Topic: NewsBusters
Remember Noel Sheppard's eager-to-smear NewsBusters post attacking critics of ABC's 9/11 miniseries? Well, never mind.
A Sept. 7 NewsBusters post by Sheppard walks back some of those claims. After hearing from Michael Scheuer (who, if you'll recall, is "no friend of the Bush administration!"), Sheppard seems to be conceding that a scene in the miniseries in which the CIA and Northern Alliance purportedly have Osama bin Laden surrounded only to have the operation called off by the Clinton White House is not as accurate as he previously suggested.
Then, after channeling Scheuer for some more Richard Clarke-bashing, Sheppard tries to change the subject:
Finally, on a personal note, it appears necessary to clear up some misunderstandings about the focus I have given to this issue the past couple of days. The truth is that I have not yet seen “The Path to 9/11,” and, frankly, have no opinion on it. How can one have an opinion on something one hasn’t seen?
In reality, that has been my point from the start.
[...]
Well, it appears this has happened with “The Path to 9/11,” and all those guilty of rendering an opinion without having seen it should be ashamed of themselves. This is especially true of those in the blogosphere that have fanned the fires of discontent concerning this program before it even aired.
[...]
In the end, “The Path to 9/11” is just a made-for-television docudrama…nothing more, nothing less.
We suspect that Sheppard didn't feel the same way about the Reagan miniseries that was similarly assailed before its airing (by conservatives).
Sheppard, however, makes no attempt to correct his other inaccurate claims, such as falsely stating the circumstances surrounding the Sandy Berger case or his straw-man claim about Think Progress' post on the miniseries.
