‘9/11’ takes on media as well as Bush

It’s President Bush looking his least presidential: waiting nearly seven minutes to leave a Florida classroom after learning America is under attack; urging the world’s nations to fight terrorism moments before teeing off on the golf course; and telling a roomful of business fat cats, “Some call you the elites -- I call you my base.”

Such TV news footage forms the bulk of Michael Moore’s controversial new documentary, “Fahrenheit 9/11,” which opens Wednesday in New York and two days later nationwide.

The video, which Moore says he acquired in standard and clandestine fashions, gives the film its potency and edge. But whatever the debate about the film’s content, secondary questions emerge about the footage itself -- from how he got it to how he uses it. In Moore’s hands, the news footage turns into not only a scathing portrait of Bush, but also a sly critique of the media.

Bush’s exchange with a reporter becomes a character-revealing moment in the context of “Fahrenheit 9/11.” The journalist asks whether the president is working during a vacation in early 2001 at his ranch in Texas. Bush issues the vague reply, “[Advisor] Karen Hughes is coming over. We’re working on some things.” Outside the context of the film, the exchange has no clear meaning. In the movie, the president appears flummoxed and adrift.

“They filter all the stupidity out of him,” Moore complained of the news media during a recent interview. “They make a decision and it’s all about access -- that you have to toe the line. It’s a constant game going on here, and the American people are losers in this game.”

Bill Wheatley, vice president of NBC News, who, like most network executives, hasn’t yet seen the film, strongly disputed the notion that the networks are soft on Bush to maintain their access to the White House.

“Tom Brokaw has done three or four major interviews with him and asked any number of rather direct questions,” Wheatley said. “Is that filtering it out? We certainly over the years have covered problems that the Bush administration has had. And we’ve dealt with his difficulties with the English language. So I don’t know if Michael Moore is saying that we give George Bush a free pass -- but that’s absolutely inaccurate.”

Networks and filmmakers are in different businesses, Wheatley said. “Rare is the filmmaker whose work reflects gray values; the work of filmmakers is much more likely to be pointed in a particular direction. We have to be fair, and we work hard to be fair.... We’ve had our shortcomings. But filmmakers tend to avoid balance and pursue a point of view.”

Much of the video that Moore employs to savage Bush and his policies -- though not all -- was licensed to him by mainstream news outlets such as CNN, NBC and CBS. Other times he relied on foreign broadcasters. He also claims to have gotten some clips on the sly, from unnamed low-level employees of news agencies who slipped him outtakes. “We have to protect people,” Moore said. “Because I am known enough, they send me stuff. They are people that could get in trouble.”

The archival producer of “Fahrenheit 9/11,” Carl Deal, who also worked with Moore on 2002’s Oscar-winning documentary “Bowling for Columbine,” did not return calls seeking his comments this week. And the movie’s producers refused to make him available for interviews on how he obtained the footage.

Networks licensed some of the material to Moore. CNN gave him two clips, one of National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and another of pop singer Britney Spears, both of which had been widely rebroadcast by other organizations. A passage from a Larry King interview with Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar ibn Sultan, however, was not licensed, according to a CNN spokeswoman.

ABC News and CBS News also licensed footage. Fox News Channel said Moore never asked for any of its video, as far as it can determine.

NBC provided Moore with footage of the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terror attacks, the Afghanistan war, the November 2000 election, a wounded soldier, Saudi airlines and shots of both Presidents Bush walking, at the podium or fishing. All of it had already aired on NBC.

Some of NBC’s biggest news personalities, Tom Brokaw, Katie Couric and Tim Russert, also appear in “Fahrenheit 9/11,” though NBC said it did not license any footage of its anchors and correspondents.

Couric and several Fox News personalities figure prominently in a montage of broadcasts early in the Iraq war. The “Today” show host exclaims in a patriotic outburst, “Navy SEALs rock!”

Other material that apparently wasn’t licensed includes a close-up of Bush, manipulated using slow motion and ominous music, before a televised White House speech. Bush’s eyes dart sideways like a mischievous schoolboy’s.

Other pre-broadcast grooming of administration officials -- including Rice and Vice President Dick Cheney -- are some of the more humorous moments in the movie. One scene that elicited groans at a recent screening in Beverly Hills shows Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, one of the chief architects of the war in Iraq, sticking a comb in his mouth and repeatedly smoothing his hair with saliva.

The sources of such shots are unclear. These moments never air on TV newscasts, and networks tend not to license outtakes. They might, however, be seen on, and recorded from, networks’ satellite-fed video transmissions. (Indeed, satellite-dish owners long have been able to catch similarly embarrassing moments of TV reporters and anchors flubbing their lines.)

The unlicensed newscast snippets with the anchors appear to fall under the “fair use doctrine” -- a somewhat murky area of law that allows limited use of copyrighted material without permission. The pre-interview primping footage likely falls under fair use as well, said 1st Amendment lawyer Victor Kovner, who saw “Fahrenheit 9/11” at a preview screening Monday in Manhattan. “The material is copyrightable, but the copyright in it is very thin,” he said. He doubted anyone would file suit claiming unauthorized use of the footage.

Some TV insiders, however, say using such footage is a cheap shot. They note that the president’s mugging for the cameras, in particular, could have been merely an effort to relieve tension in advance of a big speech. Anyone can be made to look bad under similar circumstances, one network executive said.

In some cases, it’s just a matter of perspective. Two people can watch this kind of footage and reach different conclusions, said Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, a think tank associated with the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Moore “looks at a piece of photography that confirms [his] low opinion of Bush and thinks, ‘Everyone should see this,’ ” Rosenstiel said. “Someone else can look at it and say, ‘He’s just goofing off; let’s not use it.’ ”

Still, Moore doesn’t rely solely on the media for his supporting visuals.

The scene of Bush on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, reading “My Pet Goat” to Florida second-graders was obtained from the school, which videotaped the visit. Bush, informed by his chief of staff that a second jetliner has just struck the World Trade Center, remains seated, his eyes widening. Moore superimposes a clock to illustrate how many minutes ticked by.

Moore also crafts powerful and disturbing juxtapositions. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld talks about the “humanity” applied to the targeting of U.S. airstrikes in Iraq, and then footage of an Iraqi child disfigured by war follows.

To be sure, Moore gets away with using grisly footage that TV networks wouldn’t broadcast -- including gut-wrenching video of four Americans killed in Fallouja, their burned bodies hung from a bridge and dragged through the streets. American viewers would object to such graphic footage on the nightly news, Rosenstiel said.

“American television is much more sanitized,” he said. “You don’t see American casualties or body parts or people dying [in Iraq]. You barely see people in the hospital.... If you saw BBC coverage, you saw a different war.”

While the majority of Americans still get their news from the three networks and cable, increasingly they can find alternatives. BBC newscasts air on BBC America and many public television stations, and foreign newscasts, from the Arab Al Jazeera to French TV, can be found on some satellite and cable services. Even American networks aren’t always in lock step. Spanish-language networks in the U.S. aired footage of American prisoners of war in Iraq that the major networks held back.

“Fahrenheit 9/11” recently won the top prize, the Palme d’Or, at the Cannes Film Festival. The film also has screened at celebrity-packed events in L.A. and New York.

The New York premiere Monday had to be moved to a bigger theater to accommodate those who clamored for tickets. Top-flight journalists such as Brokaw, Lesley Stahl, Ed Bradley and Bryant Gumbel mingled with A-list celebrities Richard Gere, Leonardo DiCaprio and Yoko Ono. A standing ovation at the end included only part of the crowd; the many journalists in the room stayed seated.

Times staff writers John Horn and Michael Finnegan contributed to this story.