COUNTERPUNCH LETTERS : Why PBS Has Responsibility to Air ‘Deadly Deception’

PBS Executive Vice President Jennifer Lawson’s explanation for why PBS is unwilling to broadcast our Oscar-winning documentary “Deadly Deception--General Electric, Nuclear Weapons, and Our Environment,” is a perfect illustration of PBS’ narrow vision of its mandate as a public network (“It’s Unfair to Say PBS Choices Are Timid,” Feb. 15).

Lawson states that the film’s “artistic merit . . . persuasiveness or impact” is “not an issue” but says it “does not hold up against guidelines designed to ensure it is an objective, accurate and fair piece of journalism.”

I agree that PBS shouldn’t air films with inaccurate facts--and no one (including PBS) has demonstrated that a single fact in “Deadly Deception” is inaccurate. But since when do all documentary films have to be “objective” and “journalistic”?

International TV audiences haven’t had a problem with the film’s lack of objectivity, and neither have the 25 film festivals around the world that have honored it. “Deadly Deception” was deliberately crafted to break out of the point-counterpoint style of most documentaries. Our goal was to shake viewers up, make them question the supposedly benign message in GE’s “We Bring Good Things to Life” corporate motto and motivate them to take action.

Corporations like General Electric don’t need to have their executives sitting in the editing room of the programs they underwrite--by funding so many programs, they can be sure that their political agenda filters through to public television audiences. Public interest organizations operating on shoestring budgets don’t have that luxury. There should be a thorough scrutiny of the role PBS plays in promoting benign, decidedly unobjective images of large firms that don’t always operate in benign ways.

DEBRA CHASNOFF

Producer-Director

“Deadly Deception”

San Francisco