In September 2004, Dan Rather of CBS 60 Minutes II reported on a story based on four memos reportedly taken from the files of George W. Bush's former Air National Guard commanding officer. They were memos regarding Bush being absent without leave and his poor performance. It was a clear effort to discredit Bush and influence the upcoming election. The problem was the memos were obvious forgeries. It was easily shown that they were created using a word processor because the font they were typed in is a "computer" font that didn't even exist at the time the memos were claimed to have been written. Had Rather or the producer of the piece, Mary Mapes, bothered to do their journalistic due diligence, they would have easily discovered this and never run the story. But either because of their political motivation or zeal to get a juicy story, they didn't fact check their information and it cost both of them their jobs and reputations - as it should have. A former network news executive called this scandal the worst in American journalistic history.
Now apparently Hollywood feels as though enough time has passed in order for them to re-write history and tell the story they way they wish it had happened rather than the way it actually did. To be fair, Hollywood and the media having a certain bias is nothing new and it hasn't always been left-leaning. However, manufacturing evidence, rigging tests (as NBC did with GM) and forging documents is a dangerous new development that imperils a free society.
Hopefully moviegoers will be savvy enough to see through this shameless piece of propaganda and not financially reward those who were responsible for making it. Hollywood needs to be taught a painful lesson - lies don't sell.
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