Burns, whose reputation as one of pubcasting’s leading
documentarians rests on his penchant for producing exhaustive (some say
exhausting!) examinations of epochal subjects and events, is coming under attack
for what he didn’t include in his forthcoming (September 2007) PBS series The
War.
Latino leaders from a range of civil rights, veterans’ and
media activism groups are calling for the series to be revised before it airs
– but PBS is refusing.
Maggie Rivas-Rodriguez, a journalism professor at the
University of Texas at Austin, is among them.
“We continue to be invisible,” Rivas-Rodriguez recently
told the public telecommunications newspaper Current.
“This is one that we’re not going to allow.”
Gus Chavez, a retired university administrator from San Diego
who participated in a recent meeting with PBS execs, echoed her fighting
words.
The War documents a “major national experience and we’re
not part of it and we don’t want it to be shown until it’s corrected,”
said Chavez.
“We are not going to sit still and let historical events of
this nature be presented without our input and representation.” Navy veteran
Chavez has joined Rivas-Rodriquez in organizing “Defend
the Honor,” a campaign for recognition.
“We are totally geared to making the general public aware
of our concern that this documentary is misrepresenting the war as it’s
presented to exclude the Latino experience,” Chavez told Current.
But PBS President Paula Kerger says the network is standing
foursquare behind Burns – the star of her system.
“While we acknowledge and respect the concerns you have
raised, we do not agree that going back into production to revise a completed
series that represents one filmmaker’s vision is the appropriate solution,”
Kerger wrote in a letter to Rivas-Rodriguez, Chavez and other meeting
participants.
Instead, Kerger pointed to a Corporation for Public
Broadcasting-backed outreach project tied to The
War that is designed to bring out stories not told in Burns’ series.
Kerger’s muted response to the Hispanic concerns incensed
Rivas-Rodriquez, who noted:
“PBS is more concerned with maintaining its respectful
relationship with Ken Burns than its relationship with the Latino community
and its veterans of World War II. But it is public broadcasting—funded in
part by taxpayer money—and it should be more respectful to the community
than to any individual filmmaker.”
Chon Noriega, a filmmaker and associate director of the
Chicano Studies Research Center at the University of California in Los Angeles,
believes the subject of World War II is “a sore point” in the Latino
community.
“The Second World War,” he told Current, “is where the
community felt it had earned the right to citizenship that had been denied since
1848” — the end of the Mexican-American War.
“This is a critical turning point in their recognition as
citizens and they’re not there” in Burns’ series, Noriega said.
“You can understand why people would be upset.” PBS is a
“public entity receiving public funding to describe this history and they’re
just not there in the image.”
Several Hispanic-American leaders released letters of protest
to Kerger just before a recent congressional hearing on CPB funding.
“A documentary on World War II that excludes the
contributions of Hispanic Americans is inaccurate and incomplete, and thus fails
to meet the standards of fairness and excellence for which PBS has been
previously recognized,” noted Congressional Hispanic Caucus chairman Rep. Joe
Baca.
The caucus asked Kerger to withdraw The War “until this
omission is corrected.”
Hispanic soldiers in World War II received more Congressional
Medals of Honor than other ethnic groups in proportion to their numbers in the
armed forces.
Leaders of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists
have also weighed in:
“[I]t escapes us how Ken Burns could have made a
seven-part series that does not mention the contributions of Latinos,” they
wrote in a letter to Kerger. “His usually thorough work is seen as the
contemporary documentation of U.S. political, social and cultural history on a
wide variety of themes. For PBS to air the series as is would be a disservice
to its viewers, giving them a skewed version of this important part of
American history.”
Few people have seen the latest Burns magnum opus, leaving
both critics and defenders in a difficult position.
Burns himself is on record as being “tremendously
saddened” that “Hispanic Americans have had their history marginalized for
as long as there have been European settlers in what is now the United
States.”
Nonetheless, the filmmaker says he wasn’t intending to
include representatives of any specific ethnic groups.
“That is not what the film is about,” Burns said.
“It’s about the experience of combat from the perspectives of a handful of
people."
Yet the film does feature stories of two groups of soldiers
who fought despite discrimination at home — Japanese Americans, whose families
were held in internment camps, and African Americans.
“At some point, one has to understand artistic choice,”
Burns responds. “Those choices are symbolic and we hope that you see the
whole.”
The controversy should come as no surprise to PBS executives
like Kerger. After all, questions about ethnic representation in The War were
raised months ago by Rivas-Rodriguez, who directs the U.S. Latino and Latina
World War II Oral History Project.
After a November screening of the film at which one of his
producers acknowledged that Latinos were one of several minority groups not
represented in the film, she contacted WETA in Washington, D.C., a co-producer
of The War.
“A lot of people keep saying, ‘Why don’t you wait and
see the film?’ but we’re not going to do that because at this point we know
there’s not Latino representation,” Rivas-Rodriquez says. Reediting the
documentary to include Latino veterans, she believes, “would be very easy.”
“Realistically, it’s not that hard to change a
documentary,” adds Noriega, a board member of the Independent Television
Service.
“This is really a referendum for Ken Burns. His actions
will signal what he feels about how important this issue is.… He’s come to
this point because of a clear failure to do the research.”
John Wilson, senior v.p. of television for PBS, says network
programmers don’t have any reason to question Burns’ historical analysis or
his ability to deal with issues of race and ethnicity.
“That is not really a note that you need to be concerned
with in Ken’s work,” according to Wilson. “This is very much a part of
what Ken does and I think in The War he’s very sensitive to issues of race.”
Still, Wilson admits, “the omission of Latinos’ stories
is regrettable — but it doesn’t make the film itself journalistically
unsound.” Moreover, Wilson added, “PBS by and large is known for respecting
the work of producers.”
As a documentary filmmaker myself, I’m definitely in favor
of respecting the work of producers. But isn’t respect for the audience also
important?
In a 14-hour documentary, couldn’t Burns have devoted a few
minutes (at least!) to include the WWII experiences of America’s
Latinos?
I certainly am not asking for the imposition of any kind of
“political litmus tests” for documentaries — but I am calling for Burns to
listen to and show respect for valid complaints from the public broadcasting
audience and, in this case, to reassess his startling and ahistorical omission.
But to date both Burns and his PBS supporters seem instead to
be circling their wagons and taking a defensive posture, instead of reaching out
and trying to rectify the situation.
“People, when they see the film, they will see the
universality,” Burns claims. But Latinos won’t see themselves –and
that’s the crux of the problem.
To acknowledge the ground that the film does not cover, Burns
will begin each episode of the documentary with a title card acknowledging its
limited scope.
He has also asked PBS and CPB to back the related project of
local outreach and production. “The film is done yet there are all these
opportunities to tell all these other stories,” Burns said.
In other words – leave it to others to clean up the mess
I’ve made…
Come on, Ken – you’re better than that!
You have fourteen hours in well-promoted prime time, coupled
with the most extensive outreach campaigns ever tied to a national broadcast, so
why not give it up?
Do the right thing! Listen to the voice of the people and
then re-edit your precious art…
So far, however, Burns demurs. “It’s not just me that can
tell all these stories,” he maintains. “This is public broadcasting.”
Precisely…
