HBO Panics Over Big Hollywood 'Game Change' Vetting

Virtually every media outlet covering the new HBO film “Game Change” has swallowed the network’s line about it being fair, balanced and rooted in the truth.

Not Big Hollywood.

We’ve been diligent in pointing out the glaring factual errors in the film, how HBO ignored the folks in Palin’s inner circle who actually witnessed history in favor of sources with serious axes to grind as well as how the key figures behind the film all gave thousands to Democratic causes.

And HBO isn’t too happy about it.

The Washington Post’s liberal TV scribe Hank Steuver reports HBO officials cited a Big Hollywood post by Brandon Darby in a letter accompanying the film’s screener.

I might have missed that particular blog post if HBO hadn’t drawn my attention to it and sent a letter to TV critics and editors detailing the work and attention to detail that went into making “Game Change.” Strong, the screenwriter, “spoke to 25 people intimately involved in the campaign, including the most senior advisors. He reached out to Gov. Palin and Sen. McCain, who declined to talk to him,” the letter said.

HBO also emphasized that Palin’s own memoir, “Going Rogue,” served as secondary reference material for the filmmakers, as did all that media coverage during and after the campaign. Palin’s deputy chief of staff during the 2008 campaign served as an adviser on the movie’s set.

For the record, HBO assured Big Hollywood it would send a screener of the film our way, but the company never did.

Steuver also says Big Hollywood “has raised legitimate questions about why HBO had to make this film, now, this way.”

What’s depressing – and all too familiar – is that no media outlets covering the film have bothered to ask any of the questions Big Hollywood is asking. Compare that to the treatment “The Kennedys” miniseries received last year, a maelstrom so intense the channel slated to broadcast it had to dump the project entirely.

Consider “Game Change” the latest chapter in Media Bias 101, and a perfect example of how left-wing media outlets get cover from the mainstream press.