Pantagraph to Moore: Headline use 'misleading'
Explanation, apology sought
By Bill Flick
flick@pantagraph.com
BLOOMINGTON -- The Pantagraph has a message for Michael Moore, creator of the movie hit, "Fahrenheit 9/11":
If he wants to "edit" The Pantagraph, he should apply for a copy-editing job and not simply show made-over and "falsely represented" pages from the newspaper in his movie -- or he should at least ask for permission first.
In a letter drafted Thursday and sent to Moore and the movie's Santa Monica, Calif.-based distributor, Lions Gate Entertainment, the newspaper admonished him for his "unauthorized ... misleading" use of The Pantagraph in the film. He also was cited for copyright infringement.
The letter, drafted by J. Casey Costigan of the Bloomington law firm, Costigan & Wollrab, seeks an apology, an explanation of how such a strange discrepancy occurred in his movie and compensatory damages -- of $1.
"While we are highly flattered to be included in the movie," said Pantagraph President and Publisher Henry Bird, "we are a bit disturbed that our pages were misrepresented."
Previous attempts to reach Moore through Lions Gate by phone and e-mail were unsuccessful.
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's and his associates' ties to Saudi Arabian oil interests.
In a moment early in the movie, newspaper headlines from around America that relate to the legally contested 2000 presidential election flash across the screen. One of them is purported to be from a Dec. 19, 2001, edition of The Pantagraph.
But a check of that day's newspaper revealed the large headline prominently flashed in the movie -- "Latest Florida recount shows Gore won election" -- never appeared in that edition.
Instead, the headline appeared in a Dec. 5, 2001, edition -- but not as a news headline. It was in much smaller type above a letter to the editor. Those headlines reflect only the opinions of the letter writer and are not considered "factual" news stories.
In the movie, The Pantagraph page, as shown, was not how a real page from the newspaper would have looked. Moore's version had a different typeface and a different headline size from what The Pantagraph uses. The newspaper's name, however, appears in the correct font.
The letter calls all of this a "misrepresentation of facts."
The discrepancy first came to light in a July 16 Bill Flick column.
Since then it has become a topic of newspaper articles, radio talk shows and various Web sites.
"In an instance that The Pantagraph prints materials in which there is a mistake," the Costigan letter to Moore reads, "it is corrected. It is our hope that you would adhere to the same high ethical standard and correct the inaccurate information which has been depicted in your film."
The letter calls into question the ethics of how Moore made his movie, a movie whose primary purpose is to call into question the ethics of the Bush White House.
http://www.pantagraph.com/stories/073004/new_20040730034.shtml
