Alex Gibney, the director of the new documentary Taxi to the Dark Side, agreed to sell the broadcast rights to the Discovery Channel because the people there assured him they would give the film – about an innocent taxi driver who was tortured to death at a prison in Afghanistan – a prominent broadcast. Now, the Discovery Channel calls the film “too controversial”
and won’t be airing it at all.
Meanwhile, the New York Times published a bizarre retraction or qualification it had on a thoroughly documented story on an Afghani prisoner who was unjustly held and died at Guantanamo. The reason? One of the contributors to the piece wrote a book about “America’s illegal prison.”
And the old CBS stalwart “60 Minutes” has caved to pressure from the White House not to air its story on a wrongly incarcerated individual right here in the US and A, former Alabama governor Don Siegelman. The story is a can of political, Rove-infested worms if there ever was one. But don’t hold your breath about ever seeing it on national airwaves.
What’s going on here? There doesn’t even seem to be the charade of a free press anymore. I’m reminded of that line from Sally Kirkland as a woman who had advance knowledge of the JFK assassination in Oliver Stone’s movie…
“These are serious fucking guys.”
If you are at all unsettled by this, investigative journalist Larisa Alexandrovna has not totally given up hope and has some ideas about how to fight the Big Brotherization of the Land of the Free.
*I happen to love “24” as entertainment, but the juxtaposition of torture through the prism of Jack Bauer and the reality through the eyes of these dead men is pretty staggering — but you will only be seeing one on network television.