Coming Soon to Viewers Like You: “The Armenian Genocide”
The Ombudsman Column
PBS.org
March 17, 2006
By Michael Getler, PBS Ombudsman
On Monday evening, April 17, many PBS-affiliated television stations
across the country – including nine of the top 10 TV markets – will air
an hour-long documentary on “The Armenian Genocide” produced by the
independent, New York-based filmmaker Andrew Goldberg.
The new documentary deals with an old, and very sore, subject: the
deaths, mostly between 1915 and 1918, of anywhere from several hundred
thousand to perhaps 1.5 million Armenian civilians living in the eastern
Anatolia region of Turkey during the rule of the “Young Turks” of the
Ottoman Empire as World War I engulfed Europe. The program will air a
week before the annual “Armenian Remembrance Day” is marked in this country.
PBS officials, in a statement, said they “accepted ‘The Armenian
Genocide’ for the schedule based on its merits and because the
information it presents is an important part of recent world history.
Implicit in PBS’s decision to accept” the film for distribution, the
statement says, is PBS’s “recognition that the overwhelming majority of
historians have concluded that a genocide took place.”
Nevertheless, despite that recognition, PBS also went ahead and
commissioned Oregon Public Broadcasting to produce a 25-minute panel
discussion – which is already taped and scheduled to air immediately
after the documentary – that includes two scholars who support the view
implicit in the film’s title, and two who question, among other things,
the accuracy and use of the label “genocide.” The panel discussion is
called “The Armenian Genocide: Exploring the Issues.” It is moderated by
National Public Radio correspondent Scott Simon.
The New York Times quoted Lea Sloan, PBS’s vice president for media
relations, as saying the network “acknowledges and accepts that there
was a genocide.” But it ordered the panel discussion, she told the
Times, to explore more deeply the question of why the Turkish government
and its supporters continue to reject the genocide label. A PBS
statement later added that “the specific intent is to examine the
question of how historians can come to such radically divergent
conclusions about these events. An important part of the mission of
public television is to engender responsible discussion and illuminate
complex issues.”
Turkey has acknowledged that millions of people died – Muslims,
Christians and Jews – in the waning years of the Ottoman Empire, which
ended in the early 1920s when the Republic of Turkey was established.
But it has also always vehemently denied that a planned, systematic
extermination, or genocide, of the Christian Armenians took place. A few
scholars, including some in the U.S., also hold this view. Turkey is an
overwhelmingly Muslim country but, unlike most, it has a strong
tradition of separation of church and state.
Turkey is also perhaps this country’s most important ally in the Muslim
world, although its parliament, when the chips were down three years
ago, did not allow the U.S. Army’s 4th Infantry Division to use its
ports to get to Iraq in time for the invasion. (That action, and the
Pentagon’s failure to secure Turkish agreement beforehand, remains, in
my view, one of the bigger blunders of the war’s planning.)
If It’s Genocide, What Is There to Discuss?
The addition by PBS of a panel discussion in which people who are
described, by their critics, as “genocide deniers” are given air time
has provoked an outpouring of outrage from the Armenian-American
community. They view it as “perverse,” among other things, for PBS
officials to acknowledge the historical view of the genocide and then
have a panel including those who deny it.
Current.org, the bi-weekly newspaper covering public television in the
U.S., reported on March 6 that about 4,000 e-mails protesting the panel
show (it’s about 6,000 now, according to the latest PBS figures) and
2,000 supporting it had been received by PBS, and that an online
petition to cancel the panel had some 16,000 names attached at the time.
Pressure to cancel the panel also has come from two Democratic
congressmen where there are large Armenian-American communities – Rep.
Anthony Weiner from Brooklyn in New York City, and Rep. Adam. B. Schiff,
whose California district includes Pasadena and Burbank, just outside
Los Angeles.
Several key PBS-affiliated stations have said they do not intend to show
the panel discussion. Current.org also reported on March 6 that of PBS
stations in the top 10 markets, only those in Chicago and Houston plan
to air the follow-up panel.
In New York, the broadcasting director of the high-profile WNET/Thirteen
said it would air the documentary, which he described as having “a solid
journalistic approach to the subject matter,” but that it was decided to
reject the panel after it was screened by senior staffers there.
