Tell ABC: 9/11 Lies and Propaganda are Unacceptable!
Blame Clinton, let Bush off the hook? Anyone who has done the least bit of research into what happened on 9/11 should know better. See Clinton, 9/11 and the Facts, and it’s not only Democrats who are objecting to this thing.
Follow the money… Who bankrolled the $40 million for the show? Comment if you know.
Max Blumental’s article suggests some possibilities:
“The Path to 9/11” is produced and promoted by a well-honed propaganda operation consisting of a network of little-known right-wingers working from within Hollywood to counter its supposedly liberal bias. This is the network within the ABC network. Its godfather is far right activist David Horowitz, who has worked for more than a decade to establish a right-wing presence in Hollywood and to discredit mainstream film and TV production. On this project, he is working with a secretive evangelical religious right group founded by The Path to 9/11’s director David Cunningham that proclaims its goal to “transform Hollywood” in line with its messianic vision….
Before The Path to 9/11 entered the production stage, Disney/ABC contracted David Cunningham as the film’s director. Cunningham is no ordinary Hollywood journeyman. He is in fact the son of Loren Cunningham, founder of the right-wing evangelical group Youth With A Mission (YWAM). The young Cunningham helped found an auxiliary of his father’s group called The Film Institute (TFI), which, according to its mission statement, is “dedicated to a Godly transformation and revolution TO and THROUGH the Film and Television industry.” …
ABC hosted LFF co-founder Murty and several other conservative operatives at an advance screening of The Path to 9/11. (While ABC provided 900 DVDs of the film to conservatives, Clinton administration officials and objective reviewers from mainstream outlets were denied them.) Murty returned with a glowing review for FrontPageMag that emphasized the film’s partisan nature. “‘The Path to 9/11’ is one of the best, most intelligent, most pro-American miniseries I’ve ever seen on TV, and conservatives should support it and promote it as vigorously as possible,” Murty wrote. As a result of the special access granted by ABC, Murty’s article was the first published review of The Path to 9/11, preceding those by the New York Times and LA Times by more than a week.
The “docudrama” claims to be based upon the 9/11 Commission Report, but it directly contradicts even this tainted history. The screenplay was written by an avowed right-wing activist named Cyrus Nowrasteh, who last year spoke on a panel called “Rebels with a Cause: How Conservatives Can Lead Hollywood’s Next Paradigm Shift. he describes the series as “an objective telling of the events of 9/11.”
Using Scholastic books (which are sold at my son’s elementary school and across the nation) ABC planned to distribute the movie to 100,000 educators across the country to promote its inaccurate version of history, which blames President Clinton for 9/11. It’s mentioned on the front page of the Scholastic site, but now the aim seems to be to teach the controversy. I’m sure 3 hours of school time could be better spent with a more reputable project.
Former Secretary of State Madeline Albright has called the film – which includes several scenes with no basis in reality — “false and defamatory.”
Right-wing propaganda such as this one ought to be understood as such and not marketed as truth – especially right before an election. I’m all for free speech and civil liberties (as my readers know), but when you knowingly disseminate lies in the name of truth, that’s something else. Disney and ABC market this as “exactly what happened.” Disney and ABC have known for a year that the show was riddled with inaccuracies. They refused to fix it.
Remember, it was a right-wing campaign that forced CBS to cancel a miniseries about Ronald Reagan, and for the very same reasons that so many are objecting to this film (for that, tip o’the hat to Carolyn Kaye at MakeThemAccountable). Let them present their interpretation and point of view under the understanding of what that is and who is behind it – like Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11- but don’t market it as fact to actively misled and confused Americans.
Send your personal message of complaint to the F.E.C
http://www.fec.gov/pages/brochures/complain.shtml
http://www.charleswsanders.org/petitions/pnum495.php
Big List of Action Contacts at Daily Kos
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/9/6/101819/4311
Other Actions (thanks to Elainna):
http://thinkprogress.org/tellabc
http://www.democrats.org/pathto911
http://pol.moveon.org/abcdoc/
http://www.workingforchange.com/activism/action.cfm?itemid=21330
http://action.truemajority.org/campaign/dontdistort911