By Ellis Henican, Newsday November 5, 2003
"Propaganda isn't what you tell people," CBS founder William S. Paley used to say. "It's what you don't tell them."
And now, on the evenings of Nov. 16 and 18, viewers at Paley's old network won't be told anything at all about Ronald Reagan, the president or the man.
The propagandists win again.
Yesterday, CBS bowed to political pressure from a zealous band of conservative enforcers, deep-sixing a four-hour miniseries about the former First Family.
The critics had claimed that "The Reagans" was inadequately flattering to the 40th president. Nowhere in the miniseries, it seems, was Reagan shown walking on water. The dialogue apparently included a curse word or two and a passage where Reagan seemed to lack sympathy for the victims of AIDS. So now the whole two-night program is being shunted off to a small pay-cable service owned by the network's parent, Viacom. CBS won't air a single word....
It was just Sunday night that CBS threw itself a lavish 75th-anniversary bash. Manhattan's Hammerstein Ballroom was packed with CBS luminaries. The air was thick with self-congratulation. How CBS set the highest standards. How CBS was Tiffany TV. How CBS always knew where to draw the lines.
Only Dick and Tommy Smothers reminded the crowd that night how conservative pressure once led the network to ditch their edgy variety show. It seemed like a funny, ancient story Sunday, an embarrassing exception to the general CBS rule.
By yesterday, it was 1969 all over again. A politically charged entertainment program was being sacrificed at CBS to satisfy conservative complainers....
Carl
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