WASHINGTON, Nov. 5 (UPI) -- A picture, as the old saw has it, is worth a thousand words. A television miniseries, therefore, may be worth a high school education.
In an increasingly video-oriented culture, television and movies do more to establish the historical record than the lengthy tomes written by scholars like David McCullough and the Stephen Ambrose.
When it is not obvious, it is inherently dangerous. The written record is established through serious scholarship. Television programs and movies are the product of creative minds who frequently take liberties with the facts to increase dramatic tension.
The plot lines on NBC's hit series "Law and Order," for instance, frequently follow events "ripped from today's headlines," as one promo had it. Yet as grounded in reality as a particular episode might be, few people who watch it believe that former U.S. Sen. Fred Dalton Thompson is really the district attorney of Manhattan County or that actor Jerry Orbach is really a New York City Police detective. And what's more, Dick Wolf and the other creative minds behind the show do not set out to confuse the issue.
The advent of so-called reality television has, in many ways, have taken things off plumb. While some of the first of these programs, like Fox's "Cops," had a cinema verité-like documentary aura about them, the newer generation, like CBS' "Survivor" and ABC's "The Bachelor," set real people in contrived situations that, while unscripted, are hardly reality.
The problem has accelerated as the whole business has looped back on itself. Spike TV's "Joe Schmo Show" featured one unsuspecting real "contestant" thrown in among a cast of actors for a reality-like series that was actually scripted.
The cast of HBO's "K Street" includes several people playing themselves, including political consultants James Carville and Mary Matalin, in contrived situations. The series blurs the line between fact and fantasy by inserting these and other recognizable people into storylines having to deal with actual events related to power and influence in Washington.
It is bad enough that these programs dance squarely on the line between fact and fiction; when a program crosses it, attention must be paid.
On Tuesday, CBS announced it was pulling its miniseries about Ronald and Nancy Reagan from the November schedule. "The Reagans," a 4-hour docudrama -- with far more drama than "docu" -- was to air over two nights during the November sweeps period.
At the end of September the Internet's Matt Drudge began to publicize excerpts from the script suggesting that Ronald Reagan was either a doddering old fool or contemptible religious zealot and that Nancy Reagan was a calculating, manipulative shrew who made Joan Crawford look like Doris Day.
This set off the predictable cries of outrage from Reagan supporters who mounted a campaign against the miniseries, and perhaps justifiably so. The series is reportedly headed to another property in CBS's corporate family, Showtime, a premium cable channel on which programs appear without sponsors.
The problem with the program, as was indicated in a 12-minute trailer that made the rounds in Washington last week, was the fictional events featuring real people that were presented as part of the historical record of Reagan's presidency alongside things that really did happen.
CBS has an obligation to ensure the program does not play fast and loose with the facts. Far too many of the viewers would have been people for whom Reagan's eight years as president were a distant memory. For too many, the miniseries would pass for the definitive historical account of his presidency.
The dramatization of the Reagans' lives, based again on the content of the trailer, amounts to a distorted view of history, something most people should find unacceptable.
"I thought the biggest fight in establishing Reagan's legacy was going to be against indifference and people not remembering what Reagan did for America," Reagan Legacy Project Chairman Grover G. Norquist said.
"Here we had to actually fight against active lying about Reagan the man and his legacy. CBS tried to airbrush Reagan out of history like Stalin used to do out of photos. They failed," Norquist added.
There are others, however, who remain tethered to the distortions.
"What is going on instead is that the Republicans, who deify President Reagan, cannot stand that some of the more unpleasant truths about his character and presidency might be depicted in the movie," actress Barbra Streisand's Web site says in its Oct. 30 "Truth Alert."
Streisand, whose husband, actor James Brolin, plays Reagan in the miniseries, adds, "The film, we're told, presents a balanced portrait of a complicated man."
This, of course, is at odds with the conclusion reached by CBS's Les Moonves who said just the opposite in the statement announcing that its airing had been postponed.
Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder but history deserves a more reliable resting place. The Reagan miniseries was a blatant attempt to change the way he and his accomplishments are viewed by the American people. It's too bad, really, that all the creative talent in Hollywood could not come up with a fairer depiction of one of the more remarkable leaders of the 20th century.
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(The Peter Principles regularly explores issues in national and local politics, the American culture and the media. It is written by Peter Roff, UPI political analyst and 20-year veteran of the Washington scene.)
