liz_marcs | What ever happened to Marilyn (A correction)

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What ever happened to Marilyn (A correction)

A few of you asked about Marilyn in my last post.

Ask and ye shall receive.

Marilyn died in 2002 of cancer.

I'm pleased to report that the reporter who wrote it knew Marilyn exactly the way I remembered her.

I was also reminded that I may have been wrong about the timing of when I interviewed her. So, I had cause to go digging around to find my scrapbook (which was buried in a box in the back of a storage closet where I had thrown it when I moved here two years ago).

Strangely enough, my recollection of the autumn air and the kids being out of school is absolutely correct, since it appears I interviewed her the day after Thanksgiving. It was unseasonably warm that year and it is possible that time and distance had muddled it in my mind. VJ Day was important to her, and she did talk quite a lot about VJ Day in the interview I had with her, although that part did not get into the articles I wrote.

The articles I wrote at that time are not online (sadly enough) and I have no ability to put them online.

I will correct the original post (truth is important), and link to this post so the correction can be explained.

Also, there were some typos and I wrote that three planes on 9-11 flew out of Logan when there were only two. The other flights were out of Newark and Dulles.

I want to thank everyone who emailed me privately with their corrections.

I apologize for any inconvenience.

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Thank you so much for your post.

It really made me think.

I originally responded to your very fine essay over at

minisinoo's LJ and have dickered over whether or not to bring it here. Ten to one it'll get lost in the flood of replies on the original post, and I'm having trouble sorting out exactly what it is you're advocating therein.

As Peter Huber once said, a fundamental requirement of morality is getting facts straight, and for the record, I won't be watching the program. I don't often enjoy stuff that clearly has an axe to grind.But there's something about the outcry over Path to 9/11 that bothers me a lot, and I can't tell if what you've written is an echo of it or not. People can take issues with the facts presented in the "docu-drama" all they want; it is their right, and with such contested subject material, I would expect no less.

But people aren't saying, "No, I'm not going to watch it." Or, "I'm just going to change the channel if it comes on."

They're saying it shouldn't be aired at all. They're not going to watch it because they disagree with its premise, and they don't want anyone else to watch it either.

And if that isn't censorship, it's within a stone's throw of it.

The government fucked up, and it fucked up big time. You are absolutely correct in stating that there were literally decades of missed opportunities. But there is no doubt in my mind that any president, every president, who knew to the marrow of his bones that something like 9/11 was coming would have hesitated for even a second before deploying Special Forces to hunt down bin Laden like the dog he is. Although there is also no doubt in my mind about the amount of shit we would have taken on the world scene for doing just that.

Liberals and leftists of all stripes are abandoning our most deeply-held conviction - the right to freedom of speech - to insist that this program, apparently so critical of the Clinton administration, should never be seen. They're committing the exact same sin that right-wing writers committed before Fahrenheit 911 came out, which I feel obliged to note premiered during an election year. The film was rather baldly an attempt, as Moore acknowledged, to help defeat Bush in November, and people of Moore's political persuasion heaped praise on the film. A number of leftist writers and reviewers said, "Obviously the truth's stretched a little, but...." Where are these people now? Are they, too, hurling threats at ABC because it dares to air a program that attacks "their" politicians?

This is sickening. This isn't liberalism at all. And it's not conservatism either. It's just the very human feeling of outrage against somebody who said something you didn't like. It doesn't matter how badly the drama does;the filmmaker had the right to make the film, ABC has the right to air it, and everything else is a matter for the courts to decide if some public figure has a case sufficiently strong to charge ABC with slander (although, as some commenters have wryly observed, the media will go out of business if public figures of any political stripe start suing them for untrue statements).

The ACLU once defended a neo-Nazi group with a Jewish lawyer (http://www.kansaspress.ku.edu/strwhe.html), and even though the organization lost tens of thousands of its members as a result, it stuck to its guns and its mantra: no matter how much you fucking hate what someone else is saying, they have the right to say it. People on the right had to be informed of this while Moore's movie was in theaters, and from all appearances, the left is badly in need of the same lesson. Your essay was quite beautifully written but seems to imply what a number of bloggers have otherwise stated outright; we have a right not to be subjected to this sort of thing, and I always get a little skeptical when this takes the form of shut down the broadcaster rather than change the channel.

