Similarly, the second episode’s long examination of television military analysts, titled “How to Sell a War,” does not include the perspective of the networks that hired the analysts and allowed them to espouse the government’s talking points without any disclosures about their ties to the Pentagon or to defense contractors. The segment is based on an investigation by The New York Times in April and includes an interview with the Times reporter David Barstow.
Meghan O’Hara, the program’s creator and executive producer, said the omission was not for lack of trying. “None of them wanted to talk to us,” she said.
The television networks have generally declined to talk about the military analysts. On Monday representatives of ABC, NBC and CBS declined comment.
Ms. O’Hara worked with the filmmaker Michael Moore on the documentaries “Bowling for Columbine,” “Fahrenheit 9/11” and “Sicko,” and the series adopts an outraged tone reminiscent of those left-leaning films.
Jennifer Caserta, the general manager of the Independent Film Channel, sidestepped questions about whether the program represents any kind of partisanship. “The goal was to just present the stories and allow the audience to make the judgment,” she said.
O'Hara blogged about the new project at The Huffington Post.
The greatest problem with Barstow's article was the impression that because the networks employed military analysts, and most of those military analysts were in communication with current military brass, that what media consumers heard was a storm of complete Bush administration propaganda. In fact, some generals, like former Clinton official Barry McCaffrey were quite critical of the handling of the war as they appeared on air. Others labored to offer their honest assessment, for better or worse. But Barstow (and apparently, the IFC show's personnel) feel confident they can merely traffic in ideological assumptions and not engage in actual content analysis.
