PBS, Yes and No
By Michael Getler
September 25, 2009
What follows is more of a grab bag rather than an ombudsman's mailbag.
Included are a couple of unusual but not widely known episodes that unfolded last week that I thought might be of interest more broadly to PBS viewers. They can be seen to have at least some association with PBS in the way they were presented or appeared to the public. Yet PBS, as an enterprise, didn't have anything to do with them.
These things happen because PBS is a strange beast within the world of media. Its hundreds of member stations are all independent and can broadcast what they want, and some of the superstars associated with PBS programs are also forces unto themselves with lots of other interests and outlets. Yet these stations and these superstars are widely perceived, rightly or wrongly, as joined at the hip to PBS in the mind of many viewers.
So these episodes — one involving a member station in Denver and the other involving talk show host Tavis Smiley — struck me as interesting and worthy of sharing beyond the normal back and forth with viewers over the widely viewed and well-known PBS programs that are broadcast nationally and that we all associate with public television.
The Conspiracy Pledge
The first episode involves PBS member station KBDI in Denver, Colo. Earlier this summer and again in mid-August and last weekend, the station ran a series of independent documentary films labeled: "America: Freedom to Fascism," "9/11: Press for Truth," and "9/11: Blueprint for Truth." These films ran as part of a pledge drive by the station to raise funds. These are controversial films that feed conspiracy theories and theorists about the origins and results of the 9/11 attacks. The "Blueprint" film, for example, "offers evidence that all three World Trade Center high-rises were destroyed not by fire and damage, per the official story, but by explosive-controlled demolitions on September 11, 2001," according to the official blurb describing the film.
In other words, someone wired these buildings with explosives intending to bring them down in this attack, and this has been covered up by the government, the 9/11 Commission and the mainstream media. That's the message.
Now, America has no shortage of conspiracy-minded people. The Kennedy and Martin Luther King assassinations, and 9/11, all have provoked lingering questions and suspicions and are fair game for many people, even those not inclined to always see conspiratorial forces at work, who believe there is more to these stories than has come out of official investigations. And KBDI, of course, has the right to air unpopular, alternative perspectives on such events. The station bills itself as "Denver's bold, diverse and independent PBS station." Its spokesmen say on the air that they are "taking risks," that viewers don't have to agree but they are "doing stories outside the mainstream media." And they say as they did, for example, in presenting the "Blueprint" film, they are the "first TV station in the nation to do this."
That is undoubtedly true and so far, as far as I can tell, this remains exclusive to KBDI among the 350 or so PBS member stations. I'm not going to review the films, but on a personal level I find the idea embedded in "Blueprint" of a government conspiracy to blow up those buildings to be preposterous and simply beyond belief and I fault the station for promoting this as part of a pledge drive and presenting it without an accompanying on-the-air program in which critics have their say.
PBS actually did make an early stab soon after the attacks at providing some preliminary assessments, explanations and perspective of "Why the Towers Fell" in a NOVA science program on April 30, 2002. That program included this observation from Matthys Levy, author of a book titled "Why Buildings Fall Down." He said at the time: "It was very much like a controlled demolition when you look at it, because the building essentially fell vertically down, as if someone had deliberately set a blast to take place to cause the building to fall vertically downward." Levy was making an observation, not offering "evidence," and there were many other observations presented by inspectors.
Where to Draw the Line?
The programs have not attracted much national media attention. Arts and entertainment columnist Joanne Ostrow, writing in The Denver Post on Aug. 21, said that KBDI "has a reputation for broadcasting bold, distinctive documentaries" but "just where to draw the line between bold/distinctive and kooky/irresponsible is a matter of opinion." Both the Denver Post article and another on Sept. 8 in Current, the trade newspaper for public television and radio, also noted that "staffing the phones last month were volunteers who adhered to the programs' assertions that the federal government intentionally allowed the terrorist attacks that brought down the World Trade Center in 2001 and has covered up the deed ever since," as Current put it.
Station officials quoted by Current said that viewer reaction has run about 4-to-1 in favor of airing the films and that the pledge drives in which they were used have been among the most successful.
As has been pointed out many times, all member stations are independent and can air what they choose, and only programs that bear the PBS logo at the beginning and end identify programming that was distributed and approved by PBS. Officials at PBS said the service had nothing to do with these films and that the station is under no obligation to inform PBS about what it plans to use during fund-raising pledge drives, according to Jan McNamara, director of corporate communications, and decisions about whether to have opposing views or who to use as volunteers are also local, she said.
Another PBS official added this: "KBDI has a long tradition of broadcasting (and sometimes pledging) controversial point of view programs. The fact that they ran them would probably not come as a surprise to many of their viewers. Think of them as more akin to a Pacifica station rather than a traditional PBS station. In markets where there is more than one PBS station they are always trying to differentiate themselves, and broadcasting POV (point of view) programs is one way that KBDI does it."
These films, of course, don't carry the PBS logo, but on the on-screen banner during the station's promotional segment, alongside the station's logo and the phone number, is the little PBS logo. And certainly some viewers associate this with PBS.
Still Seems Like PBS
Here's what one viewer from Alpine, Colo., wrote to me last week:
"I have a great respect for PBS and always listen to it when we are in our 2nd home back in Virginia. But I had occasion to listen to the KBDI station out of Denver CO tonight [Sept. 17] and was exposed to this nonsense about 9/11 essentially being a hoax.
"As a career army officer and Vietnam veteran I really do understand the tendency of my government to mould the truth to fit its political needs, but the garbage and pseudo science surrounding this particular PBS sponsored program does the entire PBS community a great disservice. It was presented during a station fund raiser which made it all the more incredible to me. The content was presented from one perspective and the local PBS commentators all but gushed over it as being the 'truth' incarnate. They looked out at us viewers with steely eyed sincerity and could have said our landing on the moon or the attack on Pearl Harbor was a government hoax and done it without blinking. Needless to say every conspiracy nut in the Nazi part of Colorado or in range of KBDI feels vindicated and the grassy knoll crowd and UFO buffs will be clamoring for air time. I have never heard such tripe from any PBS station and if you guys have any form of internal review for program content, you might want to give this one a real close examination. Shame on PBS for allowing these loonies to use the PBS moniker.
"I understand and admire PBS stations that are willing to air controversy. That is a good thing! There have been many programs you guys have aired that have had a major influence on helping me form opinions, but normally the more controversial shows provided explanatory comments or hopefully opposite viewpoints, all in the same show however so the listeners could decide for themselves. The folks who run KBDI are a bit 'off the reservation' it would seem to me."
___________________________________________________________________________
Please comment if you feel so inclined
