That was not directly what was said, but it was heavily implied yes. It was the part about Elfs, Dwarfs and humans all accepting "the gifts" of Annatar in the books.
The showrunners found that unbelievable, they figured people would need some kind of pressing need to accept something "so suspicious". That does imply very heavily that they have no faith in the story that Tolkien wrote and it explains why it happened differently in the show.
The problem is here once again that these baffoons are unable to understand the world that Tolkien build and can only see things from their real-world perspective. A lesson that every kid these days learns is "Do not take candy from a stranger" and they applied this to a fantasy world.
Our kids learn this because there are deviants in this world who would abuse their innocent want for sweets, but the same does not necessarily have to apply to the LOTR world, because it is a fantasy world in which the author decides if such a mistrust is ingrained in the people or not. Tolkien clearly did not, because his world is a lot more innocent then reality (no sex, very clear lines between good and evil).
In fact it makes much more sense that the middle-earth people develop a rule like this AFTER Annatars betrayal happens, taking it as the spark for a radical change in thinking. But before that they are accepting the gifts because they did not have the same suspicions that a modern real person would have. And that is unfathomable for the showrunners.
The showrunners have in many cases shown their inability to seperate reality from the fantasy world they are supposed to work with and this is just one of those instances. The disgusting part is that they disguise their own incompetence to work within the rules of the authors world as a failure in Tolkiens writing.
Hence @
Azsune is quite correct. The runners did think they were improving on Tolkiens writing, because for them there was a plothole at this point. Their failure is to recognize that this plothole only exists in their own minds, because they are unable to leave the constraints of the real world behind.
Of course, when I say "unable" I might as well say "unwilling" since writing a good story always had to play second fiddle to their message of social reform and virtue signaling that was the priority of the whole project and that goal is much harder to reach if you seperate the world you tell a story about from the reality that you want to influence.