- Madox, convinced that people get more upset about the stuff that's true than the stuff that isn't. A lot of people on the right didn't know about Bush's ties to the Saudis - and I suspect a lot of people on the left are unaware of Sandy Berger and the "disappearing" records from the Clinton years.

But ABC isn't even claiming that they're exposing truths. They've *admitted* that the scenes in question are fiction. Their excuse is that it's not a documentary.

But they're calling it a "docudrama," airing it without commercials, and originally had Scholastic distributing materials for schools to use. (Scholastic has withdrawn.)

Their actions are telling people "This is the truth. This is the real thing."

If an outcry hadn't been raised, millions of people would have watched that and assumed it represented what happened.

Sure, the people represented could sue. They might even win. It wouldn't erase the impression the movie left on people. Why do you think lawyers try to select juries who aren't familiar with media coverage of a major case. Or in some cases, they try to select juries who *are* familiar with the media coverage, if the coverage is in their favor.

What ABC is doing is not illegal. And it shouldn't be, because that *would* be censorship. But it's irresponsible and morally wrong.

I think you've misunderstood the point of my reply. My quibble isn't with the fact that people have objected to the content of the program, but rather with the fact that many of them have objected to the possibility of the program airing at all.

My point in saying this is that critics of a slanted piece shouldn't attempt to fix the problem they see before them by descending into a far greater ill - the negation of free speech - or by "correcting" the mistakes they see by denying the validity of a true claim or minimizing its importance. I would argue that someone criticizing Fahrenheit 9/11 by way of saying that Bush's ties to the Saudis have no effect on our foreign policy is essentially in the same boat with someone criticizing The Path To 9/11 by saying that members of Clinton's administration couldn't possibly have had an agenda in hiding or destroying records. Both overall works are flawed - and the attempts to refute them on either side equally so. In this respect, my issue with

liz_marcs post is entirely pragmatic. What the right suffered from with Moore's movie and what the left suffers from with ABC's program is a lack of responsible debate.

- Madox

I think you've missed the entire point of the issue. This isn't a "slanted piece." It's *fictionalized.* ABC isn't even claiming the scenes they inserted happened.

Suppose ABC had put in a scene that showed Bush in a conference with the CIA on Sept. 10, where the CIA said flat-out, "We're going to be attacked tomorrow," and Bush said, "Good, it'll be great for my approval rating." Would you find that objectionable?

Bait noted.

It is not necessary to return continually to an issue that has nothing to do with my disagreement with

liz_marcs's post. The ABC piece is fictionalized. Not everything in it is true. In fact, most of it might not be. It's incredibly irresponsible and should never be taken as the unvarnished truth of everything that happened. Fabrications and distortions aplenty.

I don't disagree with you. But the larger problem lies elsewhere.

- Madox

I'm not attempting to bait you. I'm trying to offer a right-wing equivalent of some of the scenes that are under fire so you can understand why people are so upset.

I don't understand what point you're trying to make. People can't object to material that they find offensive because it might infringe on free speech?

"Free speech" only covers the truth. Defamation, libel, slander - none of those apply if what's being reported is true.

Truth can be highly subjective in a lot of cases. This is not one of them.

I'm fairly certain that I understand why people are so upset, and spelling it out for me in the vaguely toddleresque "And how would YOU feel?" form is unnecessary (and yes, this is "bait"). I've had lots of practice watching subgroups get upset whenever their political beliefs are challenged, however indirectly or unintentionally, and this is simply the latest example of same. Forgive my saying this, but I don't distinguish between fundamentalist Christians agitating to have Harry Potter removed from public libraries, Scientologists suing newspapers at the drop of a hat, environmental activists campaigning against funding for scientists who want a more holistic view of global warming, conservatives who made ugly fools of themselves blocking lines for Fahrenheit 9/11, and liberals frothing about ABC's program. Why? Despite their differing ideologies, they're all acting on the same impulse.

Disseminate better information about the work in question without descending into exaggeration yourself, go out and create your own work explaining what happened, object all you want, boycott anything and everything - but efforts to counter the program or anything else will necessarily fail if it principally takes the form of outrage that the program is airing at all. It is simultaneously the most visceral and least smart way to deal with the situation at hand, and if people give into it, they've essentially argued themselves out of a constructive position in the debate. Moreover, from a purely pragmatic perspective, this was something of a forehead-slapper. ABC got a fire hose of free publicity from this on a program that I'm sure would otherwise have gotten lost in the flood of 9/11 programming.

