Michael Moore Faked Front Page

[Sgt Schultz]

Newspaper: Michael Moore Faked Front Page

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – Filmmaker Michael Moore's Bush-basing documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11" apparently has upset more than Republicans.

The [Bloomington] Pantagraph newspaper in central Illinois has sent a letter to Moore and his production company, Lions Gate Entertainment Corp., asking Moore to apologize for using what the newspaper says was a doctored front page in the film, the paper reported Friday. It also is seeking compensatory damages of $1.

A scene early in the movie that shows newspaper headlines related to the legally contested presidential election of 2000 included a shot of The Pantagraph's Dec. 19, 2001, front page, with the prominent headline: "Latest Florida recount shows Gore won election."
The paper says that headline never appeared on that day. It appeared in a Dec. 5, 2001, edition, but the headline was not used on the front page. Instead, it was found in much smaller type above a letter to the editor, which the paper says reflects "only the opinions of the letter writer."

"If [Moore] wants to 'edit' The Pantagraph, he should apply for a copy-editing job," the paper said.

Lions Gate Entertainment did not immediately return phone calls seeking comment Friday.

© 2004 Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

[FORD]

And the fact that it WASN'T a front page headline speaks volumes about right wing media bias in this country.

However, it's hardly the first time somebody's used a mockup of a newspaper :rolleyes:

[Big Train]

Way to rationalize.

How the fuck his doctoring of a paper has to do with right wing bias has got me. Please eloborate on how one individuals complete misuse of intellectual property, for his own direct profit, has anything to do with media bias.

[FORD]

Originally posted by Big Train
Way to rationalize.

How the fuck his doctoring of a paper has to do with right wing bias has got me. Please eloborate on how one individuals complete misuse of intellectual property, for his own direct profit, has anything to do with media bias.

The fact that GORE WON THE ELECTION should have been front page news. But a right wing paper chose to bury the story. That is the media bias.

[Big Train]

OK.

But what does that incident DIRECTLY have to do with this one? One (percieved) wrong deserves another? What about his personal accountability in this incident?

[FORD]

As I said earlier, it's hardly the first time somebody "faked" a newspaper headline.

If the BCE put a mock newpaper in their campaign commercial saying "Kerry voted against Star Wars", would you complain about that?

[Big Train]

Yea I would.

So what your saying is that because it's been done before, it's cool. Does that apply to other crimes too?

[wraytw]

FORD is good at running in circles, isn't he?

[FORD]

Originally posted by Big Train
Yea I would.

So what your saying is that because it's been done before, it's cool. Does that apply to other crimes too?

Crime? Who the fuck said anything about a CRIME??

Geezy fucking pete, this is a case of substituting large point type on a Newspaper headline.

Let me illustrate what Moore did....


Exhibit A:

George W. Bush Jr is a lying piece of shit!

Exhibit B:
GEORGE W. BUSH JR IS A LYING PIECE OF SHIT!

Now obviously one of those is going to grab your attention quicker than the other. But the content of the words is exactly the same, is it not?

It's not altering the content of the story, and it certainly is no "crime".

[lucky wilbury]

editing, redistrubiting and republication copyrighted material is illegal. editing the front page of a privatley owned newspaper falls under that catagory

[FORD]

Great..... now the CIA's gonna be all over my ass for posting new articles :(

BTW, is this another one of those new corporate bullshit "intellectual property" laws?

[HELLVIS]

Originally posted by FORD

It's not altering the content of the story, [/B]



WELL, HOLY SHIT BATMAN!
I'M GOING TO WRITE A LETTER TO THE EDITOR OF THE CINCINNATI POST. IN THE LETTER I'M GOING TO EXPLAIN THAT JOHN KERRY (PITCHER) AND LOVER (CATCHER) FORD, WHILE HAVING A THREESOME WITH BIN-LADEN, PLOTTED 9-11. I'LL TITLE IT "FORD/KERRY SUCK OSAMA, TOWERS FALL".
FUCK! THAT IS SUCH A MONUMENTAL STORY, THEY WILL HAVE TO GIVE IT FRONT PAGE HEADLINE STATUS!

AFTER ALL, ACCORDING TO FORD, PORTRAYING SOME LETTER WRITER'S OPINION AS A FACTUAL/CREDIBLE NEWS ITEM IS THE WAY A NEWS PAPER SHOULD BE RUN.

CAN I GET AN AMEN?

[FORD]

Go fuck your sister or your sheep, or your sister's sheep or your sheep's sister. Whichever it is they do in Kentucky.

