Accuracy In Media? ABC's Path to "Truthiness"
(Guest Post by Big Tent Democrat)
The firestorm over ABC's Path to 9/11 is best exemplified by the right wing Accuracy in Media's review of it:
This is the first Hollywood production I've seen that honestly depicts how the Clinton administration repeatedly bungled the capture of Osama Bin Laden. One astonishing sequence in "The Path to 9/11" shows the CIA and the Northern Alliance surrounding Bin Laden's house in Afghanistan. They're on the verge of capturing Bin Laden, but they need final approval from the Clinton administration in order to go ahead. They phone Clinton, but he and his senior staff refuse to give authorization for the capture of Bin Laden, for fear of political fall-out if the mission should go wrong and civilians are harmed.
Of course, the depiction is actually completely and utterly dishonest:
[S]ome critics -- including Richard A. Clarke, the former counterterrorism czar -- questioned a scene that depicts several American military officers on the ground in Afghanistan. In it, the officers, working with leaders of the Northern Alliance , the Afghan rebel group, move in to capture Osama bin Laden , only to allow him to escape after the mission is canceled by Clinton officials in Washington.
In a posting on ThinkProgress.org, and in a phone interview, Mr. Clarke said no military personnel or C.I.A. agents were ever in position to capture Mr. bin Laden in Afghanistan, nor did the leader of the Northern Alliance get that near to his camp. "It didn't happen," Mr. Clarke said. "There were no troops in Afghanistan about to snatch bin Laden. There were no C.I.A. personnel about to snatch bin Laden. It's utterly invented."
Mr. Clarke, an on-air consultant to ABC News, said he was particularly shocked by a scene in which it seemed Clinton officials simply hung up the phone on an agent awaiting orders in the field. "It's 180 degrees from what happened," he said. "So, yeah, I think you would have to describe that as deeply flawed."
The defense? Shockingly, the chairman of the 9/11 Commission embraces "truthiness" as a defense:
Former Gov. Thomas H. Kean of New Jersey, the chairman of the Sept. 11 commission and a consultant on the miniseries, defended the program, saying he thought the disputed scene was an honest representation of a number of failed efforts to capture Mr. bin Laden.
"I pointed out the fact that the scene involving Afghanistan and the attempt to get bin Laden is a composite," Mr. Kean said, adding that the miniseries format required some conflation of events. But, he said, "The basic fact is that on a number of occasions, they thought they might have been able to get bin Laden, and on those occasions, the plug was pulled for various reasons." Mr. Kean conceded that some points might have been more drama than documentary. "Some of the people shown there probably weren't there," he said.
Kean shows for all the world he has gone off the rails here. I hope the paycheck was worth it, Mr. Kean.
While ABC seemed to aim for "truthiness" what it actually achieved in my book is outright lying.
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