"And now, Wolf, this from our White House stenography department....what? Oh, nevermind."
Who says irony is dead?
Variety: (h/t Scarce)
The latest National Intelligence Estimate concluding that Iran discontinued its nuclear weapons program four years ago has claimed one casualty: CNN has postponed speculative documentary "We Were Warned -- Iran Goes Nuclear."
The two-hour spec, which was slated for Dec. 12 under the "CNN Presents" banner, was "set partially in the future," featuring a what-if scenario as former government officials -- playing fictional cabinet members -- debate how to deal with the Iranian threat.
That special was "based on a different set of rules and a different set of conditions," said CNN veep-senior exec producer Mark Nelson, noting that the surprising NIE report "changed everything."
In its place, CNN will this weekend air two Campbell Brown-hosted specials on the Iran situation and its history. Portions of "We Were Warned" correspondent Frank Sesno's original reporting will be incorporated into those hours, which air Saturday and Sunday.
Just "postponed" the documentary? Because it could come in useful later when Dan (Iraqi Provisional Authority's #2 and Mitt "Islamofascist Jihad" Romney's foreign policy advisor) Senor's wife, Campbell Brown decides to do a story on those scary Iranians?
Gosh, CNN, how about coming up with a documentary about a president ignoring intelligence and blatantly lying to the American people to force us full steam ahead into a nuclear conflict with a country that posed no imminent threat?
Oh wait, that would require taking a critical eye to this White House and maybe doing some *gasp* investigative journalism. Silly Nicole.
Oops, our bad.
I guess the old face value lesson wasn't learned last time around. I am so disappointed the writers' strike hasn't been resolved. I have images of Jon Stewart replayiong all the CNN and FOX hype promos with mushroom clouds etc.
CNN....the most trusted name in stenography.
I can only guess that CNN and FOX were surgically separated at birth.
How can a documentary be set in the future?
Can someone in the b' shere answer my question:
Who actually owns, or has a controlling ownership of, CNN?
The Republican Party should continue to exist only as a threat to any Democrat who may be thinking of grabbing off more power than he was given by the Constitution. One or two Republicans in Congress and Billo as comic relief should be enough.
Richard Ray Harris @ 6:
Time Warner
Richard Ray Harris @ 6:
Time Warner.
Richard Ray Harris @ 6:
Time Warner
Jinx.
File that with
CNN Presents: Acts of Terror (1996)
Which linked the crash of TWA Flight 800 with the Atlanta Olympic Park pipe bomb (!)
I have the VHS tape of that special. Because it aired.
Why report facts when you can present "possible scenarios"?
Nice fictional stuff, CNN.
fiver @ 5:
Indeed how can a speculative film even qualify as a documentary? Clearly it cannot and to continue using CNN's frame is a mistake, it is a fictional film made by a news service. Stop calling it a documentary. We're in Borat territory here.
In 04 when Sinclair Broadcasting announced they were going to broadcast the anti Kerry "docu/drama/mentary" America got up in arms, complained, and Sinclair pulled the show.
Time for a second uprising don't you think?!
.
All great Fascist Empires hate having to shelve master works of propaganda, you know.
It's getting more difficult to keep the people excited about a perceived enemy when TRUTH makes an appearance.
.
Well at the very least, CNN is more transparent about their right wing propaganda viewpoints. They are not aware of the term..."conflict of interest".
Wolf Blitzer is almost the second Prime Minister of Israel. So we know where the little bearded one stands.
Lou Dobbs has called we, the American people stupid, ignorant, and out of control so many times that we, as a group should have fun watching as he goes totally insane.
It is just crap. Last night I timed it and they spent 1 hour 45 minutes praising Romney, defending Bush, bashing Hillary, bashing Bill, taking up for Upchuckabee, and the rest of the time was spent refering to themselves as the best newcast on television...or something to that assinine effect.
Did I miss a day or did Ailes/Murdoch buy CNN without telling anyone??
