Update: Disney/ABC decided to air flawed partisan miniseries on 9/11 anniversary

Written by Media Matters Staff

Published

On Sunday and Monday nights, Disney subsidiary ABC aired The Path to 9/11, a fabricated, inaccurate, and misleading portrayal of the events leading up to 9-11. Written by a conservative activist, the film joins the cause of right-wing conservatives in blaming former President Bill Clinton for the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks while simultaneously letting President Bush off the hook.

Disney and ABC knew beforehand that this miniseries was not fit for television: There had been a maelstorm of complaints about the movie, including letters from President Clinton, Madelaine Albright and Samuel Berger. Thousands of people wrote to Disney, asking them to hold off airing such a grossly partisan film, especially on the anniversary of 9/11.

Instead of fixing these problems and airing a more honest portrayal at a later date, ABC and Disney decided to put forth a so-called “docudrama” that fundamentally misrepresented the history behind the most serious attack on American soil in 50 years. Shame on them.

There is a bit of good news:

  • Thanks to the uproar, ABC/Disney got lots of bad press for making this partisan film. CNN, the Washington Post, scores of bloggers, and a wide range of commentators talked about the controversy for days.
  • ABC was forced to back off claims that the miniseries was an objective recount of events based on the 9-11 Commission Report
  • ABC added in a disclaimer admitting that the film was not a documentary and contained “fictionalized scenes”.
  • Thanks to the pressure put on Scholastic by Media Matters and others, they pulled their initial “teaching” materials that used The Path to 9/11 as a teaching resource. They issued corrected materials which were also problematic, but much less so.
  • ABC/Disney edited out some scenes just days before the film aired. True, they were still fundamental problems, but it is encouraging that our pressure caused them to edit out some of the most egregious scenes.

It is good to see that pressure from regular people can help highlight conservative misinformation by companies like ABC and Disney, and then play a role in fixing it. Thank you for sending emails and adding your voice. It certainly made a difference. But as anyone who saw the film knows, we still have a long way to go in eradicating the rampant conservative misinformation which pervades every aspect of our mainstream media.

Media Matters is going to continue to reach out to ABC/Disney and encourage them to refrain from using the public's airwaves to promote the radical right wing agenda again in the future. You can help by clicking here to write to Disney and express your disappointment that they would air such partisan propaganda, and urge them to do better in the future.


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