Excerpt from the June 25 Early Show, between Moore and CBS’s Hannah Storm
This is what happens when you invite Michael Moore to your party and expect him to play by your rules. Instead of playing nice and being respectfully submissive, Moore goes on the offensive, something that American mainstream media is spectacularly ill-equipped to handle. For an industry used to collectively coddling the President in exchange for access, this exchange should serve as an indicator of what they SHOULD be doing- asking the tough questions and demanding answers. Isn't that what journalism is supposed to be about?
Storm: "So this is satire and not documentary? We shouldn’t see this as..."
Moore: "It’s a satirical documentary."
Storm: "Some have said propaganda, do you buy that? Op-ed?"
Moore: "No, I consider the CBS Evening News propaganda. What I do is..."
Storm: "We’ll move beyond on that."
Moore: "Why? Let’s not move beyond that. Seriously."
Storm: "No, let’s talk about your movie."
Moore: "But why don’t we talk about the Evening News on this network and the other networks that didn’t do the job they should have done at the beginning of this war?"
Storm: "You know what?"
Moore: "Demanded the evidence, ask the hard questions-"
Storm: "Okay."
Moore: "-we may not of even gone into this war had these networks done their job. I mean, it was a great disservice to the American people because we depend on people who work here and the other networks to go after those in power and say 'Hey, wait a minute. You want to send our kids off to war, we want to know where those weapons of mass destruction are. Let’s see the proof. Let’s see the proof that Saddam Hussein had something to do with 9/11.’"
Storm: "But-"
Moore: "There was no proof and everybody just got embedded and everybody rolled over and everybody knows that now."
Storm: "Michael, the one thing that journalists try to do is to present both sides of the story. And it could be argued that you did not do that in this movie."
Moore: "I certainly didn’t. I presented my side..."
Storm: "You presented your side of the story."
Moore: "Because my side, that’s the side of millions of Americans, rarely gets told. This is just a humble plea on my behalf and not to you personally, Hannah. But I’m just saying to journalists in general that instead of working so hard to tell both sides of the story, why don’t you just tell that one side, which is the administration, why don’t you ask them the hard questions-"
Storm: "Which I think is something that we all try to do."
Moore: "Well, I think it was a lot of cheerleading going on at the beginning of this war-"
Storm: "Alright."
Moore: "A lot of cheerleading and it didn’t do the public any good to have journalists standing in front of the camera going 'whoop-dee-do, let’s all go to war’. And, and it’s not their kids going to war. It’s not the children of the news executives going to war-"
Storm: "Michael, why don’t you do you next movie about networks news, okay? Because this movie..."
Moore: "I know, I think I should do that movie."
Storm: "...because this movie is an attack on the president and his policies."
Moore: "Well, and it also points out how the networks failed us at the beginning of this war and didn’t do their job."
Perhaps if the mainstream media would worrying less about playing by the rules and more about asking the questions they should be asking, the media wouldn't be such a generic, plain-vanilla $%&^#!@ wasteland.
For those of you who detest Michael Moore, you might try this: refute his arguments on their merits. Virtually every Conservative argument I've heard against Moore has been an emotional tirade focusing on personal attacks based on his appearance. If that's the best y'all can do, y'all are in worse shape than I'd suspected.
