Thursday, September 07, 2006

"We the people" did this

They don't tell you this in the following article, but the article only exists because the little people have finally started taking back their country from the evil corporations and their puppet politicians. Knowing ABC was about to show a mini-series full of lies about September 11th to push the right wing agenda, a lot of people wrote letters to Scholastic, ABC, and ABC's advertisers, saying "No... No, no, no. [Shake finger.] You're not getting away with this, ABC." And I don't know this for a fact, but I suspect advertisers started pulling out, forcing ABC to make some serious last-minute changes. And Scholastic backed out because they realized this time the lie is not profitable.

This thing isn't as pretty and harmless as they're trying to make it sound. This story is nothing more than public relations departments hard at work to clean up their fuck-up.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Children's publishing company Scholastic said that it is removing materials from its Web site originally created for use in conjunction with ABC's "The Path to 9/11" amid growing controversy over the docudrama.

The company said it will create a new classroom discussion guide for high school students that focuses more specifically on media literacy, critical thinking, and historical background.

Scholastic is removing materials from its site that were created for classroom use in conjunction with ABC's docudrama, "The Path to 9/11."

"After a thorough review of the original guide that we offered online to about 25,000 high school teachers, we determined that the materials did not meet our high standards for dealing with controversial issues," Dick Robinson, Chairman, President and CEO of Scholastic said in a statement.

"At the same time, we believe that developing critical thinking and media literacy skills is crucial for students in today's society in order to participate fully in our democracy and that a program such as 'The Path to 9/11' provides a very 'teachable moment' for developing these skills at the high school level. We encourage teachers not to shy away from the controversy surrounding the program, but rather to engage their students in meaningful, in-depth discussion."

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, Clinton Foundation head Bruce Lindsey and Clinton adviser Douglas Band all wrote in the past week to Robert Iger, CEO of The Walt Disney Co. (Charts), to express concern over "The Path to 9/11." (Full story.)

The letter writers said that the miniseries contained factual errors, and that their requests for an opportunity to see it had gone unanswered.

In a statement released in apparent response to the growing uproar, ABC said, "No one has seen the final version of the film, because the editing process is not yet complete, so criticisms of film specifics are premature and irresponsible."

Scholastic's new guide states that it had no involvement with developing the ABC docudrama and that the company is not promoting the program.

The new guide will be available on Friday, Sept. 8, the company said.

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