“The follow-up (panel) made no new points to the case outlined in the
documentary, added nothing substantive and was, in general a weak
program,” he said. By the time of their decision, “public opinion and
public display had accelerated among other people who had seen neither
the documentary nor the follow-up. But we made a conscious decision to
stick to our original editorial instincts, despite the pressure we were
getting from outside sources both to carry and not to carry either the
documentary or the follow-up.”
Goldberg, the filmmaker, told reporter Paul Farhi of The Washington Post
that he didn’t think the panel was necessary, “but I didn’t fight it. It
wasn’t up to me and I had nothing to do with its production.” He told
Current.org, “I knew that for our film we had done our homework six ways
from Sunday. Every fact was quadruple-checked and had been vetted by so
many people – historians, journalists – that I knew there was no way
that the after-show was an interpretation of our reporting.”
Earlier, the Los Angeles Times reported that residents of that city,
which has the largest ethnic Armenian community outside Armenia, will
not get to see either the documentary or the panel on KCET-TV. Rather,
the station has decided to broadcast a new French-made documentary on
the subject, “Le Genocide Armenien,” a decision that Goldberg described
as “bizarre.”
Farhi of The Post, who was perhaps the first to call attention to this
brewing controversy over the panel, especially, reported that the
$650,000 budget for the documentary was partly funded by Armenian-Americans.
Writing, But Not Seeing
In my role here as ombudsman, I’ve made it a rule to come at issues that
are raised by viewers, and as a viewer. I don’t write about programs
until after they have aired. I watch them as you would. So in this case,
I have not yet seen either the documentary or the panel, although both
have been recorded for some time now. And with few exceptions, the
people raising a fuss – and they are on both sides of this “genocide”
issue – haven’t seen the actual programs either. The battle is really
over whether the panel should be aired at all.
Yet I decided to write about it, in this preliminary stage, because the
circumstances surrounding this matter, the decision-making by PBS and
affiliated stations, the issues being raised and the pressures being
applied by interest groups strike me as concerning free speech and the
responsibilities that go with that freedom.
They also remind me just slightly about the journalistic debate in this
country a few weeks ago about whether to publish or show those offending
cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad to newspaper readers or
television reviewers here. This was months after they had been first
published by a Danish newspaper and at a time when they had become the
rationale for rioting and killing around the world by Muslim extremists
and a very big news story.
My feeling about the cartoons, as I wrote in an earlier column, was that
readers and viewers who wanted to see them – rather than just have some
editor describe them in words – and understand visually what this
rioting was all about ought to be able to view them. I thought that
those few U.S. newspapers and television networks that did find a way to
do that, did so with context and with no disrespect for religion, while
maintaining their respect for this country’s news values. I thought
newspaper Web sites, especially, offered a way to display one or two of
the cartoons without putting them in the printed paper so that people
who did not want to see them, or who would be offended, would not
randomly come across them. I said I thought PBS had also handled the
issue skillfully as a news story on the nightly “NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.”
The forthcoming presentation of “The Armenian Genocide” and the
follow-up panel have not been accompanied by violence or threats. But it
does involve some questions and background that seem worth noting and
thinking about in advance.
A Pretty Solid Judgment
I am not an authority on this subject at all. But from what reading and
research I’ve been able to do in anticipation of the program/panel, PBS
seems clearly correct when it states that “the overwhelming majority of
historians have concluded that a genocide took place.”
The Encyclopedia Britannica, for example, says that, “In what would
later be known as the first genocide of the 20th century, hundreds of
thousands of Armenians were driven from their homes, massacred, or
marched until they died.”
The online encyclopedia, Wikipedia, says that, “Several facts in
connection with the event are a matter of ongoing dispute between parts
of the international community and Turkey. Although it is generally
agreed that events said to comprise what is termed the Armenian Genocide
did occur, the Turkish government rejects that it was genocide on the
alleged basis that the deaths among the Armenians were not a result of a
state-sponsored plan of mass extermination, but from the result of
inter-ethnic strife, disease and famine during the turmoil of World War I.
