back where you, Dave, said, I think, that you were a convicted felon and a drug addict. I could be proven wrong, but it is what I recall. And even if you say it's not true, I owe you nothing, no apology, no retraction, no backup, nothing. Because I recall that and that's enough.
Wow, it's great to be a stand up guy like you.
So, someone posting their recollection to an offhand question regarding your military service is equivalent to you "recalling" their felon status and drug use in obvious retribution to their comments?
Say no to crack, Tommy. Jeebus criminy.
In your mind the person who lacks military service is equivalent to being a convicted felon and drug addict. That's real interesting.
Would this perhaps explain why you shy away from answering the poster's question about whether you served or not? I wonder...
By the way, I still stand by my recollection.
And your childish make-believe "recollection", is simply--to use your words--pathetically sad.
"Feel free to defend Dave if you so choose."
The master of binary thinking strikes again! I defy you to show how I said anything about the veracity of his comment. All I'm saying is that you have made yourself a hypocrite by calling him a "liar" when your own definitions dictate you can't do so.
"He answered a question with a false statement and when I told him it was untrue he didn't take responsibility for it, nor offered any backup, nor did he apologize."
No, you didn't just say it was "untrue", you called him a liar. That's the point. If you had just said "I never said that", it would have been better. Instead, he has to "apologize", like he's intentionally lying when he very well could have just been thinking of someone else, or, to be fair, you yourself could be forgetting what you once wrote. As many times as you've lost track of your own arguments on individual threads, I find it very credible that you don't remember something you said a year ago.
So instead of just saying "I don't remember saying that" or "you're thinking of someone else", you accuse him of intentionally making something up. That's quite an assumption, don't you think?
This seems to be one of those days where you're better off getting away from posting, Tommy. You're flailing and not doing yourself a bit of good.
I find it very credible that you don't remember something you said a year ago.
*********************
Do you have any idea how unhinged you sound? Are you actually saying that I wouldn't remember if I had ever served in the military or said I had never intended to do so. Maybe you should be the one who takes a break here. I am actually finding it all very comical how some of you jump to each other's defense.
So before you continue to embarass yourself, I will do you a favor and end this thread, on my part, now.
You should consider playing in the freeway. Society doesn't need you and your pathetic existent.
"Are you actually saying that I wouldn't remember if I had ever served in the military or said I had never intended to do so."
Uh, no. I'm saying that you might not remember saying that you hadn't served and didn't intend to do so, not that you would forget whether you actually had served or not. There's quite obviously a big difference. And still you have yet to show how I'm defending anyone. Dave's recollection may be wrong, but you can NOT claim that he knows so and is therefore lying (for some mysterious reason).
You're accusing me of being "unhinged" while you yourself are making a radical and frankly moronic misinterpretation. I don't need your "favor", Tommy. Take your ball and run home if you like, but you are always the one talking about "personal responsibility", yet when you're held accountable for your own comments you whine like a little girl. Do us all a favor and show a little responsibility and maturity, please.
---"That you fail to apologize for lying..."
I don't owe you any apology for anything, Tommy. I stand by what I said. And feel free to get down off the high horse before you hurt yourself.
in the dictionary. there was tommy's picture. at 12:59 tommy says: "i have no interest either way..." tommy's forever mantra, this just doesn't interest me but excuse me while i drone on for about 20 posts. i had a suggestion last night, tommy, it still goes. if you're not interested, shut up.
Do we know the sponsors of the show? They need to be involved in any protest.
I just think if this thing is as much a propaganda film as is indicated by what I've heard so far, it should be clearly labeled as fiction.
There is a difference between those "based on actual events" TV movies that take a lot of dramatic liberties with somebody's adoption struggle or a real crime story,and a film promoting one political parties fictional heroics.
Maybe at the end of the movie, we can have a national text-message election, like American Idol. Really put the slow kids in the drivers seat.
Anyone else remember this?
Or this Bill O’Reilly screed?They showed Reagan acting detached and sleepy which he actually was at times, if not all the time, and the movie was pulled off of CBS for that, but they fabricate entire scenes and stories about the Clinton Adminstration--man, how liberal.
THANK YOU. njguy93@yahoo.com
Bush supporters condemn fictionalized political mini-series -- in 2003
[link to glenngreenwald.blogspot.com]
When CBS announced in November, 2003 that it would broadcast a mini-series it produced about Ronald and Nancy Reagan called "The Reagans," Matt Drudge obtained excerpts from the script and published them. That led to right-wing bloggers, organizations and pundits, along with the RNC itself, demanding that CBS cancel the broadcast, which it did (moving it instead to Showtime, with a panel discussion afterwards filled with critics of the film).