Re: libel, slander, and truth, I'll have a comment tomorrow for

kimberly_t that addresses this point. Suffice it to say that freedom of speech covers considerably more than just the truth, and the entire entertainment industry would have disappeared if it hadn't.

- Madox, who would note that the "truth" still seems to be pretty subjective given the number of continuing arguments in official and unofficial quarters about events in American counterterrorism since 1993, what happened, when it happened, and - most importantly - what effect it ultimately had on the big picture. Short of fifty years' perspective, it's a series of fights I don't see being resolved soon.

I couldn't be certain that you would understand why people are upset, since you seemed to have missed the entire point of Liz's post.

And when I say that truth is not subjective, I mean, as I said above, that nobody, not even ABC is trying to argue that the scenes in question are actually truth. That should have been clear from my earlier discussion. Or should I rephrase it in words that a toddler would understand?

*ahem* If I may...?

The problem with a fictionalized "docudrama" is that the producers of same be sure to mumble somewhere that the audience might possibly hear, "Some of this, we just made up."

But then they do not tell the audience which parts of the program they're watching are true, and which parts are not.

They encourage the audience to accept their fictional scenes as truth.

They are doing more than telling a story; they are lying, slandering, and counting on freedom of speech to let them get away with it.

And that is not only wrong but actionably wrong, worthy of legal action, in my humble opinion.

Freedom of speech in this country does not cover child pornography, for which I am grateful. Those who make it or distribute it are jailed, because freedom of speech should not be used to justify a horrible crime.

Slander is not nearly as abominable as child pornography. But the right to freedom of speech should not be used to protect such blatant slander, either.

Aside from the above-made points about what "free speech" does not cover, there's another issue here as well.

About two years ago CBS had had a "docudrama" produced based on Ronald Reagan's years in the White House. The same people praising The Path to 9/11 blasted that film because it fictionalized portions of Reagan's life in the White House. Viacom, which owns CBS, bowed to the pressure and moved the film over to Showtime.

On top of this, The Path to 9/11 claims to be "based on the 9/11 Commission Report", which would lead people to believe that it's based in fact. But then they make up a scene from whole-cloth about Clinton and Berger "refusing" the opportunity to take out bin-Laden. What's more, the scene portrays bin-Laden as being pinned down by the CIA and ripe for the picking. It all but accuses Berger and Clinton of criminal negligence by crafting a scene that never occured!

What was stated in the original post was that the media has a responsibility to the people who come to it to get the story right. This includes when you're broadcasting a film about a news event such as 9/11. She has every right to question ABC for being irresponsible in their duty to be public, which is part and parcel of their license to use the public airwaves, for broadcasting something that is of dubious accuracy in its portrayal of a news event that actually occured. You have every right to rebut that opinion. But as a licensed broadcaster, ABC does not have every right to broadcast whatever they please; they are held to standards that we aren't held to in our speech. There are words they cannot broadcast, there are pictures that they cannot show, and they are not allowed to knowingly broadcast false accusations as truth rather than opinion.

This is why the uproar. And the courts have upheld this higher standard for the media, so if you have an issue with this higher standard, take it up with the courts.

The 9/11 Omission report don't you mean ? The one that didn't talk about the American and United Airlines put options, that didn't mention the illegal and psychologically cruel and greedy demolition of Building Seven, Norad standing down for the first time ever and routine emergency procedure being completely dispensed with. By focussing on theSudan offer (http://propagandamatrix.com/clinton_let_bin_laden_slip_and_metastasize.html), and realising the symbolism, I'm curious to know if ABC include something like the fore-knowledge of the WTC destruction by thousands or more individuals. The best radar technology in the western world at the Pentagon ? The poor ability of the pilot who allegedly hit the Pentagon ? Perhaps they could have called it The 9/11 Complicity Report. Don't underestimate people's intelligence though. I think that were its a lot of propaganda comes across but there are just those who can't say why or how.

Apologies if i've been too snide. I'm glad I've found an lj were people are talking about this. I should browse around more often.

I do however object to the continued use of "left" and "right". It seems to be like a lot of elitist b.s and its not my framework - just something that is to used to keep the political sideshow going, false little bickering amongst best buddies and a way to keep those of us not in the game under the illusion of change. The only truthful paradigm is right and wrong. And we know this.