[BigBadBrian]

Originally posted by FORD
And the fact that it WASN'T a front page headline speaks volumes about right wing media bias in this country.

However, it's hardly the first time somebody's used a mockup of a newspaper :rolleyes:


NO, but it speaks volumes of the liberal piggies going to the theatres to see the liar's atttempt at a "documentary." :rolleyes:

[HELLVIS]

Originally posted by FORD
Go fuck your sister or your sheep, or your sister's sheep or your sheep's sister. Whichever it is they do in Kentucky.

WELL, I'M TOUCHED (DON'T GET EXCITED, I'M NOT THAT TOUCHED).
YOU FOUND MY POST IMPORTANT ENOUGH TO READ MY BIO, AND GET TO KNOW ME (OR AT LEAST WHO I SAY I AM) JUST A LITTLE BIT BETTER.
SO WERE YOU BOTHERED BY WHAT I WROTE BECAUSE IT'S TRUE, OR BECAUSE THE FACT THAT I WROTE IT DOESN'T MAKE IT ANY MORE TRUE THAN SOME DUMB-ASS' LETTER TO THE EDITOR, THEREFORE PROVING YOUR POORLY CONCEIVED POINT WRONG.
NOW, WITH THAT SAID, PLEASE TRY TO REPLY INTELLIGENTLY TO MY POSTS IN THE FUTURE. STICK TO THE SUBJECT AND THE FACTS.

[FORD]

No, actually.....

I GET FUCKING MIGRAINES FROM READING POSTS IN ALL CAPS!!!!

Geezus, leave that for the fucking Hagar sheep trolls.

[ELVIS]

I agree...

That caps bullshit is hard to read...

[FORD]

Who the Hell is this wacko anyway??

HELLvis?? At first I thought it might have been your evil altar ego :confused:

[Ally_Kat]

Probably wanted Elvis as a sn but it was taken

[Ally_Kat]

Originally posted by HELLVIS
WELL, I'M TOUCHED (DON'T GET EXCITED, I'M NOT THAT TOUCHED).
YOU FOUND MY POST IMPORTANT ENOUGH TO READ MY BIO, AND GET TO KNOW ME (OR AT LEAST WHO I SAY I AM) JUST A LITTLE BIT BETTER.
SO WERE YOU BOTHERED BY WHAT I WROTE BECAUSE IT'S TRUE, OR BECAUSE THE FACT THAT I WROTE IT DOESN'T MAKE IT ANY MORE TRUE THAN SOME DUMB-ASS' LETTER TO THE EDITOR, THEREFORE PROVING YOUR POORLY CONCEIVED POINT WRONG.
NOW, WITH THAT SAID, PLEASE TRY TO REPLY INTELLIGENTLY TO MY POSTS IN THE FUTURE. STICK TO THE SUBJECT AND THE FACTS.

Um, just so you know, it says Kentucky under your name where all, even the disinterested, can see.

[lucky wilbury]

Originally posted by FORD
Great..... now the CIA's gonna be all over my ass for posting new articles :(

BTW, is this another one of those new corporate bullshit "intellectual property" laws?

we can post and share all the news stories we want on this board because we're not making any money off them. moore is making money while using the headlines from someone elses paper. thats his problem.

[Big Train]

Ford, here it is simply:

1. He altered a piece of intellectual property (yes that is an actual crime and no, it's not bullshit, deal with it) that was not his and he was not authorized to alter.

2. He presented the altered work as fact.

3. He directly profited from the work.

Anything else you need spelled out?

[BigBadBrian]

Originally posted by HELLVIS
WELL, I'M TOUCHED (DON'T GET EXCITED, I'M NOT THAT TOUCHED).
YOU FOUND MY POST IMPORTANT ENOUGH TO READ MY BIO, AND GET TO KNOW ME (OR AT LEAST WHO I SAY I AM) JUST A LITTLE BIT BETTER.
SO WERE YOU BOTHERED BY WHAT I WROTE BECAUSE IT'S TRUE, OR BECAUSE THE FACT THAT I WROTE IT DOESN'T MAKE IT ANY MORE TRUE THAN SOME DUMB-ASS' LETTER TO THE EDITOR, THEREFORE PROVING YOUR POORLY CONCEIVED POINT WRONG.
NOW, WITH THAT SAID, PLEASE TRY TO REPLY INTELLIGENTLY TO MY POSTS IN THE FUTURE. STICK TO THE SUBJECT AND THE FACTS.


