Pantagraph Update

Interesting piece from the Chicago Tribune over at Moorelies.  The money quote (emphasis mine):

One reader who clearly is having a good time with the controversy is Richard Soderlund, an Illinois State University history professor.

It was Soderlund who sparked the headline with his letter to the editor on the outcome of the 2000 election. He has not yet seen the movie.

”Historians would find it shocking,” Soderlund said of the alleged doctored headline. “It’s misrepresenting a document. It’s at odds with history. It was probably not a smart thing to do on Moore’s point. It’s grist for the mill.”

You can use the following to log in to the Chigago Tribune website, BTW:  username: msnerd password: mortimer

A Question of Accuracy

Here’s something to consider regarding the Pantagraph issue.  Take a look at this quote from Michael Moore’s lawyers.

Although offering no apology, the letter from Chatillon, who represents Westside Productions, which produced “Fahrenheit 9/11,” did admit the date of The Pantagraph page flashed in the movie “was unfortunately off by a couple weeks.” But the mistake “did not make a difference to the editorial point ... and was in no way detrimental to (The Pantagraph.)”

So, in other words, even though the date shown on the screen was a “mistake” it didn’t alter the overall meaning of the original article.  (The fact that the original article was a letter to the editor and not a headline story seems to be immaterial.) Now, justapose that with Mikey’s own words when someone misquotes him.

TAPPER: You declare in the film that Hussein’s regime had never killed an American…

MOORE: That isn’t what I said. Quote the movie directly.

TAPPER: What is the quote exactly?

MOORE: “Murdered.” The government of Iraq did not commit a premeditated murder on an American citizen. I’d like you to point out one.

It’s amazing how much Mikey insists on accuracy when he is being quoted, but has no problem completely manufacturing news articles that didn’t exist when he needs “evidence” to “prove” his assertions. 

Come on, Moore fans.  Let’s hear your justification for this one.

Altering the Truth

And the latest chapter in the Michael Moore fake headline scandal has appeared in The Pantagraph.  Once again, Michael Moore lies, distorts, and manipulates the facts, then hides behind his army of corporate lawyers, rather than simply admit his deceptions.

Moore lawyer responds to newspaper complaint
By Bill Flick
[email protected]
BLOOMINGTON—The Pantagraph has received its first response from filmmaker Michael Moore about his “makeover” of a Pantagraph page in the hit movie, “Fahrenheit 9/11.”

Moore apparently is not going to say he’s sorry or pay the newspaper’s light-hearted, if not symbolic, request for $1 in compensatory damages.

But his company’s lawyer was willing to spend 37 cents—to send a letter suggesting Moore did little wrong.

New York-based lawyer Devereux Chatillon of the law firm Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal sent the letter to J. Casey Costigan, the Bloomington attorney representing the newspaper.

Citing several precedents, Chatillon suggested Moore was within his legal right to use a Pantagraph headline in the movie and that no “copyright infringement” occurred.

Further, the letter claims Moore did nothing “misleading” when the headline ("Latest Florida recount shows Gore won election") that originally appeared above a Dec. 5, 2001, letter to the editor was altered in both the font and size of the type for the movie and made to look like a news story from a Dec. 19, 2001, edition of The Pantagraph.

“Baloney,” said Pantagraph President and Publisher Henry Bird, in response to the letter.

Said Costigan, “I disagree that Michael Moore’s use of the headline falls under ‘fair use,’ and I think the letter also takes what Mr. Moore did out of context.”

Bird said the newspaper would consider pursuing the matter further and asked Costigan to send Moore a follow-up letter, encouraging him to explain why a Pantagraph page was altered without permission.

Although offering no apology, the letter from Chatillon, who represents Westside Productions, which produced “Fahrenheit 9/11,” did admit the date of The Pantagraph page flashed in the movie “was unfortunately off by a couple weeks.” But the mistake “did not make a difference to the editorial point ... and was in no way detrimental to (The Pantagraph.)”

In the film, Moore criticizes President Bush’s handling of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the president and his associates’ ties to Saudi Arabian oil interests.

Repeated attempts over the past three weeks to reach Moore by telephone and e-mail have been unsuccessful.

Just the Fax, Ma’am

For the past week or so we here at MOOREWATCH have been on top of a story on how Michael Moore completely faked a newspaper headline declaring that Al Gore won the 2000 election.  (See here, here, and here for the whole story.) Well, an interpid reader named Stuart Hayashi, who first brought the story to our attention, managed to get ahold of a librarian who had access to the microfiche archives of the Bloomington Pantagraph.  Despite being a self-professed Moore fan, she agreed to fax me a copy of the disputed page.

Now, just so we’re all clear about what we’re dealing with, here we see a screen capture of the alleged Pantagraph “headline” as shown by Moore in F9/11.

Well, my friends, as you will see the actual page looks absolutely nothing like what Moore presented onscreen.

The letter to the editor is highlighted above in yellow.  (Click on the image for a larger version.) Now, in the interests of full disclosure, the image above was faxed to me on three pages.  I took the three pages and assembled them in Photoshop.  Apart from this assembly, and the color-correction of the text, I have not altered or changed the image in any way.