“Despite this thesis,” it continues, “most Armenian, Western, and an
increasing number of Turkish scholars believe that the massacres were a
case of genocide. The event is also said to be the second-most studied
case of genocide, and often draws comparison with the Holocaust” against
the Jews in Nazi Germany. “To date 24 countries have officially
recognized and accepted its authenticity as Genocide,” the Wikipedia
reports.
There is also, the encyclopedia states: “a general agreement among
Western historians that the Armenian Genocide did happen. The
International Association of Genocide Scholars (the major body of
scholars who study genocide in North America and Europe), for instance,
formally recognize the event and consider it to be undeniable. Some
consider denial to be a form of hate speech or/and historical revisionism.
“However, this academic recognition has not always been followed by
governments and media. Many governments, including the United States,
the United Kingdom and Israel, do not officially use the word genocide
to describe these events, due in part to their strong political and
commercial ties with Turkey, although some individual government
officials have used the term.”
In her widely acclaimed, Pulitzer Prize-winning book, “A Problem from
Hell: America and the Age of Genocide,” author Samantha Power lays out
the evidence of the genocide against the Armenians at the time that was
headline news in The New York Times, and the strenuous but unsuccessful
efforts of the U.S. ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Henry Morgenthau
Sr., to get President Woodrow Wilson to intervene. In that book, Power
writes that “America’s nonresponse to the Turkish horrors established
patterns that would be repeated.”
The modern American official approach remains strained. Although some 37
U.S. states have, by legislation or proclamation, recognized the
Armenian genocide, and in 2000 a resolution made it through a key House
of Representatives committee for the first time, a resolution has not
made its way through the full House or the U.S. Senate.
In 1981, President Reagan was the last American president to use the
term genocide referring to the Armenians in a remembrance proclamation.
The first President Bush talked about the “terrible massacres” and
President Clinton talked about “a great tragedy of the twentieth
century: the deportations and massacres of roughly one and a half
million Armenians,” and the current President Bush talked about
“annihilation, forced exile and murder.” But they have stayed away
officially from the G-word, although Paul Glastris, editor of the
Washington Monthly, wrote in The Washington Post in 2001 that George W.
Bush, as a candidate, wrote to Armenian-American groups about the
earlier “genocidal campaign.”
Last June, Glenn Kessler of the Post reported that the American Foreign
Service Association had honored the U.S. Ambassador to Armenia, John M.
Evans, for publicly characterizing the mass killings as genocide but
then withdrew the honor. Evans’ comments stirred such a diplomatic
tempest, Kessler reported, that the diplomat had to retract his remarks
and later even clarify the retraction.
But Was It Genocide?
The American scholar most associated with questioning the genocide is
Justin A. McCarthy, a history professor at the University of Louisville
in Kentucky. He, along with a Turkish scholar, will be one of the two
panelists challenging the genocide designation. McCarthy does not appear
in the documentary. He recently told Farhi of The Post that the history
of that period is complex and does not lend itself to simple judgments
and labels and that calling the documentary “The Armenian Genocide” is
“a false description of a complicated history.” He said he could not
find evidence of 1.5 million Armenian deaths and also said three million
Turks died during that same period. “If saying both sides killed each
other makes me a genocide denier, then I’m a denier.”
My apologies for the length of this column, but it’s nothing compared to
what’s been written about this. And, at the risk of exhausting your
patience, what follows is a list of questions I submitted to top PBS
officials and their answers. In some cases the answers are slightly
abbreviated, with permission.
Q – One assumes that a documentary by a skilled producer will produce
the fullest exploration and informed judgment on an issue, that it would
be PBS’s statement on this long-running, hot-button issue. So why,
exactly, did PBS feel the need to do a panel? What was the reasoning
behind it?
That assumption is faulty. No one-hour documentary, no matter how
skillfully produced, can be said to represent the fullest exploration of
such a topic. This is why PBS’s editorial standards have long included
the goal to seek a diversity of perspectives on controversial subjects
in the national schedule over time. In this case, we judged THE ARMENIAN
GENOCIDE to be a credible documentary on a significant and
little-covered event. We worked with the producer through his final
editing to ensure that the program met our standards. We, through Oregon
Public Broadcasting, vetted its content with a historian and journalist
unconnected with the show. While we were satisfied that it was fair and
accurate, because the fact of genocide is still contested in terms the
documentary could only mention in brief, we commissioned a panel
discussion that could explore the issues in greater nuance and detail.
