Dismantling The Catapault

PushBack
RealityVille


It's amazing how easily and quickly the Bloggodome was able to push back the veil just enough to give mainstream media access to a number of principles involved so that they could emphatically point out a number of the outright falsehoods that are in ABC's schlock-u-drama called the 'Path To 9/11'. One of those is former Whitehouse counter-terrorism director Richard Clarke whose statement to Thinkprogress.org was quoted in the NY Times:

In a posting on ThinkProgress.org, and in a phone interview, Mr. Clarke said no military personnel or C.I.A. agents were ever in position to capture Mr. bin Laden in Afghanistan, nor did the leader of the Northern Alliance get that near to his camp.

“It didn’t happen,” Mr. Clarke said. “There were no troops in Afghanistan about to snatch bin Laden. There were no C.I.A. personnel about to snatch bin Laden. It’s utterly invented.”

Mr. Clarke, an on-air consultant to ABC News, said he was particularly shocked by a scene in which it seemed Clinton officials simply hung up the phone on an agent awaiting orders in the field. “It’s 180 degrees from what happened,” he said. “So, yeah, I think you would have to describe that as deeply flawed.” …


And now ABC is clearly backpeddling, given that they have been exposed as a purveyor of what is clearly G.O.P. TV. But why they agreed to be used as a propaganda catapault for dung flung by the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Far Right Screamers in the first place is still not clear, although there is some interesting speculation floating around, some of which helps 'consolidate' things, like this from Billmon:

I find it much easier to believe that somebody -- maybe lots of people -- saw a chance to cash in on the Disney-ABC-Capital Cities axis of weevils. Limbaugh, after all, is an extremely lucrative franchise for the rodent. The ABC Radio Network has over 4,000 affiliate stations. I don't know how many of them are fully or partially dedicated to the conservative propaganda (slap) talk show format, but I'm guessing it's a substantial number.

As I recall, a few months back various lefty bloggers were debating the political impact of media consolidation, with the majority opinion seeming to be that it was no big deal.

Guess again.

All of which just goes to show, especially given the fact that Edward R. Murrow is still dead, that it is imperative that all liberal democracies have a truly independent, arms length public broadcaster that does it's best to deliver real perspective, not Prop-A-Gannon.

And, unlike the current situation with the Corporation For Public Broadcasting south of the 49th, we Canuckistanis can thank our lucky stars that we still have that, at least to a degree in the CBC*.

As such we have an alternative to ABC's crappolafest, which is Terrance McKenna's 'Secret History of 9/11' which will be aired this Sunday Sept 10th @ 7pm on the main network.

Now, the thing about McKenna's piece is that it appears to have nuance. Thus, unlike what ABC tried to do, it does not lay the blame at the feet of Bill Clinton and exonnerate George Bush, at least according to this interview McKenna gave to Anna Maria Tremonti on 'The Current' this morning (see Part I) or this excerpt that the CBC has released (RAudio clip). Neither does it do the opposite. Instead, what McKenna does do is allow people like Richard Clarke to make the point that by the late 1990's Clinton clearly understood the threat and tried to do something about it whereas Bush did everything he could to demonstrate the exact opposite in the months before the event occurred.

OK?

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*At least as long as Mr. Harper doesn't make, say, David Frum, the Mother Corp's President.
Oh, ya -In addition to ABC, it looks like Scholastic Books, which, as we noted in the previous post, was also doing quite a bit of catapaulting of it's own, has retreated from the ramparts. Our good friend Richard Cranium of Allspin Zone has that story.
Finally, pretty bizarre 'eh how much things have changed when you realize the the NY Times now goes to lefty fact-check blogs for source material. The critical thing now will be for such sites to be as rigorous as possible and not go tit-for-tat with the Rovian Prop-A-Gammon. After all, as has been amply demonstrated here, reality is powerful enough stuff on its own.

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