items tagged with ABC

So, I have to admit my own failure.  Today, in reporting on the educational aspects of the major dust up over ABC's miniseries "The Path to 9/11," I decided to try to stay focused on the impact on students and what real historians were saying. 

My concern was that a sensationalized politicized TV account was going to be used as the basis for a discussion of one of the most important events of recent U.S. history and how students understood this country's relationship to the world.  I avoided wondering out loud what our friend David Horowitz would say about the debate and stopped myself from hypothesizing that he would take a position that would demonstrate his own hypocrisy about balanced discussions.   Bad decision.   As should have been expected, Horowitz has attacked those who are raising concerns about the accuracy of the ABC miniseries as hypocritical, suggesting it is just Clinton thing.  Um, note to David: accurate reporting, just like real academic investigation, is not political.  It's fact-finding (and I think some of us still appreciate real inquiry)--but I nitpick.

Thankfully, Max Blumenthal stayed vigilant and has pointed out Horowitz's own complicity in the miniseries and his real interest in promoting this agenda.

Update:  Dave Johnson over at Seeing the Forest has more on the Horowitz connection.

A common misconception about academic freedom and the free exchange of ideas in a classroom is that all ideas should be welcomed or are even valid.  Nobody arguing to protect academic freedom says that anything goes in the classroom, either for faculty or students.  In particular, information that is known to be fabricated and untrue is usually considered not suitable classroom content and teachers building curriculum around lies and misrepresentations certainly is not acceptable

Fortunately, Scholastic, Inc has come to this same conclusion and pulled the classroom discussion materials it had prepared related to ABC's upcoming miniseries "The Path to 9/11."  ABC has been in the midst of a firestorm, with critics on the left and right calling for the network to correct or even cancel the series. Critics say the program misrepresents events leading up to the events of September 11, 2001 in such as way as to cast blame on the Clinton administration.