Dramatic License: Between Docudrama and Reality

Michael Hedges September 11, 2006

The Path to 9/11 docudrama produced for US network ABC panders to the political. It's what we call propaganda.

Skillful editors attempted to salvage a politically charged view of events leading up to the terrorist attack on New York and Washington DC right up until airtime. The first block of the 5 hour / two day mini-series was broadcast Sunday night in the US and several other countries.

Its critics – mostly from the US political party previously but not now power – view the production as a gross distortion of fact. Interestingly, few had seen it before airtime.

Television docudramas are the mediums most popular genre, grabbing ratings – usually – and headlines: always good for promotion.

Fictionalized history as a US television programming device has a rich past, beginning in the 1950s with the CBS series See It Now and peaking in the 1970’s with Ken Burns/PBS Civil War and Roots.  These were brilliant, interesting and safe. CBS correspondent Walter Cronkite interviewing George Washington was never confused with absolute reality.

As the 21st century arrived television – audience, producers and advertisers – turned reality obsessive, at least using the term to denote a real glimpse at real life in real time.

Television’s cup of credibility is more than half empty.

ABC sent review copies of the tele-film to right-wing reviewers – who loved the show – and not to others. Offering the program without commercial interruption presents a sense of legitimization: the news department did clearly not produce it. ABC would have served the public better by placing used-car and hair-loss ads every ten minutes.

The success of the docudrama and its antecedent reality TV is simply television’s strength as a popular provider of narrative. What began as storytelling – a deeply ingrained cultural need - now risks descending into propaganda. And, unfortunately, TV audiences rarely notice the difference.

If it’s on TV, it’s real.

But urban myths fare well on the screen, big and small. Oliver Stone’s JFK took considerable dramatic license in portraying a popular conspiracy theory. Path to 9/11 gives full visual effect to a government official refusing to allow the CIA to capture Osama bin Ladin, a popular right-wing myth. It never happened.

US television networks have famous feet of clay when it comes to upsetting politicians in power. CBS shuffled a less than flattering docudrama about former President Ronald Reagan amidst howls of horror from the right wing, firmly in charge of the media regulator Federal Communications Commission. No CEO will risk a threat to a valuable asset like a television license.

Americans certainly have reason for their 9/11 obsession. Outside those borders there’s an obsession with understanding that obsession – more than a little in Europe. Most everybody else has his or her own horrors to deal with.

But because the events of 9/11 – fore and aft – are so politically charged in America – where every body wants to blame somebody and no perpetrators have been strung up at sunrise – portrayal of those events can only be seen as either defending or refuting the frighteningly different popular narratives. “Either you’re with us, or against us,” says the US Vice-President.

Another television docudrama of the 1970s comes to mind: the BBC production Death of a Princess. It was a fictionalized account of events leading up to and including the quite real public execution of a Saudi royal family member for adultery. The Saudi government was incensed and brought pressure on broadcasters to keep it off the airwaves. When it finally aired, viewers were entranced as so little was known about the secretive Middle Eastern kingdom.

The result was a small opening in the shroud covering Saudi and Middle Eastern culture and, equally, questions asked. Clearly, this was a triumph of television.

Dramatic license can always be defended. There is a need, particularly with television, to simplify in order to clarify. And, too, the freedom of speech issue looms large. Where are we in democracies if we censor without explanation unpopular views?

Path to 9/11 shows not simply an unpopular view. It is wrong. Broadcasting the program in the midst of a contentious US political campaign is irresponsible.

It shows, in fact, a popular view, strongly representing the narrative of faults by the previous US administration of President Clinton. The competing narrative places blame – and this is both the problem and the solution – with the current administration of President Bush. One view is wrong and unsupported by facts.

At a time when Americans – as well interested non-American – search for a compelling, rational narrative to understand or at least come to terms with 9/11 and all its attendant issues, this is not the time for a politicized docudrama – which many will view as reality – to, indeed, yell “fire” in a crowded theater. The European version of the trailer for Path to 9/11 explicitly tells viewers that the show is based on facts. Australians and New Zealanders saw it first, without the disclaimer of fictionalized drama inserted, finally, for American audiences.

If ABC, in its stead, produced and aired five hours of media literacy instruction two things would happen. First, political energies would seize the moment to further criticize the soft-headedness of “liberal” (left-wing) media. Those damned lefties are always trying to educate somebody. Second, nobody will watch. Viewers will choose football or a re-run of Friends.

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