Turn off the caps, dude. Thank you. :gulp:


BTW - Kentucky is OK in my book. :cool:

[Sgt Schultz]

Hellvis is correct to point out that the most obnoxious thing Moore The Idiot did was make it look like a readers letter to the editor, "Latest Florida recount shows Gore won election." was some legit news story that the paper had printed.

Wow, if Moore has to stretch THAT far to try to show a legit story that Gore won Florida it shows you what a ridiculous claim it is. Even the lib networks and newspapers did their own recounts and every one showed that Bush had won Florida.

A completely fabricated news headline in this Moore the Idiot "documentary" shows how serious he is in presenting "fact" and "truth."

Note also that he chose to do it from a small unheard of newspaper hoping that these hicks would not notice.

[Warham]

Gore never won the election.

He lost in every recount.

End of story.

[fanofdave]

how long has michael moore been on the
slimfast diet?

[JCOOK]

FORD; Does the end justify the means?

[HELLVIS]

Ally, thank you for pointing out that my info is at the left of my posts.
However it does include my personal info, which is exactly what I mean when I say bio.
I don't know about you, but I could give a rat's ass about what it says to the left of someone's post, unless I care about what they have to say.
But....some of us get so upset (wah!) that they use it to make personal attacks when they have no reasonable, factual, or logical rebuttal.

[HELLVIS]

Sorry about the caps everyone. While I feel I'm a good thinker, I know I'm a poor/lazy typist.

BTW...on top of your woman is okay in my book too.

[Sgt Schultz]

When Punchline Trumps Honesty
There's more McCarthy than Murrow in the work of Michael Moore.

http://opinionjournal.com/la/072604simon.jpg

BY SCOTT SIMON
Tuesday, July 27, 2004 12:01 a.m.

Michael Moore has won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, and may win an Oscar for the kind of work that got Stephen Glass, Jayson Blair, and Jack Kelly fired.

Trying to track the unproven innuendoes and conspiracies in a Michael Moore film or book is as futile as trying to count the flatulence jokes in one by Adam Sandler. Some journalists and critics have acted as if his wrenching of facts is no more serious than a movie continuity problem, like showing a 1963 Chevy in 1956 Santa Monica.

A documentary film doesn't have to be fair and balanced, to coin a phrase. But it ought to make an attempt to be accurate. It can certainly be pointed and opinionated. But it should not knowingly misrepresent the truth. Much of Michael Moore's films and books, however entertaining to his fans and enraging to his critics, seems to regard facts as mere nuisances to the story he wants to tell.
Back in 1991 that sharpest of film critics, the New Yorker's Pauline Kael, blunted some of the raves for Mr. Moore's "Roger and Me" by pointing out how the film misrepresented many facts about plant closings in Flint, Mich., and caricatured people it purported to feel for. "The film I saw was shallow and facetious," said Kael, "a piece of gonzo demagoguery that made me feel cheap for laughing."

His methods remain unrefined in "Fahrenheit 9/11." Mr. Moore ignores or misrepresents the truth, prefers innuendo to fact, edits with poetic license rather than accuracy, and strips existing news footage of its context to make events and real people say what he wants, even if they don't. As Kael observed back then, Mr. Moore's method is no more high-minded than "the work of a slick ad exec."

The main premise of Mr. Moore's recent work is that both Presidents Bush have been what amounts to Manchurian Candidates of the Saudi royal family. Mr. Moore suggests (he depends so much on innuendo that a simple, declarative verb like "says" is usually impossible) the Saudi government, having soured on their pawns for unstated reasons, launched the attacks of Sept. 11.

"What if these weren't wacko terrorists, but military pilots who signed onto a suicide mission?" Moore asks in the best-selling "Dude, Where's My Country?" "What if they were doing this at the behest of either the Saudi government or certain disgruntled members of the Saudi royal family?" Central to Mr. Moore's indictment of the current President Bush is his charge that the U.S. government secretly assisted the evacuation of bin Laden family members from the U.S. in the hours following the Sept. 11 attacks, when all other flights nationwide were grounded. He supports this with grainy images of indecipherable documents.

But on our show on Saturday, Richard Clarke, the government's former counter-terrorism adviser and no apologist for the Bush administration, told us that he had authorized those flights, but only after air travel had been restored and all the Saudis had been questioned. "I think Moore's making a mountain of a molehill," he said. Moreover, said Mr. Clarke, "He never interviewed me." Instead, Mr. Moore had simply lifted a clip from an ABC interview. Perhaps Mr. Moore just didn't want to get an answer that he didn't want to hear. (See how useful innuendoes can be?)

