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Saturday, September 7, 2002
12:00 p.m.
US Jewish lobby tastes PBS blood
PBS has demonstrated the unwisdom of straying too far from the Sharon-rimming media herd.
'Publish, be damned, and cringingly withdraw' seems to be the PBS response to what appears to be a rather well-coordinated attack from the Jewish lobby on a page on their site supporting a show on the Arab-American experience since 9/11.
The page contained a potted history of Palestine - oops, Israel, that should be, of course! - and may indeed have included one or two factual errors. What it says now is
"The purpose of this Web site is to be a companion piece to CAUGHT IN THE CROSSFIRE: Arab Americans in Wartime, a documentary which looks at the lives of three Arab Americans living in New York City following the events of September 11.
The "Homelands" section of the site drew attention away from the message of the film. Our goal was to provide background information that contextualized the cultural histories of the people whose lives are chronicled in the film. In an effort to keep the focus on the current experience of Arab Americans, we have removed that section of the site."
This article gets to the heart of the matter: PBS and its member stations (including 13WNET in New York City) are entirely dependent on handouts from government, sponsors and others.
Just for the benefit of the terminally obtuse, it states that
"among the trustees of Channel 13's parent, the Educational Broadcasting Corporation, are some of the city's most prominent Jewish leaders, including the chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Mortimer Zuckerman; the chairman of the United Jewish Appeal-Federation of Jewish Philanthropies of New York, Morris Offit, and the chairman of the Jewish Theological Seminary, Gershon Kekst."
It also mentions that
"The [Corporation for Public Broadcasting, producer of a good deal of PBS output] gets about $342 million a year from the federal government."
Not for much longer if it doesn't watch its step! As
"The president of the Zionist Organization of America, Morton Klein, said......'[it was troubling] for taxpayers to pay for such rubbish."'
And
"The associate director of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, Alex Safian, said [that] congressional leaders may want to ask about the matter before 'rubberstamping the next appropriation for PBS'."
I think we're pretty well all getting the picture!
Even
"The national director of the Anti-Defamation League, Abraham Foxman"
got involved, calling the Web site
"a serious hatchet job".
Who said Americans had no sense of irony?
The matter doesn't stop there, though. The show in question was
"...funded in part.....by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. The Evangelical Lutheran Church takes an activist stance on Middle East policy questions; its presiding bishop, Mark Hanson, last week issued a statement opposing American military action against Saddam Hussein."
Again, the implication is clear: public broadcasting can't take tainted money and expect its other funding not to be affected.
Perhaps the site was biased and inaccurate - there's stuff that's biased and inaccurate - from one viewpoint or another - on the site of every news outlet. The point is the apparent ease with which this particular page was identified and sufficient pressure brought to bear to have it removed, with maximum embarrassment to PBS.
(It sounds to me as if this is not an isolated incident, that PBS has a history of failure to accommodate the Jewish lobby, and that this is its reward.)
It's a warning to other US news outlets - that depend on government money, or advertising or on organisations that are so dependent - that, if they know what's good for them, they'll cleave to the party line . The Likud line, that is.
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