USIA Threatens to Back Out of Treaty in Row on Export of Films

The U.S. Information Agency, faced with a series of court rulings striking down its attempts to regulate foreign distribution of documentary films, said this week that it will back out of an international film treaty if the agency’s latest package of regulations is rejected on appeal.

The move, which could effectively limit the access of thousands of documentary film makers to foreign markets, followed three successive court rulings holding that USIA regulations for certifying U.S. films are unconstitutional.

In the most recent decision, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals called the regulations, under which educational film makers can export their work free of costly duties and taxes, “a virtual license to engage in censorship.”

The court agreed, in part, with a coalition of civil rights groups that claimed that the USIA has used the regulations to deny duty-free certification for politically controversial films.

The agency has since redrafted the regulations, but U.S. District Judge A. Wallace Tashima in Los Angeles has found the revised regulations unconstitutional as well.

In papers filed in Los Angeles federal court this week, USIA Director Charles Z. Wick said he will recommend that the United States terminate its participation in the international treaty governing the exchange of educational materials, known as the Beirut Agreement, if the appeals court upholds Tashima’s most recent ruling on the revised regulations.

“Further attempts to draft regulations which, as envisioned by this court, would be less content-based and more ‘broadly’ define the categories of films which may be certified would, in my opinion, deviate from the requirements of . . . the treaty to such an extent that the agency would no longer be following the language and intent of the treaty,” Wick told the court.

Attorney David Cole of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which is challenging the regulations, called the agency’s new position “irresponsible” and compared it to “the kid who loses the football game and says I’m taking my ball home now.”

“They’re threatening that if they lose the lawsuit, to drop out of the Beirut Agreement, and the effect of that is to harm everybody, all film makers in the United States,” Cole said. “It would have a devastating effect on the international distribution of all American documentary films.”

Justice Department officials said the USIA has already drafted the regulations to conform as closely as possible to the language of the treaty. Any further refinements would not allow the government to uphold the provisions of the treaty itself, which asks participating governments to assure that films selected for duty-free certification are truly “representative, authentic and accurate,” and “augment international understanding and good will,” officials said.

“The court asked us to strip out excess verbiage. We’ve done it, and if there is still a problem, the problem is not with the regulations, it’s with the treaty,” said Deputy Assistant Atty. Gen. James M. Spears.

The 1949 Beirut Agreement, designed to promote worldwide communication, allows makers of educational, scientific or cultural films that “instruct or inform” to avoid paying import taxes in other countries. It is up to the exporting country to certify which films qualify.

High Import Duties

Films that are not certified may still be imported in most countries, but film makers say import duties are so high that foreign distributors often refuse to handle films that are not certified.

Among the films denied U.S. certification in the past are documentaries depicting drug problems among America’s urban youth, an award-winning film about the dangers of uranium mining and a film the agency said left the impression that “the U.S. has been the aggressor” in the Nicaragua civil war. The plaintiffs claimed that certification was denied because the films advanced views counter to those of the Reagan Administration.

But U.S. officials said they would not be complying with the treaty if they did not at least require, as do the revised regulations struck down by Tashima in May, that films which promote a particular point of view acknowledge a difference of opinion or another point of view.