In the matter of CBS and "The Reagans," it's difficult to decide which is more appalling -- the network's decision to cancel next week's scheduled showing of the miniseries or the predictable but altogether avoidable controversy that preceded, prompted and followed the cancellation.
From the moment the New York Times published a story on the script of "The Reagans" last month, conservatives began howling that it was a typical (and typically reprehensible) example of liberal media bias.
Mike Paranzino, who started BoycottCBS.com, acknowledged he hadn't actually seen "The Reagans," but he told Bill O'Reilly on Fox, "The people behind it have a 20-year track record of left-wing agitation and hostility to Ronald Reagan.... This is a hatchet job from day one." L. Brent Bozell III, president of the Media Research Center, a conservative watchdog group , blasted the movie as "a partisan attack against one of America's most beloved presidents."
To conservatives, Reagan is more than just a former president. He's the man who single-handedly defeated communism, toppled the Berlin Wall and led America out of a half-century of New Deal/New Frontier/Great Society socialist wilderness. Anything short of hagiography would not suit -- especially not at a time when The Greatest President Since the Founding Fathers was foundering on the shoals of Alzheimer's. And to have him portrayed by James Brolin, husband of Barbra Streisand -- the conservatives' favorite bete noire, the Clinton-loving antichrist -- was proof positive that liberal Hollywood was out to smear the Gipper and his adoring "Nancy Pooh Pants."
Then, as soon as CBS announced Tuesday that it was canceling the network showing of the miniseries and dumping it on its cable affiliate, Showtime, liberals began to howl that this just proved that it was conservatives, not liberals, who dominate and dictate the media agenda.
Although polls have consistently shown that most working journalists are liberal, it is an article of faith among liberals that the people who actually run most media companies in this country -- like those who run most nonmedia companies in this country -- are conservatives. That, they say, is why the media have been so reluctant to criticize President Bush and why -- in presidential election after presidential election -- more newspapers endorse Republican candidates than Democratic candidates.
Media criticism of CBS was instant and savage.
