Oprah's Anti-war Series

Oprah's Anti-war Series

Oprah’s Anti-war series was a series of episodes of The Oprah Winfrey Show that ran from early November 2002 until March 18, 2003. The series was supposed to begin in the Fall of 2001 but was delayed when the pilot episode inspired an enormous backlash. Winfrey was quoted as saying:

In a September 2002 interview with Phil Donahue Winfrey asked for advice on how one could do such shows without looking unpatriotic: “After we did a show called ‘Is War the Only Answer?’ I thought, Can’t you even ask the question without people attacking you”. Donahue replied by saying that dissent would become easier as time passed from September 11. Winfrey praised Donahue for plans to do anti-war shows on MSNBC saying “the bottom line is we need you, Phil, because we need to be challenged by the voice of dissent”, but was not yet ready to rejoin the anti-war movement herself. In the coming months, her position on joining the movement changed. Professor Daphne Read noted that in the aftermath of the attacks on the World Trade Center, The Oprah Winfrey Show, like all mainstream media, "was very closely tied to the Bush administration's response and the media rhetoric of America Under Attack,…however, the content of Winfrey's forum began to diverge from the purely consensual, giving voice to a much wider range of views.”