Disney and ABC have been outed

The Media Matters website has a good find on the incredible hypocrisy of ABC and Disney:

But in 2004, ABC's corporate parent, Walt Disney Co., refused to distribute Michael Moore's film Fahrenheit 9/11, which was highly critical of President Bush, even though it was produced by a Disney subsidiary, Miramax Films. Then-Disney CEO Michael Eisner explained that the company "did not want a film in the middle of the political process where we're such a nonpartisan company and our guests, that participate in all of our attractions, do not look for us to take sides."

And let’s not forget this. There wasn’t anything affirmatively false in Fahrenheit 9/11 – at most, matters of interpretation that right-wingers considered misleading, with the most prominent example being the claim (which I think was totally wrong) that Michael Moore was presenting Saddam Hussein as a nice guy because he showed kids playing and people in coffee shops before the bombs hit Baghdad. As far as I know, that was actual footage from Baghdad right before the war. (I never once thought Moore’s message had anything to do with Saddam or the character of his regime, only the fact that, no matter how bad the regime, normal life goes on in some respects and bombs do damage.)

In contrast to the essential truthfulness of Moore, this docudrama on 911 apparently presents actual falsehoods trying to blame Clinton for 911. But to ABC, that’s OK. ABC has now officially “come out” from the journalism closet: like Fox, it is not a bona fide part of the community of journalism, but a member of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, a collection of a few hundred individuals and institutional entities that, yes, does exist.