tspikes51

Recently, I had to write a report on the truths/fallacies in Fahrenheit 9/11. I cited a portion in another thread, and somebody PMed me and wanted me to share this report, in its entirety, on the forums. I only had to write on 5 points in the movie, so that's all I have here. Mind you, that until I began my research, I had only been skeptical about the movie, and didn't care if I found things true or false. Here is the report, unabridged and in its entirety:

Many of history’s greatest films have generated quite a bit of controversy, but none have attained the same level of controversy that Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004) has. Many wonder if the information presented in the movie holds up to any standard of truth. Many have tried to prove the falsity or truth of the claims made by Moore in his political “documentary. There seems to be nothing that is completely true or completely false in the movie, however many things are presented as such. Differing degrees of truth can be found by examining just five of Michael’s claims in the movie:
1. African-Americans in Florida were not allowed to vote because Bush hired a company to get them off of the voter rolls.
2. Bush was on vacation 42% of the time in his first eight months of office.
3. Bush took insider trading tips and sold Harken stock shortly before they lost money.
4. Bush proposed closing veteran hospitals and increasing drug costs for veterans.
5. One hundred and forty-two Saudis, including twenty-four members of the bin Laden family, were allowed to fly out of the country while all flights were closed, just two days after the attack.
One of Moore’s first, and more bogus, claims is that some of Bush’s friends and workers hired a private company, Data Base Technologies (DBT), to purge voters who may have voted for Gore, specifically African-Americans, from the Florida voter rolls. This was generated, according to an article in the Palm Beach Post (Hiaasen, Kane, & Jaspin, 2001) from a 1998 Miami, Florida mayoral election that went haywire because convicted felons were allowed to vote, which is against state law. To prevent this sort of disaster in the future, the Florida legislature ordered the executive branch to remedy the problem by purging all convicted felons from the voter rolls. The executive branch decided to hire Data Base Technologies, a private company, to take care of it. They made a list of 19,398 people who could not vote, and the election officials in each county were expected to use the list. However, DBT wrongly purged around 1,100 eligible voters who’s names either matched that of a convicted felon, felons convicted in other states that restored their civil rights after their sentence was served, or people whose crimes were only misdemeanors, but were shown by records to be felonies. Twenty counties in Florida completely ignored this list, which permitted thousands of felons to vote.
Where then, does Moore draw his conclusion that blacks were disenfranchised when this took place, and how does he know that they would vote for Gore? Moore most likely draws his conclusion from a couple of statistics. First, as published in the same article in the Post (Hiaasen, et. al., 2001), “Blacks make up nearly 49 percent of the felons convicted in the state…so any purge of felons would include a disproportionate number of blacks.” Second, he probably based it on the fact that the NAACP filed a lawsuit claiming disenfranchisement. However, race couldn’t have been a factor in putting names on the list of because the people denied their voting rights, in many cases, did not match the race of the felon that DBT was targeting in the purge. Michael most likely based his claim that the people improperly purged would have voted for Gore from a study conducted by the American Sociological Review, (American Sociological Review, 2003) that 68.9% of felons vote Democrat. Therefore Moore draws his conclusion from a weak combination of sources.
Moore also attacks the President by saying that, according to an article published in the Washington Post shortly before September 11, 2001, Bush spent 42% of his first eight months in office on vacation. According to an article published by Dave Kopel, (Kopel, 2004), “Shortly before 9/11, the Post calculated that Bush had spent 42 percent of his presidency at vacation spots or en route, including all or part of 54 days at his ranch.” So Moore’s citation of the Post is correct. However, that percentage includes time that was spent traveling to and from vacation spots, which Moore fails to mention. Moore also does not say that much of this time was weekends spent at Camp David, which is common practice among presidents. According to FOXNews.com (The Truth About 'Fahrenheit 9/11', 2004) if you subtract the amount of time that Bush spends at Camp David, which is equipped for presidential work, you get that Bush was only on vacation 13% of those eight months.
Moore proceeds to show several shots of Bush relaxing and having a good time, suggesting that Bush didn’t get much work done while he was on vacation. One of the shots, in particular, briefly shows Bush with British Prime Minister Tony Blair. This most likely means that Bush was doing presidential work with the Prime Minister, as anyone could see. However, the clip was only shown briefly, so that the audience was not likely to recognize the figure. In his article, “Fifty-nine Deceits in Fahrenheit 9/11,” Dave Kopel cites a “random week of Bush's August 2001 ‘vacation,’” (Kopel, 2004) (August 20 through August 25) as taken from public documents on the White House’s website. In this citation of what Bush did during that week, it seems that Bush spent plenty of time working. Among his schedule are such tasks as “spoke with Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien on the matter of free trade and tariffs on Canadian lumber,” “signed six bills into law,” and “met with Andy Card and Karen Hughes, talking about communications issues;” all of which are activities that are similar to those conducted in a conventional presidential workweek.
