Tuesday, March 15, 2005
Get this: Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt, who won a defensive libel suit against racist, anti-Semitic, Holocaust denier David Irving by proving him to be so in a British court of law, has been told that C-Span will not cover a lecture of her's promoting the book she wrote on the episode unless they also cover an Irving presentation for "balance." That's right, in order to get herself coverage, she must also agree that Irving should be given a voice as well.
Imagine you want to have a panel on the Holocaust, would it be necessary to include a panel of Holocaust-deniers as well? Or, as Cohen says in the op-ed below, "For a book on the evils of slavery, would it counter with someone who thinks it was a benign institution?"
There is often a fine-line between editorial responsibility and the simple squelching of unpopular views. Academic freedom on and off the campus is important and all such decisions must be made carefully, but that doesn't mean that we can never make them. I want to know where the grownups are? Who is going to be the responsible party and say that conjecture, opinion and exploration of even controversial subjects is acceptable, but we will not be a party to spreading lies. That is beyond the acceptable. What is wrong in the heads of the producers at C-Span? To me it is clear that this is nothing more than a selfish decision. Selfish? Yes, for it provides the perfect opportunity to show how supremely fair and openminded they are, "You see?" they can say, "We even give equal time to a Holocaust denier." Don't hold your breath waiting for a pat on the back, C-Span staff. There is nothing brave about your decision.
Let me stretch this one more paragraph and then you can read Cohen's piece. If C-Span were interested in covering an Irving lecture, it would certainly be the responsible thing to balance his lies and misrepresentations with another view, but the coverage is not occurring for Irving's sake. C-Span is interested in Lipstadt, and it is the height of absurdity to believe that Lipstadt's truth needs to be balanced with Irving's lies.
OK, now read Cohen.
Washington Post: C-SPAN's Balance of the Absurd by Richard Cohen
The word balance is not in quotes for emphasis. It was invoked repeatedly by C-SPAN producers who seemed convinced that they had chosen the most noble of all journalistic causes: fairness. "We want to balance it [Lipstadt's lecture] by covering him," said Amy Roach, a producer for C-SPAN's Book TV. Her boss, Connie Doebele, put it another way. "You know how important fairness and balance is at C-SPAN," she told me. "We work very, very hard at this. We ask ourselves, 'Is there an opposing view of this?' "
As luck would have it, there was. To Lipstadt's statements about the Holocaust, there was Irving's rebuttal that it never happened -- no systematic killing of Jews, no Final Solution and, while many people died at Auschwitz of disease and the occasional act of brutality, there were no gas chambers there. "More women died on the back seat of Edward Kennedy's car at Chappaquiddick than ever died in a gas chamber at Auschwitz," Irving once said.
For obvious reasons, Lipstadt cited Irving in her 1993 book, "Denying the Holocaust," which was also published in Britain. Irving sued her for libel. Under Britain's libel laws, Lipstadt had to prove the truth of what she wrote, which, after a lengthy trial, she did in spades. Her lawyer's opening statement -- "My Lord, Mr. Irving calls himself a historian. The truth is, however, that he is not a historian at all, but a falsifier of history. To put it bluntly, he is a liar." -- ultimately became the judgment of the court itself. In matters of intellectual integrity, Irving is an underachiever.
Once, this was not all that apparent. By dint of maniacal industry, Irving had turned himself into an admired writer on Nazi Germany. He mined the archives for material that others appeared to have overlooked. Some of it was genuine; some of it was false. Increasingly, though, his books gave off the whiff of anti-Semitism and a certain admiration of Hitler. When Richard J. Evans, a Cambridge University historian (and one of Lipstadt's expert witnesses), carefully examined Irving's work, he found it a stew of misrepresentations, falsifications and outright quackery. Irving was authoritatively exposed: a propagandist hiding behind seemingly scholarly footnotes.
This is the man C-SPAN turned to for "balance." It told Lipstadt that since it was going to air her lecture, it would do one of Irving's, too. As luck would have it, he was appearing March 12 at the Landmark Diner in Atlanta. C-SPAN was there for this momentous event -- although Irving's advance warning that cameras would be present apparently held down attendance. (His people seem to prefer anonymity -- or, in the old days, sheets.) Lipstadt was in effect being told that if she wanted to promote her book on C-SPAN (an important venue) she would also have to promote Irving. If she was to get a TV audience, then so would he.
C-SPAN's cockeyed version of fairness -- it told Lipstadt that it had bent over backward to ensure its coverage of the presidential election was fair and balanced -- is so mindless that I thought for a moment its producers and I could not be talking about the same thing. This is the "Crossfire" mentality reduced to absurdity, if that's possible. For a book on the evils of slavery, would it counter with someone who thinks it was a benign institution? Why does it feel there is another side to the Holocaust or to Irving's assertion that he was libeled? He was not. He was described to a T.
In the end, Lipstadt had to choose between promoting her own book -- a terrific read, by the way -- and giving Irving the audience of his dreams and a status equal to her own. C-SPAN said it was only seeking fairness, but it was asking Lipstadt to balance truth with a lie or history with fiction. On this occasion, at least, Irving did what he could not do with his libel suit: silence Lipstadt. He may still appear on C-SPAN, but Lipstadt will not -- a victory for "balance" that only the truly unbalanced could applaud.
Update: More here.
two points of reference.
Artwork from space shuttle with Ilan Ramon
AND
in the library of congress: THE EFFECTS OF DOLPHIN INTERACTIONS WITH CHILDREN DIAGNOSED WITH POST TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER.
It is such a stupid decision if it is a genuine one for the sake of pc. I would only hope the international news media could offer such an excuse for Israel to have the sameopportunity vis a vis her prolonged victimisation fueled by Arab oil money. It is deeply worrying that, a known Jew hater and falsifier of recent history should even have the opportunity to offer a most virulent and offensive war against the Jewish people. Just who are behind C spam? Perhaps they ought to be revealed.
I am shocked at C-SPAN's unilateral position of "balance" re Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt.
Prominent authors have discussed their books on C-SPAN, on subjects ranging from communism to terrorism. Was the principle of "fairness" applied to have representatives justify these discredited causes?
Why C-SPAN should selectively apply this standard to the faux-historian David Irving raises a question as to their motives. After all, Ms. Lipstadt's successful case in the UK courts speaks for itself.
Irving is a man that believes that Jews were killed in great number and has documented specific conversations of Germans talking about the shootings. Irving is a man who believes that the Jews died in concentration camps. Irving is a man who believe that Nazis not only killed Jews with mass shootings but also killed Jews in concentration camps.
Now does that sound like a "Holocaust Denier?
If your first reaction to what I am writing is that I must be wrong about what Irving thinks then you prove my point that using the term "Holocaust Denier" to describe David Irving is grotesque, manipulative and dishonest. How can anyone think it is not libel?