Thursday, October 26, 2006

CNN, NPR and Presumably Everyone Else Refuse Ads For "Death Of A President"

The media is so afraid of being pegged liberal they won't even take ADS for movies that come from the left. Both CNN and NPR have formally refused to carry ads for the feature film "Death Of A President" because it deals with the assassination of Bush. I ahven't seen the film and the reviews are all over the place, but one thing is clear: this is not a film that dwells on the killing of Bush but looks at the aftermath of a Presidential assassination in a post-9-11 world where we've abandoned basic principles of democracy and everyone is eager to rush to judgment that the killer must be a Muslim. NPR's ludicrous assertion was that the movie's topic was controversial and therefore they'd be obliged to do a news story on it and therefore taking an ad might compromise them. I guess that rules out 90% of all film ads and most anything else that might be advertised on their network. Will they refuse ads from Apple because they might want to cover the latest launch of an iPod? It's just absurd. If they were genuinely offended by the movie, I might have more respect for them. But this is just cowardice over what the right might say. And taking an ad for a feature film opening across the country is hardly an endorsement of that film, any more than taking an ad for ANYTHING constitutes an endorsement of that product. They're ADS, for heaven's sake.

No comments: