Reed Irvine - Editor
Documentaries, radio programs and printed material that are produced by the U.S. Information Agency to explain and defend America and its policies cannot legally be broadcast or distributed in the United States. This was written into the law to prevent the U.S. government from using USIA to propagandize the American people.
But there is a government-financed organization which unabashedly airs propaganda that seeks to undermine the United States and its policies and build popular support for foreign Communist movements. This propaganda is often produced at least in part with U.S. government funds. This has been going on for years, but the same congressmen and senators who insist that pro-American documentaries produced by USIA cannot be shown here never raise a finger to halt the use of taxpayer dollars to produce and broadcast throughout the country propaganda that aids our enemies. The organization that does this is the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). It has the assistance of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) and the public television stations that broadcast the pro- grams PBS distributes and CPB finances.
The most recent example of this misuse of public money was seen on December 17, 1985, when PBS supplied stations around the country with a documentary called "When the Mountains Tremble." This 83- minute film, produced with the help of a $51,000 grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, has been characterized by the State Department as propaganda for the Communist-led guerrillas in Guatemala. The State Department declined to send a representative to participate in a brief panel discussion that PBS insisted be aired at the end of the program to provide some balance. A spokesman for the department said that in the short time made available for the panel it would simply not be possible to point out all the serious errors, distortions and omissions in the film.
Dr. Georges Fauriol, a Latin American expert at Georgetown University's Center for Strategic and International Studies labeled the film "extraordinary propaganda." Rafael Flores, a native of Guatemala who now directs the Washington-based Coalition for Jobs, Peace and Freedom in the Americas, wrote a review of the film in which he concluded, "'When the Mountains Tremble' is neither objective, nor an in-depth analysis of the situation in Guatemala. It is just another piece of leftist propaganda."
Tom Shales, the liberal television critic for The Washington Post, couldn't quite bring himself to use the word "propaganda," but his description made it clear that this is what the film is. Shales said: "The film is bluntly didactic and one-sided in portraying Guatemalan rebels as noble freedom fighters and Guatemalan peasants opposed to the present regime as the victims of repression, torture and squalor. Co-directors Thomas Sigel and Pamela Yates take a sledgehammer to their own credibility early in the film by including two scenes labeled 'Historic Dramatization' and purporting to show the origins of a misguided U.S. policy toward the country."
Even Barry Chase, the vice President for news and public affairs programming at PBS, acknowledged that the film was an advocacy piece which he did not consider to be "journalistically responsible." He insisted that it could not be aired without some balance being provided in the form of panel discussions tacked on at end. Several major public television stations throughout the country felt the same way and refused to air the film on December 17. An official of Channel 13, the public TV station in New York City, said they were very unhappy with the polemical character of the film and its numerous errors. This official took issue with the PBS view that one of the redeeming features of the documentary was that it was well made. Critics agreed, the film was poorly done from a technical point of view. We were informed that Channel 13 does plan to air the film in January, since it was decided that adding the panel discussions was enough to overcome the original objections.
Other public TV stations refusing to air the propaganda film on December 17 included those in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Miami, Chicago, New Orleans and Kansas City. We were unable to obtain from PBS a list of the stations that had not run the film. Critic Tom Shales said it was being aired "on many if not all PBS stations" and that it would be available to an audience "wider, perhaps, than the producers deserve."
Herbert Aptheker, the "theoretician" of the Communist Party, USA, once said that history must be rewritten through Marxist eyes. This is precisely what the producers of "When the Mountains Tremble" undertook to do. Neither the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which had put $51,000 into the production, nor PBS, which put it on the air, sought to prevent this. The rewriting necessitated falsifying the record and omitting vital facts, and the producers were allowed to do both. The 15- minute panel discussion that dealt with the film itself considered only two of the many serious factual distortions.
One very obvious and easily checked example of the deliberate distortion of history is found in the "historical dramatization" of a 1953 dinner given by Guatemala's president, Jacobs Arbenz, for Amb. John Peurifoy of the United States. The film claims that the dramatization of this dinner, using professional actors, is based on an official document. AIM asked Skylight Pictures, the producer, to identify this document. A spokesman would say only that if it was an account of the dinner written by Arab. Peurifoy. We found it in the published volume of State Department papers for 1952-54. Dated December 16, 1953, it summarized the six-hour discussion that the ambassador had with President Arbenz and his wife the previous night.
Relations between Guatemala and the U.S. were severely strained at the time. President Arbenz, who had been elected with Communist backing in March 1951, had brought many Communists into his government. He had expropriated large amounts of American- owned property without paying fair compensation, had instigated political strikes against the American- owned railroad with a view to expropriating it. He was wrecking the country's economy with his radical leftist programs and was perceived to be taking Guatemala into the Soviet orbit.
The largest expropriations had been directed against the United Fruit Company, which had invested about $50 million in Guatemala, developing productive banana plantations on land that was formerly jungle. United Fruit employed nearly 10,000 Guatemalans, who earned an average annual income triple the per capita national income of the country as a whole. Its workers were better paid, better housed, and provided with better health and education facilities than other workers in the country. They have been described as the "aristocrats" of Guatemalan labor. Arbenz's expropriation of nearly 75 percent of United Fruit's land threatened to wreck this important industry.
Amb. Peurifoy, who was newly assigned to Guatemala, reported that he began the conversation with Arbenz by saying that he wanted to improve relations and asking if the president had any suggestions. Arbenz replied that the problem was United Fruit. and he "spoke at length and bitterly on the companies history since 1904." He complained especially about his need for tax revenue.
Amb. Peurifoy, interrupted to suggest that it was important to put first things first, saying the major problem was the strong Communist influence in the Arbenz government. Arbenz responded with the admission that there were Communists in his government, and be defended his friendship with the two top Communists in the country by saying they were honest and had gone to Moscow to study Marxism, not necessarily to get instructions. He conceded that government advertising was supporting the Communist newspaper. Mrs. Arbenz defended the recent memorial observance of Stalin's death in the Guatemalan Congress. The president insisted that Communism was no threat.
After a discussion of land reform, in which the ambassador pointed out that the U.S. had helped pro- mote land reform in other countries, Arbenz returned to the attack on United Fruit. Peurifoy said, "At one point President stated if there were a choice, it would be for Guatemala to live under Communist domination than live for fifty years with Fruit Company." Peurifoy expressed disappointment that they had come to no agreement, and Arbenz suggested that the ambassador would come around to his way of thinking after he had been in the country longer. Peurifoy replied that he didn't think anything would make him convert to Communism, and he expected Americans would continue to oppose it as long as Communism threatened free nations. He said he came away convinced that if Arbenz was not a Communist, he would do until one came along.
For the Marxists, it is very important that history be rewritten to obliterate this kind of information, since one of their key propaganda themes is that the United States wickedly conspired to overthrow the democratically elected Arbenz in 1954 with no good justification. Here is how the producers of the PBS documentary scripted the Arbenz-Peurifoy conversation to misrepresent what Peurifoy reported about the discussion and to mislead the audience about United Fruit.
Arbenz: The idea is to convert our country from a semi-dependent colonial nation to a Guatemala that is free and independent. The goal behind all these reforms is to create an economically viable society, but to raise the standard of living for the most people possible. We simply can't continue to give away every resource that we have.
Peurifoy: (glowering) Mr. President, I don't have to tell you that there's a lot of alarm in Washington about all the goin's on down here. There's not exactly too much time to fool around. Arbenz: Mr. Ambassador, allow me to speak freely. The problem between our nations is United Fruit. Mrs. Arbenz: imagine if in your country there was a foreign corporation that owned all the finest land. Then imagine that the means of getting your pro- ducts to market--the ships, the ports, the railroads-- were all owned by the same company. Not only do they own your entire economic infrastructure, but in 50 years they have paid virtually no taxes. Peurifoy: Look, the government of the United States is not going to permit a Red Soviet republic between Texas and the Panama Canal. Arbenz: Oh, Mr. Ambassador, I'm certain that when you have been here longer and have had an opportunity to get to know our country you will feel differently about all this. Peurifoy: No matter how long I'm here, nothin's going to make me a Communist. I can tell you somethin' else. That line doesn't have much appeal for the American people either. You clean those Reds out'a your gov'ment. When United Fruit gets what's properly theirs, maybe then we'll talk about bettering relations. I'm afraid time is getting very short.
Amb. Peurifoy, a career foreign service officer, was portrayed as a mean redneck, while Arbenz was portrayed as a saintly, cultivated democrat interested only in the uplift of the poor. Nowhere was it mentioned that Arbenz became president after his strongest rival, Francisco Javier Arana, was assassinated. Arana's chauffeur, who miraculously escaped the ambush, said that the gunmen were riding in a car belonging to Mrs. Jacobs Arbenz and that he recognized one of them as Capt. Alfonso Martinez. But this was hushed up. When Arbenz became president, Capt. Alfonso Martinez was promoted to major and was made private secretary to Arbenz. (See Daniel James, Red Design for the Americas, John Day, 1954, pp. 60-62).
The most charitable assumption is that no one at PBS bothered to check the "historical dramatization" against the document on which it was supposed to be based. Nor was this deceitful rewriting of history corrected by the panelists who discussed the film after it was shown. The only comment on this during the panel discussion was by Dr. Mark Falcoff of the American Enterprise Institute, who said: "The film begins with a dramatic characterization of the role of the U.S. in 1954. I think I generally agree with the bottom line of those characterizations although I don't think the role of United Fruit was nearly as important as the role of the Guatemalan Communist party in provoking the role that the U.S. did play."
One strong theme in this propaganda film is that the U.S. is to blame for most of what is wrong in Guatemala, beginning with the overthrow of Arbenz in 1954. The message is that there has been terrible oppression of the workers and the peasants, especially the poor Indians. Not surprisingly, a strong effort is made to blame the U.S. for this also. Here's how this was done.
After showing Guatemalan army patrols and a troop formation, the scene shifts to President Reagan ad- dressing a joint session of Congress, saying: "There can be no question the national security of all the Americas is at stake in Central America. If we cannot defend ourselves there, the safety of our homeland would be put in jeopardy. What I'm asking for is prompt Congressional approval of the full reprogramming of funds for key current economic and security programs so the people of Central America can hold the line against externally supported aggression."
This is immediately followed by a Guatemalan general saying that the U.S. had been open in showing good intentions and willingness to cooperate in solving Guatemala's problems. He adds, "And we're very grateful for any aid they give which will help the people of Guatemala. And better yet if that aid comes in helicopters." Then we see a machine gun being mounted on a helicopter. Following scenes intended to suggest that the U.S. Army is training the Guatemalan troops, President Reagan is again shown saying, "We must continue to encourage peace among the nations of Central America. No amount of reform will bring peace so long as guerrillas believe they will win by force. All our neighbors ask of us is assistance in training and arms to protect themselves while they build a better, freer life."
Next, a Guatemalan Indian woman says, "When the U.S. government sends aid to Guatemala, whether it's military aid, advisors, or economic aid, they must understand that they are contributing directly to a worsening bloodbath." The scene shifts to troops boarding a helicopter.
This was clearly intended to show that American military aid was supporting the human right abuses in Guatemala. But surely PBS knew that U.S. military aid to Guatemala was terminated in 1977. In response to charges of human rights abuses. This was pointed out by two of the panelists in the discussion following the film. One of them, Doyle McManus of the L.A. Times, said, "Since 1977, there's been no U.S. military aid to Guatemala. In fact, one of the distinguishing things about the situation in Guatemala was that this pre-American, conservative military government was essentially waging its guerrilla war with no direct help from the U.S., and its leaders actually felt sometimes it was being impeded by the U.S."
No one at PBS saw that as any reason to demand that the producers of "When the Mountains Tremble" eliminate the footage of President Reagan which was included to convey the opposite impression.
