That tricky tricky liberal media


Goddamnitall, the Republicans are working the referees in the media again, and CBS is caving. Go read the whole article. And if all of Hollywood was liberal like they say, do you really think they'd be able to suppress a fictionalized portrayal of a president?

UPDATE: CBS cancelled it. It may run on Showtime. Cowards. But there's a good side as well. Josh Marshall puts it well on his blog.

'The Reagans': Too Hot for CBS to Handle? (washingtonpost.com)

Sunday night, CBS executives attending the network's 75th-anniversary celebration in New York laughed out loud as Dick and Tommy Smothers recounted how CBS had caved in to complaints from conservatives and scrubbed their politically charged '70s variety show. Yesterday morning, some of those same CBS execs were working on how best to scrub their upcoming biopic on Ronald and Nancy Reagan after receiving a letter of complaint about it from the Republican National Committee.

By yesterday afternoon, the debate was no longer whether the four-hour miniseries, which was scheduled to air over two nights, Nov. 16 and 18, would actually be broadcast on CBS. The debate was whether CBS parent Viacom could cut its losses by airing the miniseries on its cable network Showtime, or whether it would be better never to air it at all.

CBS executives declined to comment yesterday; producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron did not return calls.

On Friday, CBS President and CEO Leslie Moonves received a letter from RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie expressing alarm over the Reagan project.

Though no one at the RNC had seen 'The Reagans,' the letter insisted that either a panel of Reagan pals and historians screen the project before broadcast for 'historical accuracy' or the network run a disclaimer crawl at the bottom of the screen every 10 minutes during the movie, advising viewers that 'the program is a fictional portrayal of the Reagans and the Reagan Presidency, and they should not consider it to be historically accurate. . . .

'It would be reassuring to know that the program in its entirety . . . had been subject to review for accuracy,' Gillespie wrote.

Though the letter was polite as all get-out, the point being made was unmistakable:

'If your series contains omissions, exaggerations, distortions or scenes that are fiction masquerading as fact, the American people may come away with a misunderstanding of the Reagans and the Reagan Administrations,' the letter said ominously.

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