The comments hera are mostly of the form "I won't watch that" rather than "It shouldn't be on". I took the attitude that if I ever want to know what the fuss is about, I'd better be in a position to watch it. So I turned on the vcr -- somewhat after it started, I admit. The part I watched seems to be a rather confused spy intrigue, where I regularly don't know what's going on enough to explain to my 13-year-old who's who even. There's very little attempt to place any of the events in historical context. From what I've seen, the show seems too incompetently put together to clearly exhibits an unconscionable bias. The one thing that I did seem to detect is a bias in favour of action instead of determining what action to take. That's so endemic in the American media culture that it's hardly specific to this program, though. Perhaps I should watch the rest, but I'm exhausted, and will go to bed instead. I found the whole thing boring. If there's a good reason for not broadcasting the show, it's that it's incompetently put together.

I have to admit that I am always pleased to find that such polemics (of which there appear to be distressingly many in American discourse nowadays) usually fail on artistic merits anyhow. When the "message" means more than the actual story, quality has a tendency to get shafted.

The one thing that I did seem to detect is a bias in favour of action instead of determining what action to take.

Interestingly, that is Colin Powell's perspective on the Clinton administration (if you presume that "determining what action to take" was an end in itself). He was then chair of the Joint Chiefs and wrote on it in his autobiography; the "dorm room bull session" approach in policy meetings was not his cup of tea, and he, like most of the military, thought that Clinton's initial picks for defense-related Cabinet posts were less than stellar. Clinton eventually came to the same conclusion after realizing that academics who studied warfare were not quite the same as people who were actually in the military.

- Madox

No, most of us are not saying they should not run it at all, we're just saying that when they are running a program produced by right-wing Dominionist zealots, without commercial interruption, and being presented as TRUTH by a network that used to be known for its news department, there is something wrong. All they need to do is either put some disclaimers in where they are presenting complete fiction, or run a complimentary piece that points out all the places it deviates from the truth.

Remember, Fahrenheit 911 was a commercial movie made to be shown in theaters, not on the public airwaves. ABC gets its license from the FCC with the understanding that they will serve the public good. That is a very key difference between the two. Intentionally using the public airwaves to run sensationalist propaganda in the lead up to a crucial Congressional election is far from serving the public good. Yes, ABC should be held to a higher standard than Michael Moore and Fahrenheit 911. That comes part and parcel with using the public airwaves.

While I am at it, I would like to point out that Disney did everything they could to block Fahrenheit 911 from being shown specifically because they wanted to curry favor with the Bush Administration. As such, I see some balance in telling ABC to clean up its act.

I think there's a fairly significant difference between "ABC should voluntarily take this off the air" and "Someone should make ABC take this off the air". The former is asking a media company to respond to consumer requests for a change in content. The latter is asking for censorship.

I personally have the biggest issue with people saying "I won't watch it because I already know it's bad and wrong". That's making a virtue out of being clueless, and that's unconscionable.

I haven't seen it and I'm not an ABC customer--I don't own a television, actually--so I haven't joined in the outcry. Perhaps I'm overly optimistic, but I think the truth will out to the greatest extent possible. There are plenty of people on both sides who are so convinced of their righteousness that no amount of protest will sway them, and as for the rest, I figure the comments coming in from people who were actually in the government at the time and who are saying they and their colleagues are being misrepresented will do a lot more good than anything I could do.

The outcry serves the function of pointing out the untruths. Yes, I signed the petition hoping that ABC would pull the show -- after all, CBS crumbled under the pressure to pull the piece they did about the Reagans -- but I didn't expect it to happen.

I rather hope that the network does get sued, as well. I am tired of slander being used, by either side, and hope that a few good lawsuits will bring us back to a place where facts get checked, and politicians have to think a bit harder before they sling the mud.

Mistakes happen but I don't see any of them as being that big. You had no agenda, you were just trying to alert people to history.

I would really love to read the articles, so I'll make a suggestion that you can totally ignore. :) If you could photocopy your articles from your scrapbook and send them to me, I'd be more than happy to scan them and send you a link for them to be seen online.

Thank you for a wonderful post either way.

