MSM Offered ABC to the Alligators

Well, this last week proved once again that the defense of liberty cannot be entrusted to liberals. There was a certain cynicism in the mainstream media’s eagerness to promote the McCain-Finegold restrictions on freedom of political discourse. That legislation did not endanger them and in fact increased their power to manage information and debate. Free speech was curtailed, but only for thee. And the media rejoiced.
But this last week, the mainstream media revealed that its commitment to free speech did not even extend to their own liberty. Sunday and Monday evening, ABC broadcast a miniseries titled “The Road to 9/11.” The movie told of the strategic fumbling, bureaucratic bungling, and operational timidity that enabled Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaida terrorist organization to grow into a network that could launch the worst terrorist attacks that this country has ever experienced.
I did not see the movie. I don’t need to have history distilled, digested and dramatized for me. But I understand that the movie shined a harsh light on the Clinton Administration for its hand wringing disinclination to take bold action against Al Qaida. Even though bin Laden had bombed the World Trade Center in 1993, two of our embassies in Africa in 1998, and engineered the attack on the USS Cole in 2000, the Clinton Administration recoiled from capturing bin Laden when he was within the reach of our special forces. A simple push of a button would have vaporized bin Laden into pink mist with a Hellfire missile when he was literally in the crosshairs of a Predator drone, but the order was withheld. Clinton even turned down an offer from Sudan to simply hand him over because then-Attorney General Janet Reno didn’t think she could build a winning criminal case against him.
The Bush Administration was made to look bad too. But, as the Democratic Party has invested its 2006 election hopes and dreams in the fantasy that George Bush bears singular responsibility for any threat of terrorism that exists in the world today, this reminder of Clinton’s carelessness undermines their efforts.
They were ticked – so ticked in fact that several prominent Democrats who stand to occupy positions of power were they to win control of Congress in the upcoming midterm elections, wrote a letter threatening ABC’s broadcast license should the company air the movie. The Democrats suggested that airing the movie would put ABC in violation of the Broadcast act of 1934 for failing to act in the public interest. It is obvious that Senators Reid, Durbin, Stabenow, Schumer, and Dorgan consider aiding Democratic campaigns to be in the public interest.
The letter may be read in its entirety on the Senate Democratic website at: http://democrats.senate.gov/newsroom/record.cfm?id=262624&. They are not in the least ashamed of their tactics.
ABC, to its credit, mostly ignored the bullying and ran the movies with only minor editorial changes.
What was missing was a general media outrage. All the other broadcast networks and all the cable networks sat idly by as a prominent political party threatened to use the awesome power of the federal government to punish a network for exercising what was once a Constitutional right. They were content to feed one of their own to the alligator in exchange for the alligator reserving them for a later meal.
Sadly, there is precedent for this. In 1992 an independent group opposing Bill Clinton’s campaign produced and tried to air an advertisement critical of Clinton’s draft dodging. Ron Brown, Clinton’s campaign chairman and the future Commerce Secretary, reminded stations that Clinton was likely to win the election and his administration would look unfavorably upon license renewals of television stations that ran the ad. None did.
One would not have to look hard to see the slippery slope that the “Path to 9/11” episode revealed and surely the other networks saw the peril. But they did not come to ABC’s defense. All seemingly entertained the hope that the jackbooted thugs would be satisfied with ABC and, if they just behaved themselves, would not soon come for them.
I used to think that the mainstream press favored appeasement over principle. Now I know that appeasement is principle with these people.