PBS STANDS BY ‘ARMENIAN GENOCIDE’
By Joanna Weiss, Globe Staff
Boston Globe
April 18 2006
Andrew Goldberg realized how powerful a word could be — particularly
a powerful word like “genocide” — when he got a call, several years
ago, from a PBS station in Fresno, Calif. A studio full of Armenians,
answering phones for a pledge drive, had been watching his 2001
film “The Armenians: A Story of Survival.” When a Turkish scholar
acknowledged that his country’s massacre of Armenians was genocide,
the room burst into applause.
For decades, the Turkish government has resisted the “genocide” label
for the events of 1915-1918, insisting that the deaths of 1.5 million
Armenians were part of a civil war. Turkey has lobbied vigorously to
keep the US government from declaring the killings a genocide. The New
York Times only officially added “Armenian genocide” to its stylebook
in 2004. The Globe, before 2003, would only use the term “genocide”
in direct quotations when referring to the Armenian genocide.
So it is significant that Goldberg’s latest documentary, which airs
tonight at 10 on Channel 2, is called “The Armenian Genocide” — no
equivocation, no hint of doubt. And, in a sense, it’s surprising that
PBS decided to air the film, title and all. “I shopped it at multiple
cable networks,” Goldberg said. “Nobody would touch this thing.”
PBS, he said, “never wavered. They were strong. I really appreciated
that.”
Critics have accused PBS of squandering that good will by commissioning
a companion piece: a half-hour panel discussion that includes Turkish
scholars who deny that a genocide took place.
Armenian-Americans and their allies say the forum gives voice to an
untenable point of view; some have compared it to following a World
War II film with a panel stocked with Holocaust deniers. Several
major PBS stations, including Boston’s WGBH, have chosen not to air it.
Lea Sloan, PBS’s vice president of communications, said the panel
doesn’t question the genocide, but explores “how historians can come
to such radically divergent conclusions about these events.” She
said PBS has produced discussions to accompany about a dozen recent
documentaries, including a May 2005 film on the Rwandan genocide and
a January 2004 film on Alzheimer’s disease.
And she noted that the panel’s title is “Armenian Genocide:
Exploring the Issues.” That’s “an implicit positioning,” Sloan said,
an acknowledgement that genocide took place. That, in itself, is
a sign of how much has changed since the 1980s, when Boston-based
filmmaker Ted Bogosian proposed a documentary on the subject. At
the time, Bogosian said, he had to leave his job as a staff producer
at WGBH-based “Nova” and form his own company to make his film. He
had to pitch the documentary as a first-person account, a search
for his roots. And when the documentary was set to air, he said,
PBS downplayed the publicity, expecting — correctly — that the
Turkish backlash would be fierce.
Bogosian was propelled by his ethnic background and his journalistic
hunger. He snuck into Turkey, filmed a genocide survivor in her
village in eastern Turkey, and retrieved Turkish war crimes trial
transcripts that corroborated her story. The resulting film, 1988’s
“An Armenian Journey,” was “the most satisfying credit I’ve ever had,”
Bogosian said.
Like Bogosian, Goldberg sets out to settle history; his film features
omniscient narration, context from scholars, and harrowing footage
from the time, along with descriptions of Armenian death marches and
suffering families.
Goldberg includes official denials from both Turkish leaders and
Turks on the streets. He acknowledges that Armenians murdered some
Turks at the time of World War I, and that Armenian terrorists
slaughtered Turkish officials in the 1980s. But he also features
vivid testimonials from Turks who recall their own relatives’ stories
of being encouraged to kill Armenians. And he shows footage of an
interview with Rafael Lemkin, who coined the term “genocide” in the
1940s, partly in reference to the Armenian slaughter.
The result is so balanced that a panel discussion seemed unnecessary,
said Lucy Sholley, a spokeswoman for WGBH. (KCET, in Los Angeles,
is showing neither Goldberg’s film nor the discussion; it is airing
a French documentary on the Armenian genocide.)
Bogosian said he’s cheered by the fact that so many stations have
turned down the panel — and that so many more scholars and journalists
have been focusing on the Armenian massacre. Over time, he said,
“the lens sharpens, the filter changes, and this stuff stands out in
much more sharp relief.”
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