LA Times' Media Critic Assails "Irresponsibility" Of ABC in GOP Myths in "The Path to 9-11"
From Editor and Publisher:
Tim Rutten of the Los Angeles Times joined many of his media and TV critic colleagues on Sunday in raising serious questions about "The Path to 9/11" TV movie, scheduled to start a two-day run tonight, but went further in judging its home network, ABC.Ed&Pub also notes that big edits to "The Path to 9-11" are being seen in European broadcasts of the film and asks if such changes will be seen here. Also, E&P notes that The Times corrected some of the ridiculous errors in The Times' media critic Stanley's article on the 9-11 film which seemed to read like a Bush press release.
The movie has been criticized for factual errors, taking too much artistic license in conflating or inventing events, and for alleged pro-conservative bias. The filmmakers were hastily re-editing all weekend but it is not known what the final product will look like.
Commentary in newspapers across the country simmered on Sunday, but even the favorable reviews were based on apparently out-of-date review copies.
Rutten described ABC's reputation as a "smoking ruin" and ripped its "irresponsibility" to history. He observed that "it's hard to know whether you're looking at the consequence of unadulterated folly or of a calculated strategy that turned out to be too clever by half."At the end of the day, it probably doesn't make much difference because, either way, the lacerating controversy surrounding the network's docu-dramatic re-creation of events leading to Sept. 11 is an entirely self-inflicted wound. For most of the week, ABC rather haughtily attempted to characterize itself as the victim of philistines, or self-righteously as a champion of free speech or, more pathetically, as just plain misunderstood by people who just don't understand how television is done."It is none of those things. "It's an opportunistic and self-interested organization that somehow thought it could approach the most wrenching American tragedy since Pearl Harbor with the values that prevail among network television executives — the sort of ad hoc ethics that would make a streetwalker blush — and that nobody would mind." The rest of the lengthy column can be found at www.latimes.com.Reviewing the same not-quite-final version of the film for the Detroit Free Press, Mike Duffy wrote that "on balance, over five often compelling hours, 'The Path to 9/11' seems extremely scrupulous in trying not to assign blame for the events of 9/11 to the administrations of either Clinton or President George W. Bush.
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