Posted on 10/16/2015 11:01:52 AM PDT by abb
CBS has refused to run advertising for Truth, the film starring Cate Blanchett and Robert Redford that revisits a painful episode in the network's past involving a discredited 2004 news story on former President George W. Bush's military service record.
CBS has denounced the movie, which opens Friday, as a disservice to the public and journalists.
Redford plays Dan Rather in Truth, with Blanchett as producer Mary Mapes. Together, they were behind a 60 Minutes II story that questioned Bush's Vietnam War-era commitment to service in the Texas Air National Guard. But CBS apologized for the story after documents used were called into question and could not be verified. Mapes and three news executives were fired.
Sony Pictures Classics sought a multi-million dollar ad buy to promote the film on Stephen Colbert's Late Show, the CBS Evening News, CBS This Morning and 60 Minutes, but was turned down, said Sherri Callan, president of Callan Advertising, the company that places ads for Sony.
Instead, Sony is advertising on ABC, NBC, Fox and several cable networks. CBS, which confirmed the rejection, told Callan it was not comfortable accepting the ads because of inaccuracies and distortions in the movie, and that it would offend longtime CBS News employees.
"It's astounding how little truth there is in Truth," said Gil Schwartz, longtime chief spokesman for CBS Corp. and a character in the movie. "There are, in fact, too many distortions, evasions and baseless conspiracy theories to enumerate them all. The film tries to turn gross errors of journalism and judgment into acts of heroism and martyrdom.
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(Excerpt) Read more at hollywoodreporter.com ...
Grrr! Stupid alto correct!
he lost his looks decades ago. I tried to watch a movie with him in it about a month ago. Horrible film and he was horrible acting. Best and only good film he did was The Sting.
They knew damn well what he was up to.
Are you joking? This piece of crap film tries to make Rather and Mapes out to be the victims here who were supposedly fired for their heroic efforts to expose the "truth".
Meh....
Yeah, I guess if they're attracted to wrinkled old mummies.
No, after the documents used were demonstrated to be an obvious forgery.
Freepers know that it was Karl Rove who purposely forged those documents, correct?
It was another Rove political hoax to prevent voters from asking even them most basic questions about W’s National Guard duty and AWOL status — and it worked...
...brilliantly.
Will be interesting to see what Vanderbilt (screenwriter) and company have to say.
Whatever folks may not like about W Bush, the whole underlying theme that Bush joined the Texas National Air Guard because he was a coward is incredibly weak.
The argument assumes a couple factual errors:
Error #1) Texas Air National Guard members were never deployed to Vietnam.
Error #2) the assignment W accepted was “safe” duty.
#1) Under the “Palace Guard” program, at the time Bush signed on to the TANG, pilots in TANG were on active duty deployment flying combat missions in Vietnam.
#2) Bush was trained to fly the F-102, which was the aircraft the Texas Air Nat Guard flew in Vietnam.
#3) The F-102 was a notoriously dangerous aircraft. Thirty percent of them crashed, burned on the runway or were otherwise destroyed. In the book “The Right Stuff” Tom Wolfe devotes a couple pages to the inordinate dangers faced by F-102 pilots, and the extreme difficulties in controlling their aircraft. While W was training in the F-102, it was determined that they were not effective in the Vietnam theatre and their use was discontinued. Shortly thereafter, the plane was retired because of its horrible safety record.
This issue likely had a little-known effect of forcing moderate Democrat Dick Gephart out of the race for President. While the CBS story ran in the 2004 election cycle, the issue of W’s Air National Guard service was raised early and loudly in the 2000 election. It was said that Bush joined TANG to avoid Vietnam and only served some 200-some-odd days and therefore reflected badly on his character. Dick Gephart of Missouri (”the milkman’s son”) dropped out of the campaign in the Spring. He had joined the Air National Guard at the same time as Bush, did no hazardous duty, and served fewer than half the days as George Bush. While this was only lightly reported, due to JournalismWorld’s slavish devotion to double standards, Gephart may well have realized that eventually what goes around comes around, his story would get out and the collateral damage of the attacks on Bush would perforce have wounded his candidacy mortally as well.
Let me just add to my above post that there was a charge that the Air National Guard was an assignment only those with “special connections” could get into. But then how is it that Dick Gephart, who used every opportunity to remind voters of his humble family origins, was able to get into the Air National Guard?
Gephart was such an inconvenient candidate.
Robert Redford is still alive?
Rather actually gave an interview the other day where he said he thought Trump might win.
Sunscreen is your Friend!
Huh? Bush was AWOL.
Let’s see if this film or anyone actually fingers the person who faked the document.
I mean Karl Rove or his lackeys. They sat down with their early 2000-era P.C., concocted the language for a fake National Guard document from the early 70’s, printed it out on their printer, ran it through a Xerox machine about ten times (so it looked “old”) and then got someone to call up Rather’s people at CBS? Then they planted the story (I think it was here on FR) that of course, there were no computer fonts back in the day.
Rove does this fake document trick all the time. It’s an old political hack bag of tricks. And it works because people forget this generational political knowledge in the heat of campaign passions.
But Rove had a problem in 04. It was an election year during Wartime, when John McCain (a veteran) was threatening to run with John Kerry (another veteran) and they were polling fourteen points higher than the Bush/Cheney ticket? (both non veterans)
Yeah. Karl Rove did a double-fake-out and created a document that was provably fake to get his boy out of trouble on the AWOL drunk questions.
Worked brilliantly. Gotta hand it to Rove. And also Steve Schmdit (Palin’s nemesis) who was working with Rove on that campaign that year.
Money talks and bullsh!t walks.
I do see two turds. LOL
CBS and scruples should never be used in the same sentence.
Leni
The Truth hurts?
Yesterday Rush gave props to FR for taking Dan Blather down.
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