Friday, June 22, 2007
The Old Double Standard
PBS pulled an episode of the children's show "Postcards From Buster," because he visited a Vermont family that had two moms. In refusing to distribute the program to affiliates, PBS CEO Pat Mitchell expressed "strong and very serious concerns" about the program.
PBS doesn't seem to have any concerns at all about distributing a right-wing Christian pseudo-documentary attacking the concept of church-state separation by Brian Godawa however.
PBS ombudsman, Michael Getler, admits the "interviews in the film, in terms of time on screen and numbers, seemed to me to tilt clearly in favor of those who see a danger in the "wall of separation" metaphor used by Jefferson...."
And Getler doesn't deny that the film's narrator "time and again, conveys the theme of this film - that God is the necessary foundation of society's law and government."
He even calls the treatment a "heavy-handed hammering away by the narrator."
Of course, the film will be distributed anyway.
"At a bare minimum," writes Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, "PBS should label Godawa's program as viewpoint and let stations and viewers know the radical religious-political perspective he's pushing."
PBS doesn't seem to have any concerns at all about distributing a right-wing Christian pseudo-documentary attacking the concept of church-state separation by Brian Godawa however.
PBS ombudsman, Michael Getler, admits the "interviews in the film, in terms of time on screen and numbers, seemed to me to tilt clearly in favor of those who see a danger in the "wall of separation" metaphor used by Jefferson...."
And Getler doesn't deny that the film's narrator "time and again, conveys the theme of this film - that God is the necessary foundation of society's law and government."
He even calls the treatment a "heavy-handed hammering away by the narrator."
Of course, the film will be distributed anyway.
"At a bare minimum," writes Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, "PBS should label Godawa's program as viewpoint and let stations and viewers know the radical religious-political perspective he's pushing."