In what is perhaps the most wrenching scene in the film, an Iraqi woman is shown wailing amid the rubble caused by a bomb that killed members of her family. I do not doubt her account, or her sorrow. I have interviewed Iraqis about U.S. bombs that killed civilians. People who agree to wars should see the human damage bombs can do.

But reporters who were taken around to see the sites of civilian deaths during the bombing of Baghdad also observed that some of those errant bombs were fired by Iraqi anti-aircraft crews. Mr. Moore doesn't let the audience know when and where this bomb was dropped, or otherwise try to identify the culprit of the tragedy.

Mr. Moore tries hard to identify himself with U.S. troops and their concerns. But he spends an awful lot of effort depicting them as dupes and brutes. At one point in "Fahrenheit 9/11," someone off-camera prods a U.S. soldier into singing a favorite hip-hop song with profane lyrics. Mr. Moore then runs the soldier's voice over combat footage, to make it seem as if the soldier were insensitively singing along with the destruction.

In another scene, U.S. soldiers make savage jokes about the awkward effects of rigor mortis on one part of the corpse of an Iraqi soldier. I do not doubt the authenticity of those pictures. But I also have no particular reason to trust it. A few basic details, like where and when the video was shot, are considered traditional reporting techniques (especially after the front-page photos of British soldiers brutalizing Iraqi prisoners turned out to be frauds). A few other basic facts might have informed the audience. Was the Iraqi killed in battle? By a suicide bomb? Moore says the U.S. soldiers are good boys turned coarse in an immoral war. But I have also heard those kind of ugly and anxious jokes about corpses from overstressed emergency room physicians.





In the New York Times, Paul Krugman wrote that, "Viewers may come away from Moore's movie believing some things that probably aren't true," and that he "uses association and innuendo to create false impressions." Try to imagine those phrases on a marquee. But that is his rave review! He lauds "Fahrenheit 9/11" for its "appeal to working-class Americans." Do we really want to believe that only innuendo, untruths, and conspiracy theories can reach working-class Americans?
Governments of both parties have assuaged Saudi interests for more than 50 years. (I wonder if Mr. Moore grasps how much the jobs of auto workers in Flint depended on cheap oil.) Sound questions about the course, costs, and grounds for the war in Iraq have been raised by voices across the political spectrum.

But when 9/11 Commission Chairman Kean has to take a minute at a press conference, as he did last Thursday, to knock down a proven falsehood like the secret flights of the bin Laden family, you wonder if those who urge people to see Moore's film are informing or contaminating the debate. I see more McCarthy than Murrow in the work of Michael Moore. No matter how hot a blowtorch burns, it doesn't shed much light.

Mr. Simon hosts NPR's "Weekend Edition Saturday" and is the author of theforthcoming "Pretty Birds," a novel about the siege of Sarajevo, from Random House.

[Sarge's Little Helper]

When Punchline Trumps Honesty
There's more McCarthy than Murrow in the work of Michael Moore.

http://opinionjournal.com/la/072604simon.jpg

BY SCOTT SIMON
Tuesday, July 27, 2004 12:01 a.m.

Michael Moore has won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, and may win an Oscar for the kind of work that got Stephen Glass, Jayson Blair, and Jack Kelly fired.

Trying to track the unproven innuendoes and conspiracies in a Michael Moore film or book is as futile as trying to count the flatulence jokes in one by Adam Sandler. Some journalists and critics have acted as if his wrenching of facts is no more serious than a movie continuity problem, like showing a 1963 Chevy in 1956 Santa Monica.

A documentary film doesn't have to be fair and balanced, to coin a phrase. But it ought to make an attempt to be accurate. It can certainly be pointed and opinionated. But it should not knowingly misrepresent the truth. Much of Michael Moore's films and books, however entertaining to his fans and enraging to his critics, seems to regard facts as mere nuisances to the story he wants to tell.
Back in 1991 that sharpest of film critics, the New Yorker's Pauline Kael, blunted some of the raves for Mr. Moore's "Roger and Me" by pointing out how the film misrepresented many facts about plant closings in Flint, Mich., and caricatured people it purported to feel for. "The film I saw was shallow and facetious," said Kael, "a piece of gonzo demagoguery that made me feel cheap for laughing."