Lies: Probable and Demonstrable
The propensity of the makers of "When the Mountains Tremble" to lie and exaggerate bothered even some who were favorably disposed to their point of view. For example, Harry Moses, a veteran producer of documentaries for CBS News, said in the panel discussion that the bias in the film was so obvious that he found himself wondering whether even the most riveting scenes were actually what they were rep- resented to be.
One of the most touching scenes comes toward the end of the film when the wives and mothers of men who have been killed in a village are shown weeping uncontrollably. A number of corpses are shown, and one of the villagers says that the victims were killed by men in uniform. Since the theme of the film is that the army is cruelly oppressing the people, the viewer is led to believe that these killings are an example of the abuse of human rights by the government.
But there is something wrong with this scene. Men in uniform are shown standing around. The narrator does not identify these men as either guerrillas or as government soldiers. Nothing is said about the name of the village or when the killings occurred, making it difficult to check the records to see what really happened. The State Department says that it has been quite common in Guatemala for the guerrillas, wearing uniforms, to summon the civil guard to a village in the middle of the night on the pretense of an emergency. The guardsmen are then murdered by the guerrillas. The army, of course, would have no reason to murder civil guardsmen.
Were the men the women mourning the victims of the Guatemalan military, as the context suggested? Or were they mourning victims of the guerrillas? That's a question that PBS should have asked and sought an answer to. The question was not raised by any of the panelists that were assembled to discuss the film, which only shows that a 15-minute discussion by five people, no matter how expert, is no substitute for a rigorous check of the accuracy of films of this type.
Even a cursory check would have shown PBS that the film was seriously flawed by the omission of evidence that the violence in Guatemala has by no means been limited to the side of the government. The guerrillas are terrorists, who have over the years carried out many a cruel massacre, a fact that the film makers care- fully avoided mentioning.
Quite the contrary. When dealing with the terrorist occupation of the Spanish Embassy in Guatemala City in January 1980, this film tried to make it appear that this was nothing more than a peaceful protest by aggrieved Indians, accompanied by a few students, Christians and workers. The film gave the impression that the heavy loss of life--37 persons killed--was the result of police action.
The Indian woman doing the narration said that the security forces had come to her village and forcibly removed the Indians from their land and their homes. She said: "That's why my parents, together with workers, students, Christians and other groups in the capital, decided to take over the Spanish Embassy to let the world know the injustices and the abuses of the regime. The rest is history."
The history was that a group of 28 leftist terrorists, occupied the embassy on January 31, 1980, apparently imitating terrorists in neighboring El Salvador who had occupied two government buildings and assaulted the U.S. Embassy a few months previously. The Guatemalan government claimed the occupation of the Spanish Embassy was planned at the University of San Carlos. The deaths occurred when the terrorists ignited a gasoline bomb inside the building, setting off a raging fire. This took the lives of the terrorists, members of the embassy staff and some visitors.
The documentary showed the fire, but it did not tell what caused it, saying only, "During the police action the occupiers were trapped in an uncontrollable fire." It even gave the impression that the terrorists were the only victims of the fire. The narrator said, "When my father and 37 {sic.} others died in the Spanish embassy, all hopes for peaceful change died with them."
Those words were spoken in 1983 when this film was made. Since then, a lot of changes have occurred in Guatemala. The violence has been greatly reduced. A free democratic election was held in November and Vinicio Gorezo, a Christian Democrat with leftist views, was elected president. He was visiting Washington the very day PBS aired this propaganda film with its gloomy assessment that all hopes for peaceful change died in January 1980.
The film was not only badly flawed by its horrendous inaccuracies and lack of credibility, but it was also terribly out of date. PBS tried to remedy that by adding a second panel discussion to tell what had happened to Guatemala since 1983. The question remained: Why was this pro-communist propaganda funded by our tax dollars and aired on tax-supported public TV stations?