Moore shows a clip in this segment—which was taken on August 25, 2001—which showed the President talking about working at his Texas ranch, while Moore says "George Bush spent the rest of the August at the ranch." This is not true, as explained in Kopel’s article (Kopel, 2004), in which he cites Bush’s schedule for the day after the shot was taken, all of which was spent in Pennsylvania. He goes on further to cite some of the President’s accomplishments over the next three days, during which Bush declared part of Southern Ohio a disaster area, spoke at the American Legion’s annual conference in San Antonio, and appointed thirteen members of the Presidential Task Force to Improve Health Care Delivery for Our Nations Veterans.
Another partially-true claim made in the movie was that Bush took insider trading tips, selling $848,000 worth of stock in the Harken Energy Corporation before they announced losses of over $23 million dollars, and that he dodged the SEC. Through the failure and buyout of a few of Bush’s oil companies, Bush ended up on the board of directors of Harken Energy in 1986, who gave him at least $500,000 in stock. Later on, between 1987 and 1988, Bush became involved in his father’s presidential campaign, as well as a group that was planning to buy the Texas Rangers Major League Baseball team. When the team was finally sold in March 1989, Bush was forced to borrow $600,000 in order to pay his share of the team. In order to pay the loan, Bush sold 212,140 shares of Harken stock, worth $848,560 during June of 1990. In August of that same year, Harken announced heavy second quarter losses, and accusations were made that Bush took insider tips, after all, he was on Harken’s audit board. According to Byron York, (York, 2002) an ensuing SEC investigation revealed that “In light of the facts uncovered, it would be difficult to establish that, even assuming Bush possessed material nonpublic information, he acted with…intent to defraud.” They also concluded that most of the information that would have indicated such a monumental loss was not revealed to Bush until after he sold the stock. Bush had sold the stock to a broker who contacted Bush with the intent to buy the stock, and Bush conferred with company personnel to ensure that the sale could be completed. Moore probably tells the audience that Bush evaded the SEC because Bush submitted some papers to them late. So, Bush neither took insider tips nor did he “dodge” the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The film claims that Bush tried to close veteran hospitals, and that he attempted to double the cost of prescription drugs for veterans. If you only listen to those two facts, and don’t look any deeper into it, you will find that Moore is correct on both points. He supported closing Veterans Affairs hospitals, as outlined in his Department of Veteran’s Affairs’ CARES Decision (Secretary of Veterans Affairs, 2004). However, this document also says that the hospitals being closed were in places where the veteran population was decreasing, VA facilities were under-utilized, and where veterans could be served by another hospital, which Moore failed to mention. The decision also ordered that more hospitals be built in places that needed them.
The claim that Bush tried to double the cost of prescription drugs for veterans is also deceptive. While Bush did support this, Moore leads the audience to believe that the increase would be such that veterans wouldn’t be able to afford their prescriptions. What Mr. Moore didn’t tell the audience is that the co-pay for veterans for prescription drugs was only seven dollars, and Bush proposed that the cost be raised to fifteen dollars for veterans whose income was more than $24,000 a year. This around the same cost as civilians with prescription drug plans.
Moore makes further attempts to deceive the audience by saying that on September 13th, 2001, some 142 Saudis—including two dozen members of the bin Laden family, and implies that no one else was allowed to fly at the time. Michael is correct in saying that 142 Saudis, including 24 bin Ladens flew out of the country, as documented by flight records. However, in the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) National Situation Update for September 13, 2001, it clearly states that airspace was open, stating “Some commercial airlines have been authorized flights to reposition aircraft. The FAA anticipates opening the national airspace system today at 11 am. The FAA anticipates opening the national airspace system today at 11 am” (FEMA, 2003). Moore failed to report that some people were allowed to fly.
The departure of the Saudis was cleared, says Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball, by the FBI. According to Isikoff and Hosenball, (Isikoff, & Hosenball, 2004) “The 9/11 commission found that the FBI screened the Saudi passengers, ran their names through federal databases, interviewed 30 of them and asked many of them ‘detailed questions.’" This invalidates the film’s interview of Richard Clarke, who says that they should of held the Saudis for questioning.
After examining some main points of the movie, it becomes apparent that while some things in Fahrenheit 9/11 were true, most points were quite deceiving. What is most frightening about this is that the general population will accept this as either absolute truth or fallacy without doing their own fact checking. With the 2004 presidential election coming up, that is a thing that nobody, save Moore and his followers, want to see.