Q – Whose idea was it to have a panel; what was the process that led to
this decision, who was involved in the decision and who made the decision?
There was immediate consensus among the Senior Programming Team that a
follow up panel was a good idea. The decision to commission the
additional program was made as Andrew Goldberg was finishing the program
and as we were in contact with him requesting script revisions. The
acceptance of the documentary and the decision to do a follow up was
essentially one process. The follow-up program had a carefully
articulated goal – not to provide a platform for those interests who
deny the genocide, but to explore how serious historians do their work,
and how they can look at events and evidence and reach such different
conclusions. PBS’s chief programmers, John Wilson and Jacoba Atlas, are
responsible for the ultimate decision in this case.
Q – Did politics enter into the decision, or pressure from the Turks or
from anywhere inside or outside PBS? Did it intrude in any way? Turkey
is obviously an important ally, is trying to enter the European Union,
is a Muslim country.
No, the documentary was completed and PBS had commissioned the follow-up
long before we were contacted by anyone about the program. We obviously
knew of the international controversy surrounding the subject and the
attention being focused on Turkey’s position and internal laws, and the
fact that the U.S. stance on the use of the term “genocide” differs from
that of many other nations. It is true that this larger present day
status of the issues that stem from the history presented in the
documentary provided a compelling rationale in our minds for providing
the public with more information on the subject.
Q – How common is it for PBS to schedule, in advance, a panel to air
immediately after a program? Perhaps you could tell me some other
instances and when they took place.
There have been several examples in recent years. The P.O.V.
presentation of “Two Towns of Jasper” (about the dragging death of a
black man in a predominantly white town) was followed by a Ted
Koppel-anchored town meeting, which allowed the further exploration of
differing and passionate viewpoints engendered by the killing. Each
evening’s presentation of AVOIDING ARMAGEDDON (a series we ran over four
nights) that looked at the dangers of nuclear proliferation) was
followed up by a panel discussion led by Frank Sesno allowing the airing
of viewpoints not emphasized in the films. TRADE SECRETS, a Bill Moyers
investigation of the chemical industry’s knowledge of threats to public
and workplace safety, was followed up by a discussion with an industry
spokesman.
Q – Jacoba Atlas has been widely quoted as saying that this is “settled
history.” By having a panel, does this not suggest that PBS is leaving
room for doubt?
That a question is generally considered “settled” does not mean that it
does not warrant discussion. The fact is there are individuals,
organizations and countries (including the United States) that do not
see the Armenian Genocide as settled. The panel discussion recognizes
that fact and provides, in our opinion, information that should be
useful to the public understanding of the issue.
Q – Who funded the documentary and the panel?
The documentary was fully funded from outside sources – individuals,
foundations and corporations. A list is provided at the end of this
document. They are credited on screen per our normal disclosure
requirements. As is the case with all PBS underwriters, none of these
had access to program materials or influence over the production. PBS
(the National Programming Service budget) funded the panel.
Q – Several news articles have reported, according to Colgate professor
Peter Balakian, who was also an adviser on the documentary, that PBS
threatened to pull the documentary if he and another genocide scholar
declined to participate in the panel discussion. True?
This is absolutely not true. If Balakian declined, we would have sought
out other historians to speak as experts in Armenian history.
Q – Officials at WNET in New York say they made the decision not to air
the panel because after reviewing it they felt it made no new points
beyond the documentary. What was the PBS assessment of the panel that
went into your decision to distribute it? Did PBS consider it to be a
worthwhile, substantive addition to the documentary – and if so, in what
aspect – or was it automatically linked to the documentary and a
commitment to distribute it included in the original programming
decision however it came out?
