| Topic: |
Politics > Politics-USA |
| User: |
"Harry Hope" |
| Date: |
08 May 2004 08:47:50 AM |
| Object: |
Disney's Eisner's Fantasyland Excuse for Censorship |
FAIR Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting
http://www.fair.org/activism/disney-moore-update.html
Eisner's Fantasyland Excuse for Censorship
May 7, 2004
On the television network that his company owns, Disney CEO Michael
Eisner dismissed the idea that forbidding Disney subsidiary Miramax to
distribute a controversial new documentary by Michael Moore was a form
of censorship.
"We informed both the agency that represented the film and all of our
companies that we just didn't want to be in the middle of a
politically-oriented film during an election year," he told ABC World
News Tonight (5/5/04), referring to Moore's Fahrenheit 911, which
examines the connections between the Bush family and the House of Saud
that rules Saudi Arabia.
On its face, Eisner's statement will have a chilling effect.
A major movie studio with an announced policy of only releasing
apolitical films, in an election year or any other year, will
discourage filmmakers from tackling important themes and impoverish
the American political debate.
(That Moore and Miramax were given advance warning of this policy
hardly mitigates its censorious impact.)
But Eisner's statement cannot be taken at face value, because Disney,
through its various subsidiaries, is one of the largest distributors
of political, often highly partisan media content in the country--
virtually all of it right-wing.
Consider:
-----Almost all of Disney's major talk radio stations-- WABC in New
York, WMAL in D.C., WLS in Chicago, WBAP in Dallas/Ft. Worth and KSFO
in San Francisco-- broadcast Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity.
Indeed, WABC is considered the home station for both of these shows,
which promote an unremitting Republican political agenda.
(Disney's KABC in L.A. carries Hannity, but has Bill O'Reilly instead
of Limbaugh.)
Disney's news/talk stations are dominated by a variety of other
partisan Republican hosts, both local and national, including Laura
Ingraham, Larry Elder and Matt Drudge.
-----Disney's Family Channel carries Pat Robertson's 700 Club, which
routinely equates Christianity with Republican causes.
After the September 11 attacks, Robertson's guest Jerry Falwell
(9/13/01) blamed the attacks on those who "make God mad": "the pagans
and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians
who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the
ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them who try to secularize
America."
Robertson's response was, "I totally concur."
It's hard to imagine that anything in Moore's film will be more
controversial than that.
-----Disney's ABC News prominently features John Stossel, who, though
not explicitly partisan, advocates for a conservative philosophy in
almost all his work:
"It is my job to explain the beauties of the free market," he has
explained (Oregonian, 10/26/94).
No journalist is allowed to advocate for a balancing point of view on
ABC's news programs.
Given the considerable amount of right-wing material distributed by
Disney, much of it openly promoting Republican candidates and issues,
it's impossible to believe that Disney is preventing Miramax from
distributing Fahrenheit 911 because, as a Disney executive told the
New York Times (5/5/04), "It's not in the interest of any major
corporation to be dragged into a highly charged partisan political
battle."
Disney, in fact, makes a great deal of money off of highly charged
partisan political battles, although it generally provides access to
only one side of the war.
So what is the real reason it won't distribute Moore's movie?
The explanation that Moore's agent said he was offered by Eisner--
that Disney was afraid of losing tax breaks from Florida Gov. Jeb
Bush-- is more persuasive than Eisner's obviously false public
rationale.
But more relevant may be Disney's financial involvement with a member
of the same Saudi family whose connections to the Bush dynasty are
investigated by Moore.
Prince Al-Walid bin Talal, a billionaire investor who is a grandson of
Saudi Arabia's King Fahd, became a major investor in Disney's
Eurodisney theme park when it was in financial trouble, and may be
asked to bail out the troubled project again.
It's not unprecedented for Disney to respond favorably to a political
request from its Saudi business partner; when Disney's EPCOT Center
planned to describe Jerusalem as the capital of Israel in an exhibit
on Israeli culture, Al-Walid says that he had personally asked Eisner
to intervene in the decision.
That same week, Disney announced that the pavilion would not refer to
Jerusalem as Israel's capital (BBC, 9/14/99).
Whatever the true motive of Disney's decision to reject Moore's film,
it's not the one that Eisner and other company spokespersons are
advancing in public.
Journalists covering the issue should go beyond Disney's transparent
PR stance and explore the real motivations involved.
____________________________________________________________
Bet ya didn't know that.
Harry
.
|
|
|
Related Articles |
|
|