My bib:

Works Cited

Federal Emergency Management Agency, (2003). Fema: national situation update: thursday, september 13, 2001. http://www.fema.gov/emanagers/2001/nat091301.shtm.

FOXNews.com, (2004). The truth about 'fahrenheit 9/11'. retrieved Oct 10, 2004, from
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,124079,00.html.

Hiaasen, S., Kane, G., & Jaspin, E. (2001). Felon purge sacrificed innocent voters. Palm
Beach Post, . Retrieved Oct 10, 2004, from http://www.commondreams.org/headlines01/0527-03.htm

Isikoff, M., & Hosenball, M. (2004, Jun 30). More distortions from michael moore. Newsweek, Retrieved Oct 12, 2004, from http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5335853/site/newsweek/.

Kopel, D. (2004). Fifty-nine deciets in fahrenheit 9/11, dave kopel,
independence institute. retrieved Sept 20, 2004, from
http://www.davekopel.com/Terror/Fift...enheit-911.htm.

Moore, M. (Director). (2004). Fahrenheit 9/11 [Motion Picture]. United States: Dog Eat
Dog Films.

Secretary of Veterans Affairs. (2004). CARES Decision. http://www1.va.gov/cares/

Check out the Kopel article for more.

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pocon1

When I travel to and from vacation, that time is counted against me. So it should be the same for Bush. Travel time is travel time. Plus, who in the real world gets even 13% vacation time in their first 8 months of a job? Even if the president were assumed to work a five day week, he still took 20.8 days his first 8 months at 13% vacation time. I expect a little more freaking work out of my president. Look at how much shit Clinton got over a freaking haircut. Godammit, you are president of the United States, you have no down time until you are out of office. If you think you should have a vacation, take a look for a second, realize how many people are homeless, without medical insurance, how many murders and drug deals there are, how many are plotting against us, and then get back to work. There is no rest for a president.

ARTelevision

Thanks for the valuable reporting, tspikes51.
Good, solid, substantial post.

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Willravel

Fantastic, you've done a lot of good research. Kudos on thinking for yourself.

kutulu

Let me guess, you are a Bush supporter?

irateplatypus

hey, great report. i've seen many of those figures by themselves but you did a great job of assembling them coherently.

watch moore for entertainment, watch moore to embolden your inner-liberal... but don't watch moore for a sober view of the world around us.

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Lebell

Good job of assembling a factual, non-partisan report.

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roachboy

the rhetoric of the opening post is far from non-partisan.
the information assembled in it has mostly to do with taking information to a certain extent out of context.

which is fine--point it out, have a debate, think about the questions at hand: that is what documentaries are done to generate--they do not--they are not--ever--other than an argument.
the argument is elaborated within a cinema context, which presents certain limitations on the ability to provide adequate context.
but so do almost all the other information sources that people rely on to fashion their political positions.

were that folk were as wary of what they watch on television as news, as wary of what they read--including in press outlets that work from political positions they agree with in general--maybe the state of american pseudo-democracy would not be as bleak as it is.

so good--debate the factual basis of the film, think about it, try to swat its messages away if that is your desire--but do not for a minute think that this is somehow not completely consistent with the nature of documentary as a form.

