This Is Why We Need the Fairness Doctrine

In a move to outsource and privatize everything in the federal government, ABC has formed a private-public partnership with the Bush Administration to spew Republican propaganda (it's bad enough when the Republicans do it on the taxpayer's dime). John Aravosis writes:

Good God, and they're sending a copy of the film and a letter to 100,000 American high school teachers written by - who? - the REPUBLICAN chair of the 9/11 Commission. Not the Democrat and the Republican, just the Republican. And a Republican whose son is running for the US Senate seat in New Jersey - oh yeah, no conflict there.

This is entering serious legal territory here.

Disney/ABC isn't just putting an incorrect, and politically partisan, version of the events leading up to September 11 on television a scant 8 weeks before national elections. They're now planning on using this partisan mockumentary to propagandize to American schoolchildren.

That goes too far.

It's one thing for Disney/ABC to take advantage of the deaths of nearly 3,000 Americans in order to curry political favor with the Republicans - sickening as that is - but it's quite another when Disney/ABC try to jam this Disneyfied version of 9/11 political propaganda down the throats of our children. And they don't even try to hide the fact that they're using Republicans exclusively to push the propaganda.

Now is the time for Congress to step in. Disney/ABC has gone too far. They owe every American schoolkid the responsibility to present them with the facts about September 11, not some Mickey Mouse fantasy written by, directed by, and pushed by Republican party hacks.

The movie also contains other falsehoods:

-Clinton and his staff failed to give authorization to the CIA to take out Bin Laden.
-The movie ignores Clinton's 1996 plea to Republicans to expand wiretapping authority.
-The movie claims that the Washington Post exposed the interception of Bin Laden's phone calls in 2002, when, in fact, the Moonie Washington Times reported the same story in 1998, leading Bin Laden to switch to couriers (why does the Washington Times hate America?)

Thankfully, there's at least one Democrat who is calling bullshit. If the Democrats take back the House, screw the networks. Hard. Damn hard. Reinstate the Fairness Doctrine. Too many damn lies.