CNN Films has decided to cancel its highly anticipated documentary about Hillary Clintonafter director Charles H. Ferguson backed away from the project on Monday, citing a lack of participants due to pressure from Clinton-world.
“Charles Ferguson has informed us that he is not moving forward with his documentary about Hillary Clinton,” CNN Worldwide spokesperson Allison Gollust told POLITICO. “Charles is an Academy Award winning director who CNN Films was excited to be working with, but we understand and respect his decision.”
“[W]e won’t seek other partners and are not proceeding with the film,” she wrote.
In a blog post on Huffington Post, Ferguson said that pressure from Clinton aides and supporters, as well as the Republican National Committee, cast a chilling effect on potential sources and interview subjects.
“When I approached people for interviews, I discovered that nobody, and I mean nobody, was interested in helping me make this film,” Ferguson wrote. “Not Democrats, not Republicans — and certainly nobody who works with the Clintons, wants access to the Clintons, or dreams of a position in a Hillary Clinton administration. Not even journalists who want access, which can easily be taken away.”
Ferguson explains that upon signing his contract with CNN Films, he began receiving pressure from Clinton press secretary Nick Merrill and Clinton aide Philippe Reines, “who contacted various people at CNN, interrogated them, and expressed concern about alleged conflicts of interest generated because my film was a for-profit endeavor.”
Remember that Reince Priebus shut-out CNN from hosting a GOP primary debate because of this documentary, a move I called “idiotic” at the time because “if the Hillary documentaries were biased, that’s an easy talking point in the debate.” It turns out Team Clinton was worried the documentary wouldn’t portray Hillary positively enough. Well, duh. How can you make a documentary, even a biased one, and gloss over everything that might anger Hillary Clinton? You can’t.
I guess Priebus can still say that this shows CNN’s leftist bias because they’re afraid of the Clintons, but that would’ve been a much more powerful point to make if he hadn’t cut CNN out in the first place.