Who Is Protecting the Air Waves?

News Flash: Germany wins War;
Russia Takes Out US!

If you saw a news flash like this, it would undoubtedly raise your hackles and you'd figure someone was pulling your chain...and get very upset by it.

Now you know how we, the public, feels...

But what if these obviously false headlines were to fall on young impressionistic minds who perhaps did not have a total grasp on events. Might they believe it? This is the danger all the time when fiction poses as fact.

Does it need to be underscored that more than 80% of the public forms their impressions of what's happened in the world from the news they receive from the networks. And you do not clarify the distinctions when you use real names, real events and real people...I am obviously referring to your representation of the events of 9/11--a representation that does not jibe with the facts.

Admittedly, what I am referring to is not pure news but it is posing as fact and theirin lies the danger. In the same way, the JFK movie was dangerous to the truth, your recreation of the events of 9/11 is dangerous to the mind.

If ABC does not honor the responsibility it has as a licensed broadcaster over airwaves that belong to the people, can we believe in anything it says?

If it is so creative and so flexible with the truth, what does this kind of intellectual sloppiness tell us? Here is where you are intellectually and morally fallible: This is not LaLa land, this is serious business; you are talking about an event that has had a longstanding effect on many of us and it is a cheap shot to camouflage causes and misrepresent the facts for what is clearly political ends. You had the choice. You could have made it very clear that this was not about 9/11 but a fictional event. But since you obviously wanted to benefit from association with the event, you have an obligation to the truth. You can't have it both ways!

Moreover, even if the times were neutral, which they are not, I would find this kind of presentation offensive but, perhaps even diabolically political in the sense that we are fast aproaching mid-term elections and knowing the sympathies of everyone connected with this project and the predilection of your parent company.

You have an opportunity now to look fair and objective. If you allow this opportunity to slide, I know that my Internet brethern with their ability to multiply their efforts geometrically, will call you to task and in the end, your ratings which are after all, your reason for being, will plummet.

And the public will not have been served with your political docudrama...

I know myself that I will boycott anything Disney or ABC is involved with for perpetuating this fraud upon our people...and you may be sure, we will provide you with the necessary coverage in our associated blogs.

Les Aaron
The Committee for POsitive Change...