Wes Vernon
Monday, Oct. 27, 2003

What's more, they note, the top executive at the network has effectively vouched for its accuracy, thus depriving CBS of the escape hatch that "Oh, well, it's just fiction."

Honest Reagan-watchers say the film is, in fact, fiction, but CBS now falsely claims the piece is faithful to the historical record.

Longtime Reagan confidant Martin Anderson, who served as domestic policy adviser during the Reagan White House years, proclaims the film "a lie."

"This is basically a hit piece," he told NewsMax.com.

The actor who plays Reagan, James Brolin, is the husband of Barbra Streisand.

"She ought to be chairman of the Democratic National Committee," adds scholar of the Reagan legacy Lee Edwards in a separate NewsMax interview.

"Then on top of that," adds Edwards, chairman of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, Judy Davis, who plays Nancy Reagan, "is to the left of Jane Fonda."

Anderson ran the policy sector of Ronald Reagan's 1976 and 1980 presidential campaigns and was a top adviser in the 40th president's early White House years.

He points out that a scriptwriter of the TV smear admits to having made up the words she put in Reagan's mouth about AIDS: "They that live in sin shall die in sin."

Unauthorized Video

Anderson, who shared with NewsMax an unauthorized "three to four minute" video trailer of the movie, is very specific in not letting CBS escape full responsibility for the lies in the film.

The top brass at the network has flatly endorsed this lie, he charges.

If CBS wanted to do something on the order of "Saturday Night Live" or a political cartoon, that's one thing. "They have every right to do that."

Anderson also notes that CBS Chairman Les Moonves, a close friend of Bill Clinton, has said, "This film is important to me. They document everything and give a very fair point of view."

Anderson, whose book "Revolution" is a widely recognized authoritative source on the Reagan era, told NewsMax: "You know, they can lie all they want. But they cannot tell us it's the truth. And coming from a major network, I'm very surprised that they think they can get away with this, and tell the American people that something is true when they know it's not true."

Anderson, who is now a Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, added, "They cannot pretend they are scholars and that they are telling [the public] the truth when the film is a lie."

His unauthorized copy of an advance video promotional film – shared with NewsMax over the weekend – is "a vicious little film," Anderson told us.

[See NewsMax report on the video trailer: Click Here.]

Edwards, who is coming out soon with an updated version of his own biography of Reagan, believes the scriptwriters, producers and network executives are driven by greed and an element of cowardice.

"I think it says, for them profits are everything," he told NewsMax. "I mean here is President Reagan – who, as we know, is grievously ill with Alzheimer's – dying, and they schedule this 'biography' in ratings sweeps during a time when he cannot respond to it."

Calling this "the most egregious example of the pursuit of dollars," Edwards added that the network chiefs "ought to be ashamed of themselves."

'Totally at Odds'

Edwards and Anderson are among a growing parade of people who actually know Reagan and who say the depiction of Reagan in the film is, to quote Edwards, "just totally at odds with what I know about him and what I've learned about him."

But it is not just Reagan supporters who have denounced the CBS hatchet job.

Lou Cannon covered Reagan for 30 years from the traditional arms-length perspective of a journalist. His coverage included Reagan's days as California governor, the years in between as a campaigner and commentator, and as president. He has authored two Reagan biographies.

Cannon, too, has said the film does not reflect the real man.

For example, he cites the fact that, far from being "homophobic," Reagan – against the advice of some advisers – opposed a 1978 California initiative that would have discriminated against homosexual teachers.

Bottom line, says Edwards: The mainstream media are "unwilling to recognize that conservative ideas now dominate most of the political landscape, and they're getting at that by trying to bring down one of the icons of American conservatism."

Editor's note:
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Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
CBS's "The Reagans"
Media Bias