'Speculative documentary'????
qed.
Speculative Documentary = Docudrama.
BUT 10 years from now retro historians will refer to the "documentaries" of the day, and this piece of filth will be one of them.
Why rewrite history when you can plant the falsehoods and watch them grow into "historical documents". Remember Rove erased 10 million emails and now has written a book explaining what was in them. So try and counter his words you silly future historians! Bwaahaa haa!
Teleken @ 4:
ROFLMAO
.
What they are doing is completely and totally criminal. Complete Orwellian Propoganda.
i guess we,ll just have to skip getting the bshit scared out of by george w bushes nut suckers at cnn,
Cnn knows that fear sells, they lap it up and love doing situation rooms on the night terrors, Wolfie would be out of a job without the ever emerging threats that lurk in the darkest recesses of the neo-con agenda. ;)
Honest investigative journalism of this president???? By CNN ehh... Naaawww, that'll never work... Who'd watch that?????
I write that as snark... But the more I think about it.. given CNN's sterling reputation of late... Might be closer to the truth than not......JD
why investigate as required by investigative journalism when you can create as in produced journalism. make it look real and add some fear . all for the ratings. the news just hasn't been the same since the ratings came into play.
The four year old report from the NIE surprise everyone, what we learn today won't be able to sink into the leaders head until another 4 years from now. 100 years to God is like a second to us mere common people. So the mighty leaders at the house are acting more accordance to God's time line.
Another good reason to keep church and state separate.
Para(don't have another 100 years to wait)noia
Nicole, how could you be so silly? CNN is part of bushco. Silly girl. Isn't that right Mr.Beck?
“We Were Warned — Iran Goes Nuclear.”
They know full well that a title like this is going to scare the fecal matter out of some people and half of them will think it's true.
A film they can make is, "We were Warned. Iraq did not have WMD"
Campbell Brown is married to Dan Senor.
Dan Senor is/was a White House spokesperson.
what's the problem?
I'm watching CNN right now, and they just advertised a "new" Campbell Brown report, "Iran: Fact or Fiction". They probably put some new lipstick on the same pig and they are calling it 'new'.
Neil got it right.
the word is PROPAGANDA.
CNN = Pravda
Why do you think legislation has been getting passed allowing for every greater media consolidation?
pissed off patricia @ 29:
Classic comment, I bet it'll be a foreign language film with no air time in the US:)
Like Campbell Brown knows shit about anything. I wish CNN had run it.
IRAN: Speculation or Bullshit or Speculative Bullshit?
Wait. Why is CNN doing a Movie Of The Week scaremongering fakeumentary? Jeebus wept, these people can just suck it. Nice propagandizing, CNN. Good thing for me I already gave up your worthless network (even if I do have to put up with CNN bumper news on my local radio station [gag])
Nicole Belle @ 10:
You have to understand that people today are doing the job that 2 people were doing. Not only are they making Harry Potter film for fictional stories, but they also double doing news report.
I do have to say the sound effect and music score sounding more and more like the same between news and fictional movies.
pissed off patricia @ 29:
http://www.uclick.com/client/nyt/gm/
Rasmussen
Just 18% Believe Iran has Stopped Nuclear Weapons Development Program
Just 18% of American voters believe that Iran has halted its nuclear weapons program. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 66% disagree and say Iran has not stopped its nuclear weapons program. Twenty-one percent (21%) of men believe Iran has stopped the weapons development along with 16% of women (see crosstabs).
The survey was conducted following release of a government report saying that Iran halted its nuclear weapons development program in 2003.
18% doesn't even cover the amount of people that live on liberal blogs. That data has got to be a little suspect.
The poll data, not the NIE report. The NIE report can't be suspect again.
This isn't a case of lazy journalism, it's a case of corporate media helping to push a very profitable (for their owners) imperialist agenda. The more I see, the more I realize that this mess is never going to be cleaned up by an election. We need to dismantle corporate power in this country, and we need to pauperize the uber-wealthy.
