PBS effort to bridge Armenian Genocide controversy creates more
“The Armenian Genocide” began airing this week on dozens of PBS stations, including nine in the nation’s top TV markets. Through tattered photos, letters and celebrity voiceovers, the documentary created by New York-based filmmaker Andrew Goldberg depicts a Turkish campaign of expulsion, rape, and murder that led to the deaths of an estimated 1.5 million ethnic Armenians between 1915 and 1920.
To the filmmaker and most historians, the documentary covers settled history, although Turkey continues to deny that it committed what many consider the first genocide of the 20th century.
PBS said it accepted Goldberg’s film based on the “recognition that the overwhelming majority of historians have concluded that a genocide took place.” But to appease a small contingent of critics, the network commissioned Oregon Public Broadcasting, a partner on the film, to produce a panel discussion comprising two historians who back the film’s premise and two who dispute it.
PBS affiliates, which make their own programming decisions, took different approaches with the programs, in some cases creating even more unhappiness on both sides.
One of the nation’s premier PBS stations, WGBH in Boston, aired Goldberg’s film but declined to show the panel.
“We chose to air ‘The Armenian Genocide’ based on its merits and because we felt it was balanced and presented both sides of the story,” said Lucy Sholley, the station’s director of media relations. “We felt the documentary stood on its own.”
KCTS in Seattle aired the film and the panel discussion. Program manager Eric Maki said in a statement that the station wanted to give viewers as much information as possible to “make an informed decision” and “better understand the world around them.”
KCET in Los Angeles, home to about two-thirds of the country’s 1.5 million Armenian Americans, declined to show both programs. A spokeswoman said the station is airing programs on Armenian issues throughout April and had earlier decided to show a French documentary called “Le Génocide Arménien.”
On Monday, the day the French film aired, Goldberg screened his documentary at Hollywood’s Egyptian Theatre before an audience estimated at 1,000.
“I didn’t want this story to not have a chance to be shown to the Armenians in Los Angeles,” he said. “It’s a story that many of them had taken part in, through their involvement or just being connected with it.”
The PBS decision to host a panel featuring genocide skeptics has angered Armenian activists.
“We commend PBS for airing the Goldberg piece. It’s a good opportunity to educate their viewers with regards to the Armenian genocide. But we felt that the panel that followed it in some areas was completely unnecessary,” said Elizabeth Chouldjian, spokeswoman for the Armenian National Committee of America. “It was misleading. Essentially, it presented the issue of the genocide not as a fact, but as a debate.”
Chouldjian’s organization and others waged a letter-writing campaign that flooded PBS and congressional offices with requests that the network drop the panel.
The network stood its ground, however, saying the program’s “intent is to examine the question of how historians can come to such radically divergent conclusions about these events. An important part of the mission of public television is to engender responsible discussion and illuminate complex issues.”