Steve Outing, of Poynter, alerts us to Salon’s posting of the full script of the controversial CBS mini-series, “The Reagans.” Was the cancelled show unfair? Judge for yourself, at least based on the script (who knows what scenes were cut). The Web delivers. Again.
The fact that Salon, a liberal publication, “outed” the script may add more fuel to the conservative view that the mini-series (docudrama, biopic) reflected “media liberal bias.”
NYT let the cat out of the bag
The NYT, which (inadvertently?) spawned the controversy, noted in a Sunday editorial that there should be a line between the “truth” of TV news and the “historical fiction” of entertainment. When the subject is real people, we, the viewers, expect the network to distinguish fiction from non-fiction.
Made-for-TV movies of any stripe rarely toe the line of truth. How can they? The dialog must be invented; dramatic license is bandied about as justification when the inevitable protests arise. Of course, this time the protests were from mainstream organizations, such as the Republican National Party.
Interestingly, all of the protests have been led by people who have yet to see the production.
The amazing thing to me is that CBS was clueless. When did $9 million become equivalent to a glass of spilled milk?
No outcry on Lynch story
The same conservative voices that protested “The Reagans” are silent on the discrepancy in disability pension being offered the two female Iraqi War POWs and the differences in media treatment. Snopes reports the on the furor and the Army’s justification for the wildly varying pensions. (Lynch’s is twice that awarded Johnson — but which woman actually fought her captors?)
No outcry on the NBC story that ran this weekend (without Lynch’s blessing) or her upcoming Diane Sawyer interview on Veteran’s Day. Or her $1million book contract. All, of course, the result of TV hype during the height of a conservative-endorsed war — hype that later proved as empty as Hussain’s weapons cache.
Related links: Lessig; NYT (requires free registration); LA Times – David Shaw (requires free registration); Time – James Poniewozik; USA Today; Boston Globe; Seattle Times – Kay McFadden; CNN; Toronto Star
