Dee Flint wrote:
Movies and novels, etc often take artistic license with the facts in order
to produce more impact. That is true of both dramas and comedies. So any
one who relies on such items for their history is going to be using a far
amount of misinformation. Even the news media takes artistic license by the
selection of what facts and speculation to report since they are going for
ratings.

Well said, Dee!

There's also the fact that opinions differ about what is worth
reporting and what is not, how much detail to report, how much history
to tell, etc.

It should also be remembered that before Vietnam and particularly
Watergate, the US news media tended to avoid criticizing the current
administration. They'd almost always give the president - indeed,
almost anyone in the government - the benefit of the doubt, as it were.
All that changed after Watergate.

The following website:

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nsa/cuba_mis_cri/

includes a critique of the recent film "Thirteen Days", specifically
pointing out how its omissions can leave the viewer with a rather
distorted and inaccurate view of what caused the crisis in the first
place. That film is recent, too, not 40 years old.

73 de Jim, N2EY