Senator Barry Goldwater, Chairman of the Senate subcommittee that oversees public broadcasting recently expressed his unhappiness about many of the programs that are produced for public TV in the East. Sen. Goldwater said that he has supported public broadcasting because he likes what the local stations throughout the country are doing. Ask Sen. Goldwater to find out why blatant far-left propaganda such as "When the Mountains Tremble" can get funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and distribution by PBS. Write to Sen. Barry Goldwater, U.S. Senate, Washington, D.C. 20510.
AIM REPORT is published twice monthly by Accuracy In Media, Inc., 1275 K Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20005, and is free to AIM members. Dues and contributions to AIM are tax deductible. The AIM Report is mailed 3rd class to those whose contribution is at least $15 a year and 1st class to those contributing $30 a year or more. Non-members subscriptions are $35 (1st class mail).
NOTES FROM THE EDITOR'S CUFF By Reed Irvine
WE REALLY THOUGHT THAT THE PUBLIC BROADCASTING SERVICE (PBS) HAD TURNED OVER A new leaf last year. Under the leadership of its new president, Bruce Christensen, whose rise in the communications business was via KSL, a station owned by the LDS Church in Salt Lake City, and the communications department at Brigham Young University, PBS took a bold step. It acknowledged that it had an obligation to air programs representing diverse points of view, even if this meant airing direct criticism of some of its previously broadcast programs. Despite bitter opposition within the PBS family, Bruce Christensen approved broadcasting the first hour of AIM's two-part critique of "Vietnam: A Television History," the multi-million dollar series that PBS had aired twice. We and others hailed this move as enlightened and courageous. The TV critic of The Chicago Sun-Times called it "a unique chapter in TV history" and added: "What can't be denied is that AIM has a right to its views and the right to air them over PBS. After all, PBS stands for the PUBLIC Broadcasting Service. They are the public's airwaves." Harvard Law School professor, Arthur Miller, the moderator of the panel discussion that was aired after our film, echoed this view. He said, "When it was designed and licensed, television was supposed to allow for all sides of an issue to be heard, in the public interest. We hope you have found this effort to be at least a small step in that direction."
WHY, THEN, ARE WE CRITICIZING PBS FOR HAVING AIRED THE FILM THAT IS THE SUBJECT of this AIM Report? "When the Mountains Tremble" certainly represents one side of a controversial issue, the side of the communist-led terrorists in Guatemala.
REASON ONE: AS WE POINT OUT IN CONSIDERABLE DETAIL, THIS IS A VERY INACCURATE AND dishonest film. It is one thing to air differing opinions. It is quite another to air seriously inaccurate information and lies. This film could and should have been rejected by PBS for any one of the following reasons: (1) It was not true to the historical record in its dramatization of the conversation between President Arbenz of Guatemala and Amb. John Peurifoy; (2) It tried to create the impression that the U.S. under Pres. Reagan had given military aid to Guatemala and was therefore responsible for human rights abuses by the Guatemalan army, although it was known that such aid had been terminated in 1977; (3) It portrayed the terrorist-guerrillas in Guatemala as unoffending, gentle poor people who are the victims of unprovoked attacks and abuse by the authorities. This is typified by the misrepresentation of the facts in the 1980 occupation of the Spanish Embassy in Guatemala, which resulted in 37 deaths from a fire caused by the terrorists.
REASON TWO: THE FILM WAS BADLY MADE, ARTISTICALLY AND TECHNICALLY. THIS WAS pointed out by the panelists that were assembled to discuss it on the air after the showing, as well as by reviewers. Jack Thomas, TV critic of the liberal Boston Globe, said of it: "This is not a documentary.... (It) is a political statement.... When drama, fact and political opinion are disguised to look like history or documentary, whatever the argument, then the distinction between fact and falsehood is blurred and our search for truth impeded." Thomas and other critics noted that the actors who gave the English interpretation of what was being said in Spanish made the guerrillas sound reasonable, while the voices used for the government spokesmen or their defenders sounded evil or silly. This was even admitted by the film's co-director, Pamela Yates, who said that if they had had a bigger budget they would have redone the voices. While Barry Chase of PBS claimed that technical excellence was one reason he decided to use the film, other professionals said the film was technically badly done.