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superiorrain

The Propaganda war continues to be fought. But a nice report to slightly even it up. Still the propaganda machine against Bush for me is still more powerful than for him.

Being from England, i'll let you Americans to decide yours and the rest worlds fate. Remember he still took 20 days holiday in 8 months. Does this sound like a man you'd want to employ if you owned a business??

Make the right decision you owe it to mankind.

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SirSeymour

You can complain about this when you sleep over your office, your commute to the office is a shorter distance than many of us walk our dog every day and your primary mode of transportation carries not only you but a communications officer and a significant number of journalists. The President (regardless of party) is one of the busiest men in the world on a daily basis and you can make the arguement that he is never truely on vacation. There are always members of staff nearby, members of his security detail and somewhere there is a guy handcuffed to a briefcase that contains the nuclear launch codes. Not my idea of a vacation.

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ARTelevision

Exactly - not to mention the burden of responsibility for the most powerful entity in the world.

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OpieCunningham

And if, in my comparatively stress-free job, I am informed of a major potential crisis while I'm on vacation (such as an August 6th PDB, comparatively non-mass-life threatening due to my comparatively stress-free job), should I just shrug my shoulders?

I'd get fired. Talk about STRESS.

jonjon42

I have one story to tell about the vacation time thing.
My father is a dermatologist based over in Bethesda. He treats some goverment employees in the area. One of his patients was a secret service agent that provided security in the white house. Supposedly one of the things Bush asked about repeatedly when he first started, were questions about vacation time. I heard this story in the summer of 2001 so I don't doubt that Bush expected a calm presidency, and was on vacation more then he should have been.

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yoyoyobro

13% is still an outrageous figure for vacation time for the President. WIth the responsibility of the world most powerful country in your hands you would hope that he is spending a great deal more time in his office, even if it is one at Camp David.

Ustwo

Perhaps vacation is a way of saying 'getting away from the presscore so we can do some work'.

Based on both Clinton and Bush I, this seems about the normal amount.

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tspikes51

Paraphrasing Dave Kopel on the vacation thing: Being the President is a 24/7 job. He spent 13% of his time "on vacation," and assuming that he slept 8 hours a night, he spent 33% of that time sleeping. Should we criticize our President for sleeping??? The fact is that part of his vacations were more like working away from work, like taking your laptop outside and doing reports out there.

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tspikes51

Nope. I actually was going to vote for Kerry because of this movie. Now I don't support either. This report had nothing to do with being pro- or anti- anything, it was just doing some fact checking on the movie.

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quicksteal

I always had suspicions about Moore's storytelling, but I've been too lazy to do any real research. I just knew that the claims he was making were absurd ("Bush stole the election", "Bush was always on vacation before 9/11", etc.).
I really don't see this movie as a documentary. Documentaries report on factual information. "Super Size Me" is a documentary because it records what that man actually did, no spinning. War documentaries are the same, all the facts and numbers are laid out for all to see. It's impossible to make a documentary out of a current presidency--there's way too much classified information, and way too much political emotion to make a fair, unbiased, historical account. Moore says he submitted his film as a "best picture" nominee to the Academy Awards so that others in the "best documentary" category would have a chance to be recognized. First of all, I'm glad to see that he has a healthy ego, and secondly, it may be non-fiction, but "Fahrenheit 9/11" is not a documentary.

roachboy

that there were real problems in florida last election is not in doubt.
that bush had a better, more aggressive legal team is not in doubt.
that he lost the popular vote in florida is not in doubt.
that bush "won" the election on the shakiest of grounds is also, sadly, not in doubt.
it is also true that simply saying "bush stole the election" may be crude, but it is not far from the fact of the matter--this was a real problem (the legitimacy of the bush regime) until they were handed 9/11/2001, which enabled a wholesale refashioning of bush into the very miltiary cartoon we now endure.

i have grown weary of the problems folk have with the notion of documentary film, what is is, how it is understood--i would suggest reading any history of the form and you will see that documentary is a form of film that is about making arguments conerning the world---there is no objective view of anything, anywhere, ever. there are only arguments. including this one.

what passes for war documentary in general is little more than collections of newsreel footage, edited together following the politics of the people doing the editing. the history channel is an appalling example of this.

my sense is that conservatives--who have been silent on the question of factual errors in the bush hagiography films that were produced as a counter to moore's--do not particularly care about the question of what a documentary is--they prefer myth that is consistent with their beliefs--one of these myths is that of objectivity, which of course they like to pretend they monopolize.

