The Reagans is a four-hour miniseries about U.S. President Ronald Reagan and his family which CBS planned to broadcast in November 2003 during fall "sweeps". About a month before it was scheduled to air, portions of the script of documentary-drama were leaked and published by the The New York Times and the Drudge Report. The miniseries was widely criticized by conservatives as an unbalanced and inaccurate depiction of Reagan, and CBS ultimately conceded that it did "not present a balanced portrayal of the Reagans." The network chose instead to broadcast the miniseries on the premium cable channel Showtime, which along with CBS is owned by Viacom.

CBS reportedly had ordered a love story about Ronald and Nancy Reagan with politics as a backdrop, but instead received an overtly political film. Conservatives began criticizing it before its broadcast, claiming that it put words in Reagan's mouth and condemning it as leftist historical revisionism.

One of the most controversial points in the script was the depiction of Reagan telling his wife during a conversation about AIDS patients, "They that live in sin shall die in sin." The screenwriters later admitted that there was no evidence that Reagan ever said this. However, Edmund Morris's authorized biography of Reagan quotes him as saying, "Maybe the Lord brought down this plague [AIDS]". The Reagans producers, Neil Meron and Craig Zadan, had previously insisted that every fact, though not every line of dialogue, was supported by at least two sources.

Another factor causing critics to suspect bias was that Reagan is played by James Brolin, who is the husband of Barbra Streisand, a stridently outspoken critic of the Republican Party. A related motivation for a "hatchet-job" may be that the Brolin and Streisand have reportedly had a family member recently stricken with AIDS (see Drudge Report), and during the Reagan administration many critics said Reagan should have made the government spend more money to find a cure for AIDS.

Critics further claimed that homosexual scriptwriters were smearing him, perhaps for espousing the belief held widely by Christians and conservatives that illicit sex is against the Ten Commandments).

After several weeks of outspoken criticism by conservatives, CBS released a statement on November 4, 2003:

"CBS will not broadcast The Reagans on November 16 and 18. This decision is based solely on our reaction to seeing the final film, not the controversy that erupted around a draft of the script.

"Although the mini-series features impressive production values and acting performances, and although the producers have sources to verify each scene in the script, we believe it does not present a balanced portrayal of the Reagans for CBS and its audience. Subsequent edits that we considered did not address those concerns.

"A free broadcast network, available to all over the public airwaves, has different standards than media the public must pay to view. We do, however, recognize and respect the filmmakers' right to have their voice heard and their film seen. As such, we have reached an agreement to license the exhibition rights for the film to Showtime, a subscriber-based, pay-cable network. We believe this is a solution that benefits everyone involved.

"This was not an easy decision to make. CBS does tackle controversial subjects and provide tough assessments of prominent historical figures and events, as we did with films such as Jesus, 9-11 and Hitler. We will continue to do so in the future."

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