Mahony, KCET Make Peace, Disagree Anew

Ending a yearlong dispute with Cardinal Roger M. Mahony over televising a documentary that assailed the Roman Catholic Church’s response to AIDS, KCET Channel 28 has revised its broadcast guidelines and pledged to offer a “balance of views” in all future programming.

The accord announced Tuesday was reached after face-to-face negotiations between Mahony and station executives that followed the airing last year of “Stop the Church,” a film that chronicled a 1989 demonstration by AIDS activists in New York’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

How long the truce between Mahony and KCET will hold remains to be seen. While both sides issued conciliatory statements Tuesday, they almost immediately found themselves in the midst of a disagreement over whether the new guidelines could prevent a rebroadcast of the controversial film.

Against the backdrop of a satirical song entitled “The Vatican Rag,” protesters in the documentary were seen disrupting church services and spilling Communion wafers.

The program outraged many Catholics as well as individuals of other faiths and prompted Mahony, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Los Angeles, to lead a boycott that cost the public broadcast station an estimated $130,000 in pledges. KCET’s annual budget is about $40 million. The station said it received 14,000 responses from viewers on both sides of the controversy.

Denouncing the film last fall, Mahony said that by airing it, KCET was “giving encouragement to all the hate-mongers in our midst who would burn, loot and vandalize houses of worship or disrupt religious services in the name of one cause or another.”

On Tuesday, Mahony said that he was so pleased with the new statement that he was renewing his own subscription to KCET and encouraged others to do the same.

“Based on KCET’s program policy statement, I believe that the concerns and sensitivities of the Catholic community, as well as other communities and groups in the Los Angeles area, will be considered in connection with future programming,” Mahony said.

KCET President William H. Kobin welcomed Mahony’s “expression of friendship and support for KCET and hope for a continuing positive relationship.”

But as soon as the two sides announced the accord, they were publicly disagreeing again over whether the program could be broadcast under the new guidelines.

Mahony’s office said “Stop the Church” or any similar program could “probably not” be aired under KCET’s new policy.

“I don’t think that’s the station’s view,” countered Barbara Goen, KCET vice president for public information. She added, “The new guidelines would not prevent the station from broadcasting that.”

Asked, then, what the cardinal gained, she replied, “I think that’s a question for him.”

Later, Mahony said through his spokesman, Bill Rivera: “I was personally assured by the leaders of KCET that something like this would not happen again.”

David M. Smith, executive director of the Los Angeles chapter of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, told The Times that KCET assured him that “Stop the Church” could be broadcast under the new guideline.

“The cardinal,” said Smith, “is most likely reading something into their statement that is just not there, bless his heart.”

The statement drew plaudits from filmmaker Robert Hilferty, who produced the controversial documentary. But in a telephone interview from New York, he wondered about the conflicting views of the revised policy. “How can the two issue a joint statement and have completely different interpretations?”

As for the “positive relationship” with the cardinal mentioned by KCET President Kobin, Hilferty cautioned, “I hope for the same thing, too, just as long as that friendship doesn’t mean the cardinal represents some kind of censoring arm for public television.”

When the film was released last year, Mahony said the station should be held morally and possibly legally responsible “for every future act of terrorism against churches, temples and synagogues” and that it had surrendered to “blackmail” by gay activists. At the time, gay activists threatened to tie up the station’s telephone lines during its pledge drive to prevent callers from getting through.

Despite Mahony’s protests, station management put the 24-minute film on the air--followed by an hourlong discussion. Mahony declined to participate in the discussion, as did the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, which complained that filmmaker Hilferty and members of another gay organization had been excluded.

Mahony took out advertisements in The Times and the Los Angeles Daily News asking the station’s contributors to consider withdrawing their financial support.

George Pla, a prominent Latino businessman who is president of Cordoba Corp., resigned from the KCET board and withdrew a pledge of $100,000. In addition, an estimated 1,900 station subscribers canceled pledges totaling an estimated $114,000, the station said Tuesday.

But the controversy also won the station new allies, who sent in checks totaling $85,000 in direct response to the controversy, KCET’s Goen said. Overall, there was a net loss in pledge income of approximately $130,000.

Although agreed to last May, the revised policy was not announced until Tuesday, in part because the two sides could not agree on how a joint news release should characterize it. KCET officials stressed that the station saw the latest draft as a “clarification” and not as a “new policy,” as the archdiocese preferred.

The new program policy statement has been shortened to three paragraphs from the seven-paragraph policy in effect a year ago. Unlike the old statement, the new version includes the word accuracy in its list of broadcast standards. It also explicitly calls for “a balance of views” for the first time but nonetheless notes that it allows them wide latitude.

The statement says in part, “KCET’s program mission is to provide the culturally diverse community of Southern and Central California with relevant and intelligent programming, which while adhering to the highest Public Broadcast System standards for quality, fairness and accuracy may reinforce or challenge commonly held beliefs.”