The Gathering Storm of 9/11 Tributes

StudioBriefing has two pertinent bits today on the two 9/11 television events coming up this Sunday. First, a summary of some more news regarding ABC's "mockudrama," The Path to 9/11.

Today's (Friday) New York Times reported that two former Clinton aides, Bruce R. Lindsey and Douglas Band, mounted what the newspaper described as "an unusual attack" on former New Jersey governor Thomas H. Kean, a co-chairman of the 9/11 Commission and a consultant on the miniseries. The pair sent a letter to Kean charging that his defense of the miniseries "is destroying the bipartisan aura of the 9/11 Commission" and suggested that it was motivated by payments he had received from ABC or by his own partisan politics. Kean told the Times that he had defended the series because he thought that it would draw attention to the commission's recommendations, many of which have not been put into effect. However, Kean acknowledged that the work of the commission might be diminished by the miniseries. Meanwhile, in a letter to Disney chief Robert Iger, the Senate Democratic leadership called for the program to be canceled, saying that airing it "would be a gross miscarriage of your corporate and civic responsibility." The New York Post reported that Clinton himself had written to ABC disputing allegations in the drama that he was so preoccupied by the Monica Lewinsky scandal that he was unable to focus his attention on terrorism. Meanwhile, in an interview on CNN, Harvey Keitel, who stars in the miniseries, expressed his own concern about some of the events depicted in it. "you cannot cross the line from a conflation of events to a distortion of the event," he remarked. "No. Where we have distorted something, we have made a mistake, and that should be corrected."

And in regards to CBS's documentary, simply titled 9/11 (see previous post):

Giving a CBS documentary on the 9/11 events a new lease on life, a federal appeals court on Thursday called a temporary halt to the FCC's enforcement of its indecency rules and ordered the commission to clarify them within 60 days. More than two dozen CBS affiliates had previously indicated that they would not air the 9/11 documentary because for fear that some of the language used by rescue personnel in the film might be considered indecent under the FCC's rules and could therefore result in stiff fines. CBS had reportedly considered editing the documentary (although earlier versions had previously aired without deletions). However, it said following the court ruling on Thursday that the program will air Sunday night without edits.