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Lebell

Correction:

This is only true if you are a Gore supporter.

There is serious doubt that he won the popular vote as several news organizations have tried to determine just exactly who won it.

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roachboy

in the end, lebell, the facts appear to ahve been that had gore called for a statewide recount that bush would have lost.
that is why it all came down to the legal teams.
bush is in power now because he had a more aggressive legal team.
nothing more.
and it **did** create legitimacy problems for bush up front. even a die-hard bushite cannot deny that.

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tspikes51

You are right on the first one. No quarrels there. However, in most of the common methods used for a recount, Bush won. I would like to see your evidence. I'll find mine. Reguardless, this is off-topic.

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SirSeymour

From the Meriam Webster Online Dictionary

Main Entry: 1doc·u·men·ta·ry
Pronunciation: "dä-ky&-'men-t&-rE, -'men-trE
Function: adjective
1 : being or consisting of documents : contained or certified in writing <documentary evidence>
2 : of, relating to, or employing documentation in literature or art; broadly : FACTUAL, OBJECTIVE <a documentary film of the war>

Just looking at this definition I think it more than reasonable for the public to expect some serious research and evidence from anyone doing a documentary. If they want to make propaganda, then it should not be called a documentary. I have no problem with Moore making his movie and including or excluding whatever he wants. I do have a problem with his use of the word "documentary" to describe it. It implies a factual nature that Moore exploited for his own ends.

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quicksteal

This is not true. Bush also won because he had more aggressive rioters (I just love that video of Bush supporters--from other states--trying to push their way into the room that was holding ballots).

But the most important reason why he won is because he got the most votes. The statistical results from the partial recounts are far from scientific, so a few liberal newspapers claiming a recount would have pushed Gore ahead is just barely more than speculation.

By the way, legitimacy wasn't Bush's biggest problem after the Florida scandal. Look at the 9/11 report--his team didn't have the time to prepare their counterintelligence team, and surely that wasn't the only thing that the administration was behind on. Personally, I believe Bush has played the hand he was dealt very well.

Mephisto2

CORRECTION

This is only untrue is you are a Bush supporter. Or perhaps someone who simply doesn't believe the facts. Or maybe someone who can't count...

Whichever of the above is true, the fact remains that Gore DID WIN THE POPULAR VOTE

Tally of the popular vote:


References:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._pr...election,_2000

If you don't believe Wikipedia, how about Infoplease?
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0876793.html

And if you don't believe Infoplease, how about the Federal Election Commission itself?

http://www.fec.gov/pubrec/fe2000/prespop.htm


Mr Mephisto

cthulu23

Documentarians are not journalists...there is no expectation of objectivity. Any claim otherwise ignores the rich history of documentary film.

SirSeymour

Ummmm, I think of you go back and look at Ledell's original comment you will find she was talking about the popular vote in Florida. Not the national popular vote. No one is disputing that Gore won the national popular vote.

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Mephisto2

Oh, perhaps I misread the post.

If that's the case, then I stand corrected. Bush "carried" Florida by 537 votes.

Mr Mephisto

SirSeymour

I did not say anything about objectivity. Granted, the definition I quoted from Meriam Webster did. Maybe this one will work better for everyone:

From Wikipedia:

A broad category of cinematic expression, traditionally the only characteristic common to all documentary films is that they are meant to be factual.

And that is just the first line. My point is that Moore used partial facts at times and completely ignored other facts when it suited his purpose. That is NOT in line with the idea of a documentary. I have no problem with doing a documentary to support your side of an argument but I do have an issue with crossing the line to propaganda.

Of course, the fact that my link uses Fahrenheit 9/11 as an example of a modern documentary opposes my view but I just can't see my way clear to equate the quoted line above with the work Moore did. He ment to be factual but only with facts he liked. To me, that is not documentary.

