CBS might not be able to prevent (the) Truth from coming out, but it doesn’t have to help promote it. According to The Associated Press, the network has refused to run any advertising for the Robert Redford movie, which dramatizes one of its biggest blunders (no, not picking up 2 Broke Girls).
Truth stars Redford as an embattled Dan Rather and Cate Blanchett as his ousted producer Mary Mapes, who were accused of letting their “liberal bias” get in the way of a little thing called journalism back in 2004. When Mapes got her hands on the Killian documents, which supposedly called then-President George W. Bush’s military record into question, she and Rather rushed to air the story on 60 Minutes II without doing the proper vetting.
The records were eventually discredited, and the movie puts Redford through the paces as the disgraced Rather, who nonetheless gets a standing ovation from the crew after his last broadcast. That scene might have been too much for CBS, which released a statement denouncing the film as “a disservice to the public and journalists.” There’s no telling how this will affect Truth’s box office numbers, considering how many people are watching network television and sitting through commercials these days. But the network had every right to turn down Sony Pictures’ multi-million dollar ad proposal, and we’re fairly certain that the press surrounding CBS’s denial of publicity for the movie about that time they were really wrong about something will not end up reminding anyone of the incident that caused the network embarrassment in the first place.
[h/t Yahoo! News]