Quite possibly she needs copyright permission from the newspaper that published them. Presumably it was work-for-hire. But I suspect the newpaper could grant it if she asked nicely, included a reference to the place of original publication, or even placed it on the newspaper's own web site. It's generally good for a newspaper to be known world-wide as having published something good.

I was a staff reporter at the time I wrote the articles, so clearly the newspaper holds the rights to the content. If I was a freelancer, the rights would be mine to do as I wanted.

I honestly wouldn't have a problem calling the newspaper and requesting the right to put it on a Website somewhere. Chances are they won't much care since the articles are 15 years old at this point.

The real problem is my real name is bylined on those articles. Lizbeth Marcs and Liz Marcs are nom de Internet names. I stupidly didn't realize (or fluffed off the idea) that someone might be able link my real name via Marilyn. People might be able to do it based on things I've written in this LJ, but I don't want to make it easy on anyone.

Hence me scrubbing a few things in the post above us and my personal LJ info. I confess that I'm a little taken aback by how far the whole thing has spread.

That said, if I can get permission from the newspaper to put them up, I do have a Google Website where I can host the files. I'll also ask my brother if there's a way he can scan the articles in for me electronically so I can put them live. It goes without saying that I'll be blocking my real name.

I'm glad whoever wrote Marilyn's obituary got it right. There will always be mistakes when writing strictly off of memory. Sounds like you did extremely well, better than I would certainly, even relying solely on your memory.

It's slightly embarassing. I'm not sure if it proves my point or misses my point. I'll argue for "prove" since it shows you need multiple witnesses to get it right.

And since I was making a point about truth, I figured I better correct the record and be honest about it.

Either way, I'm just a little shocked/shaken just how far that post has spread. I just went through and scrubbed all LJ info that could lead back to me down to bare minimum and edited the post above us as well.

I'm just slightly at a loss at the moment. I know I have to respond to you and a few hundred other people in the last post, but I've reached the point of being just a little bit afraid to look. Some of the comments are breaking my heart to the point of tears.

Consider me responded to. :) You touched people. No matter what people's reactions, you touched them. You're still a good reporter.

Make that a damn fine reporter. Building respect in the community so that people who won't ordinarily talk will talk to you takes time, dedication, and no small amount of courage and good judgement. People screw up. Coming forward and admitting a mistake, no matter how small, and fixing it, publicly..... yeah.

It's not how good you are when you're on your game. It's how good you are when you're not at your best that separates the creme de la creme from the wannabes.

A good reporter also makes people think.

Today this has been done, in spades.

liz_marcs, if you ever end up in the Pacific NorthWet, the drinks are on me.

The articles I wrote at that time are not online (sadly enough) and I have no ability to put them online.

Aww. They sounded great.

Thank you again for writing that post. It was beautiful, and important.

wow.

Thank you so much.

(writing from downtown NYC)

In a way this makes me sad you're no longer a reporter, since the world needs more reporters like you.

I was thinking the same thing.

My mom quit being a reporter because she wasn't willing to do the damage to people that was sometimes necessary to "get the story." She wasn't comfortable with the amount of power she had to do harm, even accidentally. I wish she could have found a way to reconcile these things, because then we'd not have lost her reporting.

I was lucky to learn from "old school" reporters who "retired" after the JOA had eliminated their jobs. The young pups kept reporting, and these gems taught the next generation of journalists. Unfortunately, by that time, journalism had morphed in to "mass media," and what we see today.

This all makes me very sad. I'm glad that you posted this, and that you blanket-granted permission to spread it. Otherwise, I never would have found another soul who understands *journalism.*

The root word is "journal."

Thank you! This article has elucidated a great many of the angry feelings I've been experiencing about the news coverage in the last few years, and brought a fair and decent perspective to a terrible event.

Thanks for posting and documenting your corrections. All too many people feel it's okay to post something to world, to represent it as important and worthwhile, then quietly revise out errors when noticed. It's dishonest to your readers. The I'm always right because I delete anything that was wrong (http://www.xoverboard.com/cartoons/2004_09_13.html) attitude infuriates me. It's one thing if the content in question is the disposable pictures of cats and facebook tales of getting drunk, but it's inappropriate when you're engaging in reporting, commentary, or art. Thanks for doing the right thing. Of course, given that's the entire point of your story, I shouldn't be surprised.

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What ever happened to Marilyn (A correction)

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Thanks for the correction