Flogging ABC, Part 6

ABC's 9/11 film `special' for all wrong reasons | Chicago Tribune: "ABC's 9/11 film `special' for all wrong reasons


Published September 10, 2006

You spend $40 million on a two-night miniseries.

Because of the subject matter, you decide the most respectful way to run it is without sponsors.

Then, historians, politicos and others demand editing if not outright cancellation. Scholastic yanks a classroom guide tied to the program. And the president schedules a speech to the nation that will interrupt the middle of part two.

Obviously, ABC's path to 'The Path to 9/11' has been fraught with peril.

ABC's parent, The Walt Disney Co., must be thrilled.

Broadcast networks have largely left the TV movie business. The films simply aren't the draw they once were, save for the occasional special event. This one--starring Harvey Keitel, Patricia Heaton, Donnie Wahlberg, Amy Madigan and Michael Murphy--has become special for all the wrong reasons.

Hard to believe no one thought that a movie about something this sensitive wouldn't be just a tad controversial.

The movie was billed as based on the report of the 9/11 commission , but it comes with a disclaimer noting the report is just one of its sources.

The brouhaha is reminiscent of the 2003 protests over the fairness and accuracy of the CBS docudrama "The Reagans" that chased it right off the network and over to its corporate sister, pay-cable Showtime, available in only about 15 million U.S. homes.

This time it's not conservatives raising a stink about Hollywood. It's the left that mobilized, unhappy with how the Clinton administration has been depicted.

The Democratic National Committee said it has given the network a petition with close to 200,000 signatures calling the film "a conservative attempt to rewrite the history of Sept. 11 to blame Democrats, just in time for the election. . . ."
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