Protests Greet TV Debate on Genocide

A taped 25-minute panel discussion that is to follow a PBS documentary about Turkey’s role in the massacre of Armenians during and after World War I, scheduled to air in April, has prompted protests by thousands of Armenian Americans and two congressmen.

But Angelenos will not get a chance to see either the one-hour film, “The Armenian Genocide” by filmmaker Andrew Goldberg, or the debate featuring two academics who deny that a genocide took place and two who maintain that it did, because KCET-TV does not plan to air them.

Instead, KCET-TV, the PBS station in Los Angeles, which has the largest ethnic Armenian community outside Armenia, will broadcast a French documentary, “Le Genocide Armenien,” which the station selected in January, said Bohdan Zachary, executive director of programming.

KCET was not swayed by protests, Zachary said Monday. Station executives, he said, had never planned to air Goldberg’s documentary because they preferred the French film’s comprehensive take on the topic.

The Armenian genocide of 1915 to 1918 claimed the lives of about 1.2 million Armenians under the Ottoman Empire, which became the modern republic of Turkey. The Turkish government disputes that a genocide took place. April has become a time to remember those killed.

“Our decision has nothing to do with the controversy whatsoever,” Zachary said. “The approach of the documentary we’ve selected is much more interesting.... We’re spending a lot of money to acquire this film. The easy thing would be to take the PBS film at no cost.”

Joining the fray is Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank) and Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.). Schiff is collecting signatures for a petition asking PBS not to air the panel. Weiner held a news conference Saturday urging the same.

“It is a matter of journalistic ethics and academic excellence to hear the historical facts and not give equal time to air the spurious views of those who deny history,” Schiff said Monday.

Although more than 14,000 people have signed an online petition urging PBS not to distribute the discussion produced by Oregon Public Broadcasting and taped a month ago, PBS executives have received only about 200 e-mails on the subject, said spokeswoman Lee Sloan. She said PBS has no plans to withhold distribution of the program, but several stations across the nation, including KOCE in Orange County, are choosing to air the documentary without the panel discussion.

Goldberg said he was puzzled by KCET’s decision to air a French documentary instead of his film, adding that the station hosted a fundraiser for his movie in 2004 at which he raised a substantial portion of its budget.

“It’s bizarre,” he said. “Why they would choose to run a foreign film in the place of my film, and then not air my film at any other time, is a mystery to me.”

In fact, Steve Dadaian, the Western region chairman of the Armenian National Committee of America, recommends viewing Goldberg’s film, which includes a rarely seen interview with Rafael Lemkin, the Polish Jewish lawyer who coined the term “genocide.”

“There’s value in the film just for that one interview,” said Dadaian, who has viewed both films. “There’s no question about it that the French film has more facts. I have no problem with them showing either one. I just don’t really understand PBS’ position. They feel the documentary is truthful, but they feel they have to follow it with a panel with purported academics on it. It’s so stupid.”

Sloan said the taxpayer-supported broadcasting service commissioned the panel to help viewers understand the debate about the Armenian deaths, not to raise questions about whether a genocide occurred.

The panel discussion was moderated by National Public Radio host Scott Simon and taped last month at a studio in Washington. One of the participants, Colgate University humanities professor Peter Balakian, said he repeatedly tried to have the session canceled but was told by PBS that the documentary would not air without it. Balakian and Taner Akcam, a visiting professor at the University of Minnesota, take the position that the killings were genocide. Justin A. McCarthy, a history professor at the University of Louisville, and Omer Turan, a history professor at Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey, deny that a genocide took place.

Finding himself between “a rock and a hard place” because he believed that the film was too important to be killed, Balakian agreed to participate.

“This is so ethically horrid,” he said. “It’s as if we are trying to reshape history and create another side when there is no other side. We figured if we had to put ourselves in such an unethical situation, there was something to be gained by a scholar of Turkish origin and a scholar of Armenian origin speaking together. But the panel is an absurdity, something right out of the world of George Orwell.”

At the heart of the protests by the Armenian American community is the point that PBS would never follow a documentary on the genocide of Jews during World War II with a panel of Holocaust deniers. In a Feb. 24 letter to Dadaian, PBS co-chief program executive Jacoba Atlas said the comparison was not analogous because Germany has taken responsibility for the Holocaust.

“Most Americans do not understand what happened to Armenians; too often news organizations have ignored this part of world history,” Atlas said. “We strongly believe in the power of truth to come through in debate.”