MediaWatch: October 19, 1998
Table of Contents:
Moral Equivalence Weekly?
In an era of TV news magazines dominated by celebrities, crime and cancer scares, Ted Turner deserves credit for spending $12 million to produce Cold War, a documentary about an important topic. But, there are troubling signs about what liberal historical revisionism and moral equivalence may be delivered in the 24-part series produced by British filmmaker Jeremy Isaacs. It began airing in late September on Sunday nights at 8pm ET and repeats five more times during the week.
Turner: Not triumphant the U.S. won. In a December 27, 1997 New York Times story reporter Mark Landler relayed: "Sir Jeremy said he was swayed when Mr. Turner told him he believed the documentary should approach the Cold War from the perspective of neither the United States nor the Soviet Union. ‘He wanted a project that dealt unjingoistically with the Cold War,’ Sir Jeremy recalled. ‘He did not want a triumphalist approach.’"
No honorable anti-communists? Even Time, partners with CNN in the NewsStand show, raised a concern. In the September 21 issue James Collins reported that the series reveals the moral deficiencies of the Soviet system, but Collins cautioned: "As for the portrayal of the U.S., there may be some lapses in perspective — in the episode on the McCarthy era, for example, it is unfortunate that the filmmakers found no honorable anti-communists to balance the comments made by those who were sympathetic to the party."
Research provided by a left-wing group best-known for its anti-Reagan activities in the 1980s aimed at undermining his policies in Central America. In the September 20 CNN preview of the series, producer Taylor Downing explained: "The National Security Archive suggested to us that they brief us, they provide us a background for each episode....So they would prepare for us a set of briefing documents for each episode."
U.S. propagandized just like the Soviets. Film researcher Miriam Walsh, on the preview show, contended: "I wouldn’t accuse the Soviets totally of contrived footage. I mean, the Americans were just the very best at contriving their material, and some of the propaganda films that came out of the States in the ‘50s and ‘60s are just shameless....And then you look at the Russian material and... you get people in the West going, ‘Oh, it’s so censored.’...To me, both sides are very censored, and that is one of the features of media in the Cold War that we’re very slow to see on our own side."