REASON THREE: THE FILM, MADE IN 1983, IS BADLY OUT OF DATE.
YOU WOULD THINK THAT TAX-PAYER SUPPORTED PBS WOULD HOLD FILMS SUPPORTING OUR ENEMIES to a higher standard of accuracy and excellence than films that are pro-American.
A COMPARISON OF THE TREATMENT OF "WHEN THE MOUNTAINS TREMBLE" AND AIM'S TWO documentaries at the hands of the PBS staff shows that the opposite is true. Our first film, "Television's Vietnam: The Real Story," was scrutinized carefully by the PBS staff for possible inaccuracies. We made changes in the script at their suggestion, and they even required that we make costly changes in the film itself. For example, we had said that the PBS series we were criticizing had "deliberately" distorted a historical event and that the portrayal of Ho Chi Minh as a potential Tito had been "disinformation." We were required to edit the film to remove those words. In addition, our film had to be balanced with an hour-long "wrap-around" program costing $139,000.
THIS INCLUDED TAPED INTERVIEWS AND A CAREFULLY CONTROLLED PANEL DISCUSSION. The object of this expensive effort was to try to poke holes in our documentary. The producer, Ned Schnurman, told the press that he was going to put a "scalpel" to the AIM film, adding: "We are not knowingly going to put on the air distortions and information we know to be untrue." Hard as they tried, they could only come up with two minor nitpicks to fault us on. It is obvious that no similar effort was made to locate and eliminate misinformation and distortion in the Guatemalan film.
THE DOUBLE STANDARD HAS NOW BEEN REVEALED EVEN MORE CLEARLY IN THE TREATMENT OF AIM's second film by the PBS staff. Ironically, a few hours before "When the Mountains Tremble" aired on public broadcasting stations around the country, I was in Bruce Christensen's office at PBS seeking to persuade him to air our second documentary, "Television's Vietnam: The Impact of Media." Peter Rollins, the producer of our film, and I were asking Mr. Christensen to overrule Barry Chase, the vice president for news and public affairs programming, who had notified us that our documentary was not acceptable for broadcasting by PBS.
"TELEVISION'S VIETNAM: THE IMPACT OF MEDIA" IS A SUPERB DOCUMENTARY NARRATED BY Charlton Heston and featuring interviews with Robert Elegant, Arnaud de Borchgrave, Peter Braestrup, George MacArthur, Gen. William Westmoreland, Truong Nhu Tang (former Vietcong minister of justice), Norman Podhoretz and Ben Wattenberg, to name but a few. With tens of thousands of dollars of film footage donated by ABC and Charlton Heston virtually donating his services, we were offering PBS an outstanding documentary whose value we estimate at least $500,000. I explained to Mr. Christensen that the documentary focuses on one of the most important lessons that should have been learned from the Vietnam War, namely, that skill in influencing public opinion via the media can be more important in war than soldiers, planes and missiles.
BARRY CHASE INFORMED US THAT THIS FILM DID NOT MEET PBS'S STANDARDS IN TWO RESPECTS: (1) it was not clearly and sufficiently labeled as "depart(ing) substantially from the conventional norms of broadcast journalism" in that it "advocate(s) a preconceived point of view" and (2) it fails to meet the PBS requirement that "'advocacy' programs must contain some material, treated with respect, from which a viewer could draw a conclusion contrary to that favored by the producers." Mr. Chase added that AIM "is suspect as a regular producer of informational programs on PBS" because it "holds such strong, philosophically partisan views concerning the performance of the press."
THERE YOU HAVE IT. A SLEAZY, DISHONEST, INACCURATE PRO-COMMUNIST PROPAGANDA FILM, "When the Mountains Tremble," is made acceptable by tacking on a short panel discussion which points out a few of its many faults. AIM's outstanding and important documentary is simply rejected. Bruce Christensen promised to view our film and give us his decision. As we go to press (12/26) we have not yet heard from him. You may wish to write or call him at PBS, 475 L'Enfant Plaza, S.W., Washington, D.C. 20024; phone 202-488-5000.