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Mephisto2

By that definition, NOTHING is a documentary, as subjectivity comes into all representations of "the truth".

And, to be fair, I think people are getting a bit hot under the collar about this whole thing anyway. It's not as if Moore wasn't open with his opinion. It's not as if he has tried to pull the wool over anyone's eyes. And he's just using facts, however reported, to support his views.

Mr Mephisto

cthulu23

Who says documentaries have to be fair?

Also from Wikipedia:
Is Triumph of the Will fair? Does it present all the facts?

The very same wikipedia article names Farenheit 9/11 as a documentary. Here's what Ebert had to say about it:

Note to everyone out there: if you're sick of rereading this same argument, imagine how sick I am of making it. I just want the word "documentary" depoliticised.

dbc

I don't know about you, but I don't think "Fahrenheit 9/11" can be descredited by foxnews.com. They probably swing things to the right as far as Moore swings things to the left. I usually believe the real numbers are somewhere in the middle.

Ustwo

Ummm if you think fox news is as far right as Moore is left, you have either never seen a Moore film, never watched Fox News, or .... well I'll leave out the or.

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SirSeymour

Please note that I never said anything about "fair". I said factual. To me that means not ignoring the half of something you don't like in order to fulfill some misguided attempt to support your arguement.


Hey, I mentioned this myself. I was not trying to hide it.


I am not trying to politicise the word. In fact, to a degree I am trying to depoliticise it myself. I am tired of Moore's movie being refered to a documentary in a political attempt to give the movie more credibility than the facts presented there in warrant. Although it seems my beef over this issue is less with Moore and more with Hollywood since it is apparently Hollywood that considers propaganda a form of documentary. I consider that to be like equating two shots in the back of the head to brain surgery.

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tspikes51

I didn't discredit the whole movie based on one article. I just took one stat from it.

I also don't think it matters if it is a documentary or not. The point is that because he threw in a couple of statistics, people will believe that Moore is 100% right. It is the responsibility of somebody to tell people the complete facts. I just took a couple of political plot tests. On each of them I landed in the middle, maybe a tiny bit to the left, just in case you wanted to know where I stand politically.

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james t kirk

I get 3 weeks vacation a year and I have been working for 15 years.

This is November.

So far this year I have taken 5 days off of which 3 were when my dad died. The other 2 were taken immediately after the aforementioned 3 days.

I like to think that I have had no vacation at all in the first 10 months of the year.

Bush is well known to be at work at 7:30, but gone for the day by 3:00.

He is not a hard worker.

Irishsean

Hmmm, just a thought, but don't most people get 2 days of work off each week? THat amounts to a lot mroe than 13%...

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cthulu23

Sounds like we're back to objectivity here. Anyway, "factual" can mean a lot of things. "Facts" are in the eye of the beholder. I may not agree with the "facts" in "Stolen Honor," but I wouldn't deny that it is a documentary.

There's the problem...to you, the term "documentary" confers credibility.

It's not just Hollywood that qualifies some propaganda as worthy of the title "documentary," it is a standard idea in the study of cinema. Pehaps your personal ideas don't jibe with the standard school of thought? There's nothing wrong with that, of course, but don't act surprised when F9/11 is described as a documentary because, well, it is.

Paq

sorry, didn't read this post very much....just struck me during the first debates:

"Being president is a hard job"

said repeatedly by bush.

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maximusveritas

I appreciate your effort, but IMO this is just another weak attempt to discredit an entire movie full of valid points by nitpicking a few minor points. I realize you were limited to 5, but couldn't you have found better examples? I guess not. The Kopel article is more of the same but still adds up to a whole lot of nothing.

The funny thing is that you commit just as serious a violation as Moore when you misrepresent the claims he makes in the movie. Why can't you provide a direct quote from the movie? It's probably because Moore never made those claims and you needed to create a straw man to easilly tear down.

I realize that the movie is not completely accurate. That's obvious. It would be practically impossible to create such a movie and for Moore to claim this is dishonest. However, to claim that one shouldn't watch the movie or believe anything in it is equally dishonest and leads people to bury their head in the sand and dismiss reality.