RADAR ALERT: It's Baaa...aack! "Breaking the Silence" re-aired by PBS affiliate!

Last Sunday, KVCR in San Bernardino, CA aired Breaking the Silence: Children's Stories.

Many of you will remember that when this film was aired last October, its blatant bias resulted in a veritable firestorm of criticism for PBS, and condemnation from both the PBS and the CPB ombudsmen.

For those who need a reminder, a history of the controversy is included below and also found on RADAR's site here.

Last December, the CPB ombudsman found that the producer's attempt to justify excluding certain interviewees, "amounts to a plea of guilty to violating the fairness and balance standards of PBS."

Considering this, one wonders why a PBS station would choose to air this film now? Three possible explanations come to mind:

• Cluelessness?
  Perhaps the management at KVCR is so clued out that they managed to remain blissfully unaware of the universal condemnation of this film's bias.
• Arrogance?
  Could it be that the management at KVCR consists entirely of true-believers who intend to push this bias onto an unsuspecting public, regardless of whether or not it violates PBS' editorial standards?
• A harbinger of things to come?
  Could it be that PBS has a real doozy planned for this October, and their stations are re-airing "Breaking the Silence" to soften up their viewership in advance?

This week please write to KVCR. Tell them:

• The bias in "Breaking the Silence: Children's Stories" has been condemned by both the PBS ombudsman and the CPB ombudsman.
• The CPB ombudsman has stated, "It might be difficult to find a clearer breach of PBS editorial standards," in regard to producer Lasseur's admission that the film's suppression of alternative views was intentional.
• PBS affiliates should require that any material they broadcast must rigorously adhere to standards of objectivity and honesty. The taxpayers and PBS' donors deserve no less.

Address your letters to:

KVCR General Manager: Larry Ciecalone
and
KVCR TV Program Director: Don Leiffer, Jr.

You may email them at:
hometeam-at-kvcr.pbs.org or send snail mail
to:
KVCR TV
701 South Mount Vernon Avenue
San Bernardino, CA 92410

We also recommend you send a copy of the letter to PBS headquarters. If emailing, CC to the following addresses: pkerger-at-pbs.org, rnrauer-at-pbs.org, and jmcnamara-at-pbs.org.

If sending via U.S. mail, address the copy to:

Paula Kerger
President and Chief Executive Officer
Public Broadcasting Service
1320 Braddock Place
Alexandria, VA 22314

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History of the controversy caused by the bias in "Breaking the Silence: Children's Stories":

• Production of this film was paid for by the non-profit arm of Mary Kay cosmetics. The non-profit has a demonstrated history of one-sided portrayals of domestic violence.
• The film's producers, Dominique Lasseur and Catherine Tatge, cherry-picked their interviewees, outright rejecting anyone whose story might call their biased premise into question.
• Furthermore, although they knew that one of the mothers in their film had been found by the court to have committed child abuse, Lasseur and Tatge portrayed her in the film as a sympathetic victim.
• In one of the very first analyses of the film, RADAR worried that it would be used by women's rights activists to stampede legislators into passing ill considered laws. It was! The Mother's Research and Reference Center organized screenings and demonstrations at courthouses nationwide. They even announced that one PBS affiliate planned to help them advertise and promote a special screening of the film for judges and other officials.
• When one commentator suggested that the PBS station's willingness to provide special favors for this lobbying effort may be considered evidence of partisanship, which would violate PBS' own mission statement as well as their Congressional mandate, the evidence was quickly removed from the web.
• This is a film that was so biased that it was roundly criticized by both the PBS and the CPB ombudsmen. PBS' own ombudsman said the program "had almost no balance".

  And echoing RADAR's prediction, CPB ombudsman Ken Bode opined, "PBS may find it has been the launching pad for a very partisan effort to drive public policy and law."

  But Bode went even further. He quoted producer Dominique Lasseur as stating that the lack of balance and fairness was intentional, and concluded, "It might be difficult to find a clearer breach of PBS editorial standards".

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Date of RADAR Release: August 21, 2006

Register now for the National Family Law Reform Conference, to be held September 15-16 in Alexandria, Virginia (near Washington, DC). The conference will address the crisis of family law, including biased family courts, false allegations of domestic violence, child abuse, and much more. For more information: http://www.acfc.org/site/Calendar?view=Detail&id=100021

R.A.D.A.R. – Respecting Accuracy in Domestic Abuse Reporting – is a network of concerned men and women working to assure that the problem of domestic violence is treated in a balanced and effective manner. http://www.mediaradar.org/.