IT’S BACK
By Michael Getler
PBS – Public Broadcasting
its_back.html
Dec 18 2008
What is broadly described as the "Armenian Genocide" — the epic
saga of what many, but not all, historians and many, but not all,
countries describe as the genocide against the Armenians carried
out by the Young Turks of the Ottoman Empire during World War I —
will never be forgotten. Nor should it be. Nor, it appears, will
PBS’s role in presenting this century-old controversy be forgotten.
More than two years ago, in April 2006, PBS aired a one-hour
documentary titled "The Armenian Genocide" by independent New York
filmmaker Andrew Goldberg and Oregon Public Broadcasting. It was, as I
wrote at the time, "a powerful and skillfully edited production" that
was no "on-the one-hand, on-the-other-hand account. This was a film
that sought to validate the genocide and nail down the issue with the
best evidence the producers could bring to the screen and into American
households." I actually wrote three columns about this program, the
last one, on April 21, 2006, includes links to the two earlier columns.
The reason for three columns is because the issue remains intensely
controversial among some — Turks, in particular, and a small
but committed collection of historians who dispute the mainstream
view and the appropriateness of the term genocide. The issue is so
controversial that PBS convened a televised panel of four scholars
on opposing sides charged with "Exploring the Issues" that appeared
immediately after the 2006 documentary was broadcast. Many stations,
however, including some big ones with lots of Armenians in the local
population, chose not to air the panel that included an American and
a Turkish participant who disagree with the genocide label.
As I said in that last column in April 2006, it seemed to me that
this was not what one would call a balanced issue and that there is
"a more substantial body of evidence and historical assessment on
the side of what happened to the Armenians." This was a sophisticated
documentary that made clear its assessment but also drew at least some
attention to the other side of the story so it did not, in my view,
violate PBS editorial guidelines. The panel that was tacked on could
have added more perspective from the Turkish side, but it was only
25 minutes and I thought it was poorly handled.
The point here is not to go over this unending controversy but
I bring it up, in shortened form, because late in November, PBS’s
Frontline World posted online a film called "Turkey: A Family Erased,"
a 12-minute documentary about an Armenian American family in search
of its ancestral Armenian home in what is now eastern Turkey. The
film is touching in ways that such films can be, and the young Turkish
children they find in the village are as warm and charming as any. But
the father makes clear at the outset that his ancestors were victims
of a series of massacres at the hands of the Turks in what he calls
the first genocide of the 20th century.
So, as was the case with the first documentary, members of the Turkish
American community and the Assembly of Turkish American Associations
have mounted another large e-mail campaign (much of it sent to me)
and a protest letter to PBS criticizing this as "little more than
a paid advertisement for a single view on a genuine and unfinished
historic debate."
I’m not going to go over all of this again but you can watch this short
film on the Frontline World Web site and you can also read well-stated
criticisms, and responses by Frontline World that include references
to my earlier columns, as well as a commentary by the filmmaker,
George Kachadorian.
There are some things about this new online film that bothered me,
but I don’t think it violated Frontline World’s editorial guidelines
for what it calls these "Rough Cut" films. Its guidelines state:
"Rough Cut videos will adhere to the same rigorous journalistic and
production standards as all FRONTLINE/World reports, but they may be
more idiosyncratic, more personal, more unconventional than our usual
television documentaries." This film is certainly more idiosyncratic
and personal than what one might expect.
The film is about the family of the filmmaker, an American of
Armenian descent. One of the things that I found bothersome about
the 2006 documentary for television was that the names of families
and foundations supporting and paying for that film seemed to be
overwhelmingly Armenian American. Another thing that was troublesome
about the 2006 TV production — more specifically about the panel
that was added on — was that congressmen in New York, California
and elsewhere where there are large numbers of Armenian Americans
lobbied hard, and with some success, to have the panel excluded
from the broadcast. The TV documentary, as I said earlier, was a
sophisticated production. This 12-minute film is not. It states its
case, through the family, unequivocally.
Frontline World answers that observation this way: "While we recognize
that some may dispute official estimates of the Armenian dead, and
that there remains plenty of room for scholarly inquiry into the deeply
complicated events of that time, we think Kachadorian’s piece, in its
unqualified assertion of genocide, is squarely within the current
scholarly consensus on the issue. We await future opportunities
to tell more stories — from all possible angles and viewpoints —
that help us reckon with this difficult history."
That’s a fair response. Nevertheless, this sort of home movie on
Frontline World surprised me and it struck me as odd that PBS, having
broadcast an earlier, careful and scholarly documentary, plus an
unusual follow-up panel — both of which attracted national attention,
controversy and thousands of e-mails on all sides — would come back
to this topic in this fashion.