Charles Ferguson has but the kibosh on a planned Hillary Clinton documentary for CNN. Commissioned by CNN in July, the project started getting push-back right away. It all started from Hillary’s camp, then from other parts of the left, and then the right. But that wasn’t going to deter Ferguson, and CNN was still on board:
I flew to New York and had a two hour meeting with CNN’s President Jeff Zucker and his senior staff. They were great. They asked me how I was holding up — I said fine. They pledged their support, expressed dismay that things were so nasty, and told me to go forth and make my film. I did so.
So why did he quit the project?
(W)hen I approached people for interviews, I discovered that nobody, and I mean nobody, was interested in helping me make this film. 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. I even sensed potential difficulty in licensing archival footage from CBN (Pat Robertson) and from Fox. After approaching well over a hundred people, only two persons who had ever dealt with Mrs. Clinton would agree to an on-camera interview, and I suspected that even they would back out.
A CNN spokeswoman tells the New York Times the network will not move ahead with the film, which would have required CNN to produce it in-house or find a different filmmaker.