The film director Oliver Stone has warned that the independence of British news media would be destroyed if US conglomerates were allowed to buy into them. The maker of such films as Platoon and JFK, whose puff piece documentary on Fidel Castro, Commandante, was pulled "indefinitely" from the cable station HBO’s schedules as America went to war with Iraq, said British politicians were naively courting disaster.
| I always say, if you're going to court disaster, don't do it naively... |
The communications bill enables foreign companies to buy terrestrial channels such as ITV and Channel Five for the first time. Stone, who screened Commandante at the Edinburgh Film Festival, said he feared the change would undermine standards.
| Ain't no standard like BBC standards... |
"I was shocked at how superficial and sentimental the American coverage of the Iraq war was — all Private Jessica Ryan, and no coverage of civilian casualties.
| I didn't think we had many civilian casualties... |
In Britain, you have a wider view, and people are more independent.
| "You Europeans are so-o-o-o sophisticated! Can I touch your Players?" |
"Goebbels said the bigger the lie, the more people will believe it, and I am afraid that is the American case. In America the media is amazingly conformist. We are living in an age of spin. Now there is a law before parliament which would allow the US media to buy into your media. That’ll be the end of the independent British media." Stone was scathing at the withdrawal of his documentary, after the Cuban leader executed three men who tried to escape hijack a plane and imprisoned 75 dissidents in the spring, saying it had become a football in George Bush’s re-election campaign. Mr Bush, he alleged, was reliant on the Cuban American lobby in Florida who had helped engineer the state’s much-disputed vote that took him to the White House.
| Nothing has anything to do with revulsion at actual conditions in Cuba, of course, nor with any sympathy with actual Cubans... |
"I just pray that the American people have a chance to see Fidel Castro through a gunsight his own words, because it need not be filtered by anybody, particularly the Cuban American lobby. The American people are sufficiently mature to see it without being guided or having cards put up saying this is propaganda." Stone returned to Havana to kiss ass grill Mr Castro on the executions and his treatment of internal protest in Cuba. He hopes that HBO will eventually show the resulting film, Looking for Fidel, together with Commandante. Having been given unfettered access to the Cuban leader for more than 60 hours of interviews, Stone claimed he was much more of a "human being" than Mr Bush.
| "G.W. has cloven hooves, y'know. That's why you never see his feet on the teevee. I know these things, 'cuz I'm a famous director..." |
"I see George Bush as a synthetic person. He’s a C student at Yale, an ex-alcoholic who believes in Jesus — what could be more dangerous?"
Paranoid left-wing directors?
"Castro believes there is a new Bush policy against Cuba, fomenting hijackings and supporting dissidents with money," Stone alleged. "I believe the Republicans are very concerned about the 2004 election, which plays into the Castro situation very deeply."
He’s seen thru our deception program and has grasped the truth, George Bush plans to overthrow Fidel and expand the Gitmo Death Camp(tm) to cover the whole island of Cuba. |