HAW HAW HAW!
My god, do these people even understand what they were asked? Maybe they think Iran just another name for the Bay To Breakers run and don't believe for a minute that us SF wackadoos would give up our race. Orrrr our rights to own WMDs.
CNN keeps using that word--"documentary;" I do not think it means what they think it means.
"Speculative," however, they've got down pat.
Does anyone here remember the 90 - 100 million dollars that were going to be spent "selling" the war on Iran? I read it somewhere. Do you think maybe this
documentaryfable was part of that money spent?What business does CNN even have in airing this kind of speculative tripe, anyway?!?!
I thought their purpose was to report news, not invent it.
Eric in Ottawa @ 43:
I love the Canadian sense of humor. Were you a writer for Second City? - one of my all-time favorites!
ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?
ysbaddaden @ 37:
I have to admit, I didn't get that cartoon. I understand one is a democrat and one is Bush, but I didn't get it.
Cat Atomic @ 39:
I don't know about "pauperize." I'd take Warren Buffet's solution (not the cheeseburger in paradise guy.)
Jo @ 44:
Umm. Thank you... yes that was intended to be... humourous. *sigh*.
"The ministry of propaganda has informed us that our latest production is no longer to be aired."
Sy Hersh is spinning in his grave.
huh? oh he isn't? Never mind.
great CNN is in the
"what if" special
business
heh...
"based on a different set of rules and a different set of conditions,”
I'm assuming that the different rules were different than journalistic ones. And the different conditions were different from the condition of honesty.
"Oh wait, that would require taking a critical eye to this White House and maybe doing some *gasp* investigative journalism. "
Nawwww... making shit up is always a lot easier.
I suppose "Mission Accomplished" was based on speculative competance.
Am I the only one that is little surprised that something like this would be made public knowledge? I always knew that most of what the Warpigs were claiming about Iran was just warmongering propaganda in the first place. This only proves that the everything we read in the newspaper and see on the tube is bought and paid for by the Government. CNN was probably paid by the Bush Administration or any number of NeoCon think-tanks to air what sounds to me like nothing but fear-mongering bullshit.
Teleken @ 4:
Win.
Not too much difference between Ted Turner and Rupert Murdoch- except party labels.
Campbell Brown is married to Dan Senor? Geez, I've got the least sensitive gaydar on the planet and it's flashing red whenever I see Senor. He's got that Bush favorite male-pattern-baldness going for him as well. Oh well, time to end 20 years of sobriety.
Steve Charb @ 55:
Ted Turner merged CNN to Time Warner in 1995. He sold off more than half of the Time Warner stock he got in the deal. He's been on and off the board of Time Warner since, but he is no longer the unitary decider of what goes on at CNN, unlike Murdoch, who totally controls Fox.
miss_kitty @ 57:
If I had Jane Fonda, I wouldn't be goin to work either.
Oh Campbell "MoveOn and members are insurgents" Brown.. who in hell gave her credibility. She is a stupid bush puppet like the rest of the MSM>
I say we hold the traitorous war criminals accountable and remove them from office via indictments and impeachments.
Keith Olbermann’s Latest Special Comment
Bush: Pathological liar or idiot-in-chief?
Olbermann: We have either a president who is too dishonest to restrain himself from invoking World War III about Iran at least six weeks after he had to have known that the analogy would be fantastic, irresponsible hyperbole, or we have a president too transcendently stupid not to have asked, at what now appears to have been a series of opportunities to do so, whether the fairy tales he either created or was fed were still even remotely plausible. Full story
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22134108/
More Special Comments
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16270176/
CNN=Fux news.
Ah, come on people - it is much easier and cheaper to invent news than it is to actually report it.