Let’s recap.  On December 5, 2001, a letter to the editor entitled “Latest Florida recount shows Gore won election” was published in the Bloomington, IL Pantagraph.  Then, almost three years later, Michael Moore, in his attempt to show that Bush “stole” the election, takes this letter to the editor and digitally manipulates it to appear as if it was a Pantagraph headline written on December 10, 2001. 

Look at the images, folks.  There is absolutely no way this could have been an accident, or an editing glitch, or a typographical error.  This is a flat-out lie.  So, this truly begs the question, what was Moore’s motivation here?  Why the need to lie?  Did he think that nobody would catch on?  Or was he so desperate to “prove” that Bush “stole” the election that he was willing to fabricate evidence to prove it?  And if Moore is willing to fabricate evidence in this instance, how can you trust anything else he says?

Get the facts.  If you’re a Michael Moore fan reading this, how much longer are you going to believe his lies?

Update: Just to head off the Moore-ons at the pass, there was only one edition of the newspaper that day.  What you see here is what was printed.  Besides, even if there was more than one edition, do you think that before the second printing the editors of the Pantagraph decided to take a letter to the editor and turn it into a headline for a paper that wasn’t going to be printed for five more days?

Less...

The Paper Never Lies

A couple of days ago we blogged on a story about a possible incident where Moore fabricated a newspaper headline in F9/11.  (See the article for a screen capture of the paper.) A reader named Stuart contacted the paper about this very issue.

Dear Mr. Flick,

Regarding the “The Bloomington Pantagraph” appearing in “Fahrenheit 9/11,” I have recently heard that the headline “Latest Florida Recount Shows Gore Won Election” was actually the title given to a Letter to the Editor; not the headline for a news article, and that the letter ran in the Wednesday, December 5, 2001 edition instead of the Wednesday, December 19, 2001 edition.

Is all of this true?

Sincerely,
Stuart

Mr. Flick then responded:

That’s all correct, Stuart.

Keep me posted with what you’re doing.

This is all getting fun.

So, the “headline” you see in the film is actually a letter to the editor.  Stuart then followed up:

So it IS true that the headline is really the title of a Letter to the Editor, and that it was from Wednesday, December 5, 2001.

Could it be that someone working on “FahrenHate 9/11” fudged the date because he or she knew that, if someone actually checked out the archives of the paper, it would be discovered that the headline was from a Letter to the Editor and not a straight news article?

That wouldn’t make sense, though, because whoever fudged the date would have to know that, if someone looked in the Wednesday, December 19, 2001 archives, the headline wouldn’t be found.  And the fudger would have to know that, if Michael Moore shot back that whoever second-guessed him was wrong because the headline did appear in the December 5 edition, that would still bring to light the discrepancy between the letter’s real date and the one from the film.

So not only am I completely in the dark as to why the date was changed, but I’m at square one over any conceivable explanation.  I can’t assert any theory over motives for the change, but it is a fact that the headline was from a Letter to the Editor and that the real publication date doesn’t match the one in the movie.

Beats the crap out of me, too.  Why, with all the headlines relating to the 2000 election, would Moore need to manufacture one from some relatively obscure newspaper?  The mind boggles.  Any of you Moore fans out there have any idea why your hero would find this necessary?

Headline News

Not satisfied with inventing political advertisements that didn’t exist in Bowling for Columbine, Mikey is now inventing newspaper headlines, reports the Bloomington Pantagraph.

So you’re in the theater, watching “Fahrenheit 9/11” as the movie flashes photos of big newspaper headlines ...

The Washington Post.

The St. Petersburg Times.

The Bloomington, IL, Pantagraph.

Uh, the Bloomington Pantagraph? In the smash Michael Moore flick?

One word: Yup.

“It’s definitely The Pantagraph,” says Dawn Riordan at The Normal Theater where she and her husband, Cliff Carney, have viewed the shot so many times, they’ve written down the Pantagraph headline featured in the movie ("LATEST FLORIDA RECOUNT SHOWS GORE WON ELECTION") and the date of the edition it allegedly appeared—Wed., Dec. 11, 2001.

One problem:

We went through the entire Wed., Dec. 11, 2001 edition of this newspaper—and there’s no such headline.

A call to Michael Moore’s film company remains unanswered.

As for those alleged “factual” question marks in the otherwise great movie: Now apparently, you can even add this newspaper to the list.

The only conclusive fact in any Michael Moore project is that he will lie at any possible opportunity.

Update by JimK: Here’s a screen grab from the best copy of F911 floating around. 

It’s still hard to see the date, but it damn sure isn’t Dec. 5th.  It’s clearly the 10th or later.  And that is vital to the timing of the claim Moore is making in the film.  So what we have here is a paper/magazine that published an article that was referencing an earlier recount, and Moore fudged the date in order to make the article support his claims.

That’s just shameful.

Update 2 by JimK - So I screwed something up myself.  In my focus on the date of the 5th or the 11th, I did not notice at all that everyone, Moore, the paper, the image I was staring at, said 2001!  So ignore my rumblings about the date having a meaning germane to the subject of the segment.  But now I’m left with even more confusion.  Just why the hell did Moore do this?  It makes absolutely no sense, but here it is, in black & white so to speak.  He lied.  To what end I have no idea.