The Sept. 11 that never was
ABC's docudrama "The Path to 9/11" is a false version of history. It popularizes right-wing myths by exaggerating Clinton's failures and Bush's successes, depicting events that never happened.
By Joe Conason
Sept. 8, 2006 | It would be uplifting to believe, as the producers of ABC's "The Path to 9/11" have claimed, that the network spent $40 million on its anniversary docudrama to educate the American people and improve the nation's defenses. And it would be reassuring to believe, as the producers have insisted in recent days, that "our ambitions and our goals and our standards were all about accuracy." But it is impossible to believe, after viewing their somewhat cheesy, sometimes incomprehensible and severely distorted version of the events leading up to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that they acted in good faith on either of those motivations.
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As I wrote this column, the Los Angeles Times reported that ABC had made "minor" alterations to some of the movie's most glaring errors. But for a production that rather tastelessly and gratuitously promotes ABC News in its script, no last-minute edits can restore news values that the producers never respected.
The ultimate irony is that this project -- based on the work of a commission whose bipartisan members swore to pursue and reveal the truth about a national disaster -- is likely to perpetuate old partisan canards instead of dispelling them.
more (after a short ad) at:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2006/09/08/path_to_9_11/index1.html
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