Old Billy @ 46:
McCoy is a rabid right-wing Bushie. He's implying the Dems are stupid for "buying into" the NIE that Iran has ceased it's "nukular" weapons programme. McCoy's comics are never funny, and I'm sure he's an asshole.
Dennis @ 38:
Of course the question they asked was, "Are you stupid enough to believe...."
Did they reach Huckabee?
Original Bill-
You're not one of those 18%-ers, are you?
Any remaining doubts that CNN is a neocon propaganda organ?
Dennis @ 65:
I guess I am inclined to believe the combined best estimate of the 16 intelligence agencies. Of course, I haven't seen it; and I am always wary of anything Cheney could have influenced.
I guess I don't see any motive for intentional misdirection of the intelligence in this case.
Ooh, ooh, I gotta pitch some shows to CNN:
"When Democrats Impeached the White House"
"How the Iraq War Will Be Paid For by the Iraqis"
"Missing Trillion Dollars from the Department of Defense: the Iranian Connection"
"How We're Cleaning Up After Katrina"
I gotta million of 'em! I'll be rich!
CNN has whites only drinking fountainists like Dobbs and Beck and Murdochian claptrap Brown but is "far left" to Faux
cnn has sunk to a new low. i never watch them anymore. i'd rather watch keith and the daily show. with lou dobbs raging spittle every night, breaking his hypocritical back to blame all our problems on the "illegal menace" and wolf the twat bending over backwards to keep the neocon lies in the public sphere, i've sworn off cnn. they don't know what the fuck they're doing.
I wonder how deeply Brown will go into the 'Iran situation's history'?
Will she talk bout the US /CIA overthrowing a fairly elected democratic Iranian government and installing one of the most profligate and cruel dictators of modern times, the Shah of Iran?
Will she talk about the Shah's secret police, SAVAK, and how it dealt with the populace?
Will she talk about the reasons the Iranians took the hostages when the Shah's regime was overthrown?
Will she talk about Reagan delaying the release of the hostages?
And will she ask the burning question,
Who would you trust most to buy a used car from?
Ahmadinejad, or the Preposterous Putz?
A MUCH, MUCH BETTER 'DOCUMENTARY' WOULD BE TO FILM CAMPBELL BROWN BEING FUCKED BY DAN SENOR WITH WOLF BLIZTER STANDING BY AND MASTURBATING ... AT LEAST THAT WOULD BE REAL ....
CNN = CORPORATE NEOCON NEWS
I MEAN, GEEZ, CAN YOU IMAGINE THIS THING CALLED CAMPBELL BROWN FUCKING WITH THAT NERD DAN SENOR ... try to picture that one ....
It actually reminds me of a few other standards in modern journalism...such as pre-prepared reminiscence pieces on older celebrities who are likely to die in the near future.
It is really a difficult job for the media when its primary function ought to be "betraying" the country's own team. It's almost like a child who comes to know better than their parents, grappling with how to assert authority over them when they're the parents. So they'd rather dream up makeshift scenarios involving fearing Iran than take fact-based information to expose how the American leadership is out to wrong and deceive the American public.
i have cnn on my block list, but if campbell brown is doing the show in a bikini i may make an exception.
Mass media in America is part of the disease of democracy that the nation is encountering at this time. The media's behavior is beyond contempt, but, more like despicable and unconscionable. I do not think any ethical media people exist any longer because even the "good ones" are compromised by their corporate whore managers.
I know she's a liar, but she's so damn adorable!
If CNN had any integrity, they wouldn't put this documentary on the shelf, they'd broadcast it - in a newly edited version including critical commentary on the "facts" of Iran's nuclear weapons program, the flawed assumptions behind them and a frank assessment of the blinkered ideological agenda that has driven the US media since before Bush took office, and that resulted in the original version of "We Were Warned".
If "We Were Warned" could be supplemented with what is now known to be the truth about Iran and US policymaking, it could be a milestone, a true turning point in how news is reported. That's too much to hope for, I know - call me a dreamer.
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