We do feel the panel is a worthwhile addition to the documentary – if
only because it provided the rare, perhaps unprecedented, occasion for
experts holding differing views to be in the same room, let alone a TV
studio, participating in a discussion about such sensitively held
convictions. Scott Simon did a wonderful job of keeping the discussion
on track and asking tough questions of all panelists. And the panelists
did provide significant detail beyond that mentioned in the documentary
in support of their perspectives.
Neither the documentary nor the panel program was designated for common
carriage. We respect local stations’ decisions to carry both, or one, or
neither.
There was no automatic imperative to proceed with distributing the panel
discussion no matter how it turned out. The programming content team
screened the panel program shortly after the taping and felt it did the
job we had envisioned. Additional executive staff screened the show, and
concurred.
Finally, we never believed that this documentary or its follow-up would
be the last word on this subject, or bring an end to the generations-old
dispute. But, as one of the only institutions in America using media to
serve the public, we believe we have to take on tough subjects, even if
it means taking heat from both (or all) sides of a given issue. The
easier approach – one that most of America’s commercial media have
employed – is to steer clear of the subject altogether. While easier, we
do not believe that approach is in the public’s best interest.
Underwriters: THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
ABNOUS, SUZANNE M. AND RAZMIK; ASLANIAN, RICH; AVANESSIANS FAMILY
FOUNDATION; BABIKIAN, JEFFREY C.; BALIAN FAMILY FOUNDATION, INC.;
BEDROSIAN, MR. JOHN C. & JUDITH D.; CALIFORNIA COMMERCE CLUB; DEMIRJIAN,
YERVANT; FALCON MANAGEMENT CORPORATION; GRS MANAGEMENT; HAGOPIAN FAMILY
FOUNDATION; HAMPAR, ARMEN AND NORA; HAMPARIAN FAMILY FOUNDATION;
KABLANIAN, ADAM; KAZANJIAN BROS.; KECHEJIAN FOUNDATION; KECHEJIAN,
SARKIS; KEVORKIAN FOUNDATION, GRGE & ALICE; KHEDERIAN, ROBERT P. AND
LORA M.; KOUYOUMDJIAN, HAGOP AND ERANICA; KULHANJIAN STRAUCH FAMILY FDN;
LINCY FOUNDATION, THE; MANOOGIAN SIMONE FOUNDATION; MARDIGIAN
FOUNDATION; MEKHJIAN, DR. HAROUTUNE & SHAKE FDN; MULLER USA, FRANCK;
SIRAN & ANOUSH MATHEVOSIAN CTBL FDN; SOBEL/DUNN FDN, JONATHAN & MARCIA;
ST. GREGORY/ ILLUM ARMENIAN CHURCH; UNITED ARMENIAN CHARITIES; VARIOUS;
VARIOUS INDIVIDUALS; VARIOUS PRIVATE FOUNDATIONS; WAGNER, JEANETTE S.
AND PAUL A.
So . . .
. . . where does this preliminary back and forth about the still unseen
documentary and panel discussion leave me? More illuminated but still
uneasy about a couple of things, given the intense pressures exerted by
both sides.
One is the participation of Armenian-Americans in the funding of the
documentary; not because I fear they had any influence or because I
don’t trust PBS and the producer to prevent any influence, but because
it would just be better to not have it. I know money is tight and I
don’t know how this would get funded otherwise, but there it is; a
factor in my head.
Another involves the different assessment of the panel’s value by WNET
in New York. The panel was funded by PBS and PBS officials offer worthy
explanations of why they felt the need for it. My presumption is that
the one-hour documentary does explore, at least in some fashion, the
case against the genocide label. The officials at WNET, who reviewed the
panel discussion, said they didn’t think it made any new points to the
case outlined in the documentary and added nothing substantive. The
producer, Andrew Goldberg, said he didn’t see any need for a panel.
So the documentary, that the Armenians don’t seem to object to going in,
is funded partly by the Armenians. Then the panel, which they clearly
don’t want, is funded by PBS. So one could argue, as PBS does, that the
public is best served by the combination. But if the documentary does
indeed explore the other side, and the panel doesn’t add anything, as
WNET suggests, that would raise anew questions about why the panel was
felt to be necessary. My instincts, without having seen anything, are
with PBS’s desire to have the fullest airing possible of this historic
event. But let’s wait and see.
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