Disney/ABC and Hugh Hewitt's audience of "millions"

One of the most incriminating aspects of Disney's conduct is that it made Path to 9/11 screeners available only to the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Hugh Hewitt and even obscure right-wing bloggers, while expressly refusing to provide a copy to liberal bloggers, including those with large audiences, or even to Bill Clinton and the former high-ranking Clinton officials smeared by the film.

Hugh Hewitt, who has become as much of a blindly loyal apologist for Disney's film as he is for the Bush administration, had this to say in response to that complaint (emphasis added):

First, hundreds of people have screened :The Path to 9/11," including me and many other critics and/or hosts of large audience shows. (Complaints from tiny lefty bloggers that I received a screener and other s didn't ignore the fact that I requested it weeks ago and that I have an audience in the millions, not the tens.)

According to Hewitt, it was audience size which determined who received screeners, not ideology. Currently, the average number of visitors to Hewitt's blog is 41,000. Firedoglake has 50% more; blogs such as Crooks & Liars and Atrios have almost triple Hewitt's audience; and the readership of DailyKos is ten times larger than Hewitt's. If one were using audience size as the determining factor for which bloggers received screeners, Hewitt would still be waiting for his. But he was one of the first to receive a copy, while others with larger audience (measured in the tens of thousands, not the "tens") were expressly refused.

If Hewitt is referring to his talk radio show, that still doesn't seem to justify his flamboyant, self-promoting claim. Talkers Magazine, an industry trade publication, published a 2005 list of the radio talk show hosts around the country with an audience of 1 million or more. Hewitt is not even on the list. If Hewitt's show does not even have an audience of 1 million, what is his basis for claiming that he has an "audience in the millions?"

Independent of all of that, Think Progress has documented that bloggers with -- to use Hewitt's sneering description -- "tiny" audiences received screeners, but they were individuals who were certain to ooze with praise for the film. And ooze with praise is exactly what they did (emphasis added):

I have been fortunate enough to see an advance showing of The Path to 9/11 - due to air in 2 parts on ABC on 9/10 & 9/11 respectively.

For those who have been asking for a clear historical account of the build-up to the 9/11 disaster, free of political spin, politically correct whitewashing and partisan wrangling - I can say wholeheartedly that this is the film that you have been waiting for.

?The Path To 9/11? is astonishing.

It is an amazing achievement on many levels. It is flat-out one of the best made-for-televison (sic) movies seen in decades. The only thing that would keep this movie from theatrical distribution is its nearly 5-hour running time (split over two days in this instance). Forget CNN?s ?replay? broadcast from 9/11 - Trust me and mark your calendars to watch ABC these nights.

Many of the most prominent television critics who have seen the film have mocked it mercilessly on dramatic and artistic grounds alone, but Disney obviously knew that if it fed its biased, fictitious product into the mouths of the most biased political hacks -- those who have been trained to consume fiction as their political diet (Iraq is going really well, Saddam worked with Al Qeada, Bush is a popular president, only the fringe Left is anti-war, etc. etc.) -- they would generate the type of drooling, mindless praise evidenced in the above quote, or by the Rush Limbaugh monologues, or by every Hugh Hewitt post over the last week on this topic.

While promoting this film as an unbiased account leading up to 9/11 based on the non-partisan 9/11 Commission, Disney was ensuring that only the most reliably Bush-worshipping partisan hacks received screeners of the film. Disney knew full well that it was preparing to broadcast a one-sided account which only Bush worshippers would love. The outright falseness of Hewitt's defense of Disney's conduct here makes that glaringly clear.

Read The Full Article:
http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/09/disneyabc-and-hugh-hewitts-audience-of
.html

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