President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference at the White House in Washington, DC on Friday, Dec. 19, 2014. Carolyn Kaster/AP
In his end-of-year press conference today, President Barack Obama called the decision by Sony Pictures Entertainment to cancel the release of its film The Interview a “mistake.”
“I am sympathetic to the threats they face,” Obama said. “Having said all that, yes, I think they made a mistake….
“We cannot have a society in which some dictator someplace can start imposing censorship here in the United States,” Obama said. “Because if somebody is able to intimidate folks out of releasing a satirical movie, imagine what they will start doing when they see a documentary they don’t like or news reports they don’t like? Or, even worse, imagine if producers and distributors and others start engaging in self-censorship because they don’t want to offend the sensibilities of somebody whose sensibilities probably need to be offended.”
It’s important to point out that Hollywood is already engaging in self-censorship in the wake of the Sony hack; on Wednesday, another entertainment company, New Regency, pulled the plug on a Steve Carell film set in Pyonyang before the film had even hit production.
Actor George Clooney, in an interview yesterday with Deadline, noted that Sony didn’t want to cancel its film, but had no choice once movie theaters started canceling screenings.
“Sony didn’t pull the movie because they were scared; they pulled the movie because all the theaters said they were not going to run it,” he said. “And they said they were not going to run it because they talked to their lawyers and those lawyers said if somebody dies in one of these, then you’re going to be responsible.”
But he expressed the same sentiments Obama did in saying that industries should not bow to threats—especially ones that trample on the First Amendment. “The truth is, you’re going to have a much harder time finding distribution now. And that’s a chilling effect.”
President Obama added today that he wished Sony “had spoken to me first” before making its decision. “I would have told them, do not get into a pattern in which you are intimidated by these kinds of criminal attacks.”
He likened it to the idea of Boston canceling the Boston Marathon out of fear that another attack might strike that event.
“I think all of us have to anticipate that occasionally there are going to be breaches like this, they are going to be costly,… but we can’t start changing our patterns of behavior any more than we stop going to a football game because there might be the possibility of a terrorist attack..lets not get into that way of doing business.”
Obama’s statement followed an announcement this morning from the FBI that it had evidence attributing the Sony hack to North Korea. The evidence provided by the FBI in its announcement, however, has still not convinced many skeptical security professionals that North Korea is behind the attack.
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