Charles Ferguson, the filmmaker behind the Hillary Clinton documentary set to air on CNN, has terminated the project.
Ferguson, who won an Academy Award in 2007 for his documentary about the Iraq War announced his decision in a blog post for the Huffington Post:
After painful reflection, I decided that I couldn’t make a film of which I would be proud. And so I’m cancelling. (Not because of any pressure from CNN — quite the contrary.) It’s a victory for the Clintons, and for the money machines that both political parties have now become. But I don’t think that it’s a victory for the media, or for the American people. I still believe that Mrs. Clinton has many virtues including great intelligence, fortitude, and a deep commitment to bettering the lives of women and children worldwide. But this is not her finest hour.
He went on to say he faced opposition from Republicans, Democrats, and Clinton staffers in trying to create the special.
“This shows you how free our press is. There is an amazing story up from The Guardian that shows that CNN has cancelled a documentary on Hillary Clinton and they said no one, no one wanted anything to do with this,” Glenn said on radio this morning. “[Ferguson] has decided to pull the plug on a documentary after being met with a wall of silence. He said, ‘When I approached people for interviews, I discovered that nobody, and I mean nobody was interested in helping me make the film. Not Democrats, not Republicans, and certainly nobody who works with the Clintons, wants access to the Clintons or dreams of a position in the Hillary Clinton administration. Not even journalists who want access, which can easily be taken away. I sensed potential difficulty in licensing archive footage even from Pat Robertson and from Fox. After approaching well over 100 people, only two people who had ever dealt with Mrs. Clinton would agree to an on‑camera interview. And I suspected that even they would back out.’ Is this amazing? I mean that's how free your press really is.”
“That's also the kind of power the Clintons have,” Pat added.
CNN has expressed its disappointment that the project would not be moving forward. A CNN spokesperson told TheBlaze that CNN “was excited to be working with [Ferguson], but we understand and respect his decision.”
“You can imagine the [2016] election and what's going to happen and what the media is going to do to anyone who runs against Hillary Clinton,” Glenn said. “She was promised, she was promised this is your presidency after we get rid of BO.”
Front page image courtesy of the AP