Those who wanted the mini-series cancelled back then were making arguments which are highly relevant -- for reasons that are self-evident -- to ABC's plans to broadcast an indisputably fictionalized mini-series about 9/11, a film which includes exactly the fabricated dialogues and historical events which served as the ostensible basis for outrage over The Reagans:
Ed Gillespe, RNC Chairman -- Scarborough Country, 11/6/2003 (via Lexis)
Bill O'Reilly, O'Reilly Factor "Talking Points", 11/4/2003 (Via Lexis)
Republican National Committee, November 5, 2003
Read the rest of the whining from the anti-American terrorist-loving unhinged POS useless right --> [link to glenngreenwald.blogspot.com]
Please note that MSNBC also seems to be involved in this as they have placed a large amount of 911 propaganda on the same page ([link to www.msnbc.msn.com] We all know what happened during that date - but it seems that they are also attempting to fuel the tank of the Republicans in the the coming vote.
How do we stop this? If we cantt get balance dmedia - we cannot expect to get balance in the political arena. For example - look at what happend in the Primary with Katherine Harris. Google the Primary in Florida - and you come up with Harris. But if you look at what really counts - Bill Nelson tromps Harris - where is that in the news. You have to do serious research to figure this out.
This is disgusting and it needs to stop now!
That this movie critical of movie was scheduled to be shown while Reagan was still alive.
From a personal perspective, I thought the timing of it was in extremely poor taste and would only add to the pain that Mrs. Reagan would have to endure.
So far all I've seen are two links to a progressive website that says Rush Limbaugh spoke of a scene about surrounding Bin Laden that someone else (Richard Clarke?) is never happened and another one that says the movie was innacurate when it stated that Bin Laden started using couriers instead of phones.
Maybe the critics are correct? I don't know. I would agree that if Bin Laden was never surrounded, it shouldn't be in the movie. For accuracy's sake, I also think the dialog could be corrected regarding Bin Laden and phones.
Having said all that, this flap doesn't sound to me like it has risen to the same level of 'fiction' that caused the conservatives to be up in arms over the Reagan movie.
Looks to me like it's another made-for-tv movie that I won't bother to watch.
My first sentence should have read...
That this movie critical of Reagan was scheduled to be shown while Reagan was still alive.
sorry for the confusion.
"Having said all that, this flap doesn't sound to me like it has risen to the same level of 'fiction' that caused the conservatives to be up in arms over the Reagan movie."
Are you serious? A completely baseless scene where the Clinton administration passes up a sure-fire opportunity to get Osama doesn't rise to some "level" of fiction? It barely has a nugget of truth in it at all. And it quite clearly puts blame on Clinton for 9/11, along with fictional scenes of Albright warning Pakistan so Osama could escape capture, and scenes strongly (and falsely) implying that Clinton was too busy with personal matters to think about Osama. But since he's a Democrat, falsely blaming him for the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil isn't as bad as dramatized conversations regarding Saint Ronnie's personal character, right?
Washington Times:"There has been a sizable public eruption from the production, which features a President Reagan character swearing, oblivious to the AIDS crisis and trimmed of his pivotal role in the economic rehabilitation of America during the 1980s."
That's it? First off, people really think Reagan didn't swear? As for being "oblivious" to the AIDS crisis:
[link to zmagsite.zmag.org]
While the manufactured line is clearly inappropriate, claiming that Reagan paid any significant attention to that growing problem is ridiculous. And he was not a fan of gay people, either, from all I've seen. As for "Reaganomics" being any sort of pivot point of economical rehabilitation, that's much too highly arguable in itself for any complaints about such an omission.
So yes, the Reagan movie may have exaggerated, and placed at least one line inappropriately, but I fail to see how it is more worthy of outrage. The fact is, Reagan was not a saint. He had serious family issues, and his performance as President was hardly beyond criticism. Painting a negative picture of Reagan can hardly be compared in either veracity or importance to falsely blaming Clinton for 9/11. I have to believe it will be difficult for you to argue otherwise.
The lack of media attention to the call for pulling the 9/11 show and the lack of coverage of the Democratic congressmen and women who stood together to request the show not be aired is status quo under the Bush crime family and their sick Republican base.
Did you forget Republican Talking Point #5? When nothing else works, blame Clinton.
The truly sad thing about all this is that mainstream media have become pathetic sissies.