His methods remain unrefined in "Fahrenheit 9/11." Mr. Moore ignores or misrepresents the truth, prefers innuendo to fact, edits with poetic license rather than accuracy, and strips existing news footage of its context to make events and real people say what he wants, even if they don't. As Kael observed back then, Mr. Moore's method is no more high-minded than "the work of a slick ad exec."

The main premise of Mr. Moore's recent work is that both Presidents Bush have been what amounts to Manchurian Candidates of the Saudi royal family. Mr. Moore suggests (he depends so much on innuendo that a simple, declarative verb like "says" is usually impossible) the Saudi government, having soured on their pawns for unstated reasons, launched the attacks of Sept. 11.

"What if these weren't wacko terrorists, but military pilots who signed onto a suicide mission?" Moore asks in the best-selling "Dude, Where's My Country?" "What if they were doing this at the behest of either the Saudi government or certain disgruntled members of the Saudi royal family?" Central to Mr. Moore's indictment of the current President Bush is his charge that the U.S. government secretly assisted the evacuation of bin Laden family members from the U.S. in the hours following the Sept. 11 attacks, when all other flights nationwide were grounded. He supports this with grainy images of indecipherable documents.

But on our show on Saturday, Richard Clarke, the government's former counter-terrorism adviser and no apologist for the Bush administration, told us that he had authorized those flights, but only after air travel had been restored and all the Saudis had been questioned. "I think Moore's making a mountain of a molehill," he said. Moreover, said Mr. Clarke, "He never interviewed me." Instead, Mr. Moore had simply lifted a clip from an ABC interview. Perhaps Mr. Moore just didn't want to get an answer that he didn't want to hear. (See how useful innuendoes can be?)

In what is perhaps the most wrenching scene in the film, an Iraqi woman is shown wailing amid the rubble caused by a bomb that killed members of her family. I do not doubt her account, or her sorrow. I have interviewed Iraqis about U.S. bombs that killed civilians. People who agree to wars should see the human damage bombs can do.

But reporters who were taken around to see the sites of civilian deaths during the bombing of Baghdad also observed that some of those errant bombs were fired by Iraqi anti-aircraft crews. Mr. Moore doesn't let the audience know when and where this bomb was dropped, or otherwise try to identify the culprit of the tragedy.

Mr. Moore tries hard to identify himself with U.S. troops and their concerns. But he spends an awful lot of effort depicting them as dupes and brutes. At one point in "Fahrenheit 9/11," someone off-camera prods a U.S. soldier into singing a favorite hip-hop song with profane lyrics. Mr. Moore then runs the soldier's voice over combat footage, to make it seem as if the soldier were insensitively singing along with the destruction.

In another scene, U.S. soldiers make savage jokes about the awkward effects of rigor mortis on one part of the corpse of an Iraqi soldier. I do not doubt the authenticity of those pictures. But I also have no particular reason to trust it. A few basic details, like where and when the video was shot, are considered traditional reporting techniques (especially after the front-page photos of British soldiers brutalizing Iraqi prisoners turned out to be frauds). A few other basic facts might have informed the audience. Was the Iraqi killed in battle? By a suicide bomb? Moore says the U.S. soldiers are good boys turned coarse in an immoral war. But I have also heard those kind of ugly and anxious jokes about corpses from overstressed emergency room physicians.





In the New York Times, Paul Krugman wrote that, "Viewers may come away from Moore's movie believing some things that probably aren't true," and that he "uses association and innuendo to create false impressions." Try to imagine those phrases on a marquee. But that is his rave review! He lauds "Fahrenheit 9/11" for its "appeal to working-class Americans." Do we really want to believe that only innuendo, untruths, and conspiracy theories can reach working-class Americans?
Governments of both parties have assuaged Saudi interests for more than 50 years. (I wonder if Mr. Moore grasps how much the jobs of auto workers in Flint depended on cheap oil.) Sound questions about the course, costs, and grounds for the war in Iraq have been raised by voices across the political spectrum.

But when 9/11 Commission Chairman Kean has to take a minute at a press conference, as he did last Thursday, to knock down a proven falsehood like the secret flights of the bin Laden family, you wonder if those who urge people to see Moore's film are informing or contaminating the debate. I see more McCarthy than Murrow in the work of Michael Moore. No matter how hot a blowtorch burns, it doesn't shed much light.

Mr. Simon hosts NPR's "Weekend Edition Saturday" and is the author of theforthcoming "Pretty Birds," a novel about the siege of Sarajevo, from Random House.

Oops. I wasn't paying attention. Tell me again what is going on.