ABC alters 9/11 show under pressure

From the LA Times courtesy of the Huffington Post:

After much discussion, ABC executives and the producers toned down, but did not eliminate entirely, a scene that involved Clinton's national security advisor, Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger, declining to give the order to kill Bin Laden, according to a person involved with the film who declined to be identified because of the sensitivities involved.

"That sequence has been the focus of attention," the source said, adding: "These are very slight alterations."

In addition, the network decided that the credits would say the film is based "in part" on the 9/11 commission report, rather than simply "based on" the bestselling report, as the producers originally intended.

ABC, meanwhile, is tip-toeing away from the film's version of events. In a statement, the network said the miniseries "is a dramatization, not a documentary, drawn from a variety of sources, including the 9/11 commission report, other published materials and from personal interviews."

The statement adds: "The events that lead to 9/11 originally sparked great debate, so it's not surprising that a movie surrounding those events has revived the debate. The attacks were a pivotal moment in our history that should never be forgotten and it's fitting that the discussion continues."

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Well, I bet these changes don't amount to too terribly much--after all, ABC has apparently been heavily marketing this thing to conservatives, and I'm sure they don't want to lose too much of their audience. However, this last minute editing is a good sign. They had already sent out review copies to numerous media outlets, and such a thing isn't usually done when there's still more work to do on a project. That is, the public pressure has made them back down to some extent. In other words, this incident shows once and for all that big media companies are just as vulnerable to extreme liberal flak as they are to the usual conservative version. Only now, however, are liberals willing to use their dormant strength.

Actually, this vulnerability to flak has been known for some years. Here's a bit I wrote a while back about Chomsky and Hermann's book Manufacturing Consent:

FLAK AND THE ENFORCERS refers to organized negative responses to news products. The way this works is such that any reporting that is perceived as unflattering to the views or aims of these "flak machines" is attacked so endlessly that the news business loses money. A worst-case scenario, in these terms, is a boycott of news advertisers--advertising is the entire reason for the news business's existence. Of course, both liberal and conservative groups create flak (but I would say that the most powerful "flak machines" are conservative; they've got the money), but the point is that the news business is highly vulnerable to this kind of pressure and they certainly never admit it to their consumers.

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You can just scratch out the word "news" and pencil in the word "TV network" and it works just the same--at this point news and entertainment are all the same, anyway. The lesson here is that the left now has tangible evidence that they have the ability to successfully pressure the corporate media into fairer coverage. If I had a few million bucks, I'm pretty sure of where I would direct my activist dollars...

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