Kurtz Covers ABC "Docudrama"

(crossposted at The Blue Herald)

It's a good sign that one of our major newspapers is now writing on ABC's anti-Clinton, pro-Bush propaganda piece The Path to 9/11. The article's author, Howard Kurtz, sometimes gets a bad rap, but having read him for a long time now, I feel while he's more conservative than he realizes, at his best he does valuable work. This will likely be an influential piece that allows others to do further, necessary digging, and I'm sure Kurtz will cover the issue this weekend on his CNN show as well.

While it's infuriating to hear spin and lies from ABC and the film's producer in the article, the ending paragraph is very encouraging (emphasis mine):

The assault on "The Path to 9/11" assumed the trappings of a campaign yesterday. Four senior House Democrats -- John Conyers Jr., Jane Harman, John D. Dingell and Louise M. Slaughter -- have written Iger to demand that the inaccuracies be corrected. Spurred by the Center for American Progress, which is headed by Clinton chief of staff John D. Podesta, 25,000 people have sent letters of protest to ABC.

Let's keep that number growing!

Update: MSN.com is now headlining Kurtz' article, and the AP now has a story out on this (headlined on Yahoo, among other places), in which Madeleine Albright denounces the "docudrama" as "false and defamatory."

Berger objected to a scene that he was told showed him refusing to authorize an attack on Osama bin Laden despite the request from officials. "The fabrication of this scene (of such apparent magnitude) cannot be justified under any reasonable definition of dramatic license," he wrote.

Lindsey and Band objected to advertisements for the miniseries, which they said suggested that Clinton wasn't paying enough attention to the threat of terrorism.

"While ABC is promoting "The Path to 9/11" as a dramatization of historical fact, in truth it is a fictitious rewriting of history that will be misinterpreted by millions of Americans," they said. "Given your stated obligation to 'get it right,' we urge you to do so by not airing this drama until the egregious factual errors are corrected, an endeavor we could easily assist you with given the opportunity to view the film."

Given that this sucker cost $40 million to make, and that it involves politics and 9/11, there is zero chance that at least some ABC bigwigs did not sign off on this.