Neo-Nazi ‘Voice’ Finds a Forum on Public-Access : Television: Wiesenthal Center criticizes airing of the series but some cable operators are bound by franchise agreements.

Ernst Zundel has been in and out of Canadian jails a total of 11 times over nine years for violating Canada’s so-called “hate laws,” before he was cleared by the Canadian Supreme Court in 1992 on constitutional grounds.

Tired of testing the Canadian system, the neo-Nazi apologist who claims the Holocaust was a hoax, now believes he has found a forum where he cannot be denied: the free outlet of American public-access cable television.

He is bringing his cross-country campaign to Los Angeles, where at least a dozen cable companies have either shown or are scheduled to show his low-budget series of 50 half-hour programs called “Another Voice of Freedom.” The Simon Wiesenthal Center, a leading Jewish human rights organization, sent letters this week to many of those companies imploring them to reconsider their plans.

“You mean in America, the last bastion of free speech, the censors are hard at work again? Don’t they ever sleep?” asked the German-born Zundel, 56, during a telephone interview from his home in Toronto.

The Wiesenthal Center has been dogging Zundel for two years, from Canada to the United States, where it has helped get his TV series yanked from two satellites and a handful of broadcast TV and radio stations. The center is most concerned now by the timing of Zundel’s efforts in Los Angeles.

Worldwide ceremonies begin the week of April 24 to commemorate Yom Hashoah, the annual memorial for victims of the Holocaust, the mass slaughter of European civilians and especially Jews by the Nazis during World War II.

Yet cable-TV subscribers living in such areas as Los Angeles, Hollywood, Santa Monica, Van Nuys, Riverside and Garden Grove will be presented with Zundel’s program, which suggests that Jewish prisoners were treated humanely, fed well, given jobs, even allowed to exercise daily in a swimming pool.

“I have no doubt there will be demonstrations in front of one or more of the cable facilities by the (Holocaust) survivors,” said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, who can’t understand why a foreigner living in Canada has the right to air whatever he wants in America. “To have that kind of insensitivity directed at them, and partially paid for by them as consumers in the community, cannot be ignored.”

Despite their controversial views, the “Voice of Freedom” episodes are presented in a low-key and matter-of-fact fashion to avoid the kind of reaction white-supremacist Tom Metzger received several years ago when his public-access shows were pulled by some cable companies due to fear of inciting violence.

Still, one cable operator has already responded to Wiesenthal’s urging. Crown Cable in Pasadena aired an episode of “Voice of Freedom” last week. Even though there was only one complaint from a viewer, the system canceled plans to air the weekly program again.

“When you get down to defending what is artistic versus what is offensive, you get into shades of gray,” said Elbert Dyson, executive director of the Pasadena Community Access Corp. “Rather than open Pandora’s box, we would much rather respond with sensitivity to the community.”

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Other cable companies don’t have it so easy.

In order to provide cable service for a community, a company must sign a franchise agreement with the city. Under the 1984 Cable Act, the cable operator must grant free TV equipment and on-air access to the public, providing the programming meets minimum production standards and does not contain obscene content.

“Public access was meant to be a community forum,” explains Jonathan Kotler, an associate professor of journalism at USC who teaches media law. “Certainly this guy (Zundel), or people like him, would have a right to stand up in the local park and spew whatever venom he wants with the protection of the First Amendment, and public-access channels are the same way. They’re the electronic community’s town forum. People don’t go to the parks anymore, but they do turn on their televisions.”

Crown Cable is not obliged to air programming unless it’s sponsored by a member of the community, according to its franchise agreement with the city of Pasadena. Since Zundel’s program was mailed in, Crown Cable had no problem pulling it.

But the 14 cable franchisees in Los Angeles--with such systems as Buenavision, Century and Continental--fall under the jurisdiction of the Los Angeles Department of Telecommunications.

“Basically, what you have in our franchises is a first-come, first-serve model of access, where anyone requesting to be on an access channel would receive first-come, first-serve treatment without discrimination,” said David Hankin, assistant general manager for the Department of Telecommunications. “There’s no residency requirements in our franchise agreements.”

That doesn’t sit well with several public-access managers and employees who declined to give their names for this story. They would like to cancel “Voice of Freedom” but feel that their hands are tied, fearing sanctions if they violate their franchise agreements.

“We feel it puts us in a very difficult position,” one access manager confided. “We’re here to service our community, yet we’re catering to people all over the country, sometimes all over the world. If somebody sends me a program from Yugoslavia, I have to play it. That’s the rule.”

Rabbi Cooper is working with a Los Angeles attorney to take up the issue in Washington with the Federal Communications Commission. But he will likely have no luck, according to the FCC’s Morgan Broman, special assistant for public affairs in the Cable Services Bureau. If anything, the FCC indirectly encourages diversity in public access by protecting cable operators from legal action for what they air.

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“Our rules allow the cable operator and the city to be absolved of liability if they did not produce the programming,” Broman said. “In other words, if the operator has a question about a program, and the person presenting the program wants to put it on anyway, the operator can run the program and any lawsuits would be against the person putting the program on.”

Broman suggested that the best way to combat a radical point of view is with another point of view. The Wiesenthal Center does regularly produce programming and distribute educational material about the Holocaust. But the international organization does not want to get into a shouting match or public debate with the Zundels of the world, Cooper said.

“They would love nothing better than to go head-to-head on television,” Cooper said. “But we’re not going to produce a program just to refute their claims. It’s like, if someone says you beat your wife, do you take out a full-page ad to deny it?”

Wiesenthal is more concerned with stopping the spread of what he calls “a political game plan that spans the globe,” because it could raise doubt in the minds of people too young to remember the Holocaust.

Indeed, Zundel publishes a newsletter that goes to 41 countries, and he broadcasts a weekly short-wave radio program. “Voice of Freedom” episodes have played or are now playing in 40 different locations throughout the United States, he claims, including a current weekly run on a satellite uplinking from Pittsburgh.

“I’ve been waging battles to have Germans rehabilitated on public airwaves since I came from Germany to Canada in 1958,” said Zundel, who opened an Internet web-site this past Thursday on the World Wide Web.

He recently won a victory in Finger Lakes, N.Y., when the state cable commission unanimously ruled that public-access programs cannot be banned based on content unless they’re considered pornographic or subversive. In Finger Lakes, which requires programs to be submitted by local residents, Zundel found a community member willing to sponsor his TV show.

Zundel said he will try to line up local sponsors in Los Angeles if he has to. And if cable companies still don’t air “Voice of Freedom”? “We are not litigious people by nature, but unless they put it on, taxpayers in the area will have to foot the bill for a lawsuit,” said Zundel.