The outrage of the week for the Chronicle‘s Editorial LiveJournalists seems to be a movie that none of the LiveJournalists has seen (and which may be pulled by ABC before anyone sees the final cut). Here’s the headline from yesterday’s editorial:
Fabricating history: ABC docudrama on 9/11 jettisons accuracy in favor of fictional sensationalism
An email to the Chronicle confirmed that no member of the left-leaning Editorial Board has actually previewed the docudrama (unlike other reviewers who have written about the preview released to them), which makes their criticism of the unseen docudrama premature and their subheadline way too strong.
The right-leaning Investor’s Business Daily also ran an editorial on the docudrama yesterday, and unsurprisingly their perspective was more sympathetic. Nobody from IBD answered my email as to whether they had viewed a preview copy of the production before opining on it.
While the production is billed as entertainment (hence the term docudrama), it is historical. One hopes that the producers don’t take extreme liberties with what actual American foreign policymakers said or did. By extreme liberties, I mean inaccurately putting words in the mouths of people who never said such things. Entertainment shouldn’t be license for libel/slander (although sometimes it seems to be), whether we’re dealing with the Clinton or Bush or Reagan Administrations.
That said, it’s amusing that editorialists and bloggers who have not yet seen even a preview of the docudrama nonetheless feel the need to write about it so authoritatively! Perhaps this advice from ABC would have been good advice for the Chronicle‘s Editorial LiveJournalists:
“No one has seen the final version of the film, because the editing process is not yet complete, so criticisms of film specifics are premature and irresponsible,” the network said in a statement Thursday.
Premature and irresponsible? Our Editorial LiveJournalists? Shocking!
BLOGVERSATION: Isolated Desolation.
