C.P.B.’S ‘Rosa Parks’ Treatment

This one took a little time for me around to due to the fact there was so much news coming out about terrorists, captures, illegal aliens, etc. I am finally getting around to posting it. It was sent to me by Bryan Hill, and it was written by Frank Gaffney. The rest of this article was written by Frank. Have a great day.

Last Wednesday, the Oregon Public Broadcasting Service announced that it had reached an agreement with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) that seemed, at first blush, to represent a breakthrough: The national Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) would no longer prevent the airing of a film CPB commissioned as part of its “America at a Crossroads” series called “Islam vs. Islamists: Voices from the Muslim Center.” Instead, PBS’s Oregon stations would make it available to the more than 350 other affiliates across the country.

As one of the Co-Executive Producers of this film, I began to receive a number of congratulatory messages from all over the country. Most were from people who had followed the saga of this documentary about moderate Muslims who have courageously challenged co-religionists known as Islamists – adherents to a totalitarian political ideology seeking to dominate the Muslim faith and, in turn, the world. Like innumerable editorialists, bloggers and ordinary citizens around the country, the authors of these messages had been frustrated and outraged when PBS and its Washington flagship, WETA, culminated months of efforts to alter and then censor “Islam vs. Islamists” by refusing to broadcast it, as planned, as part of the “Crossroads” series rolled out last month. They assumed that the Oregon announcement meant national distribution was imminent.

Unfortunately, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s arrangement with the Oregon PBS means no such thing. Far from the treatment accorded other “Crossroads” series programs – nationwide broadcast by the Public Broadcasting Service, in prime-time with a substantial promotional budget – “Islam vs. Islamists” would simply be “made available” to PBS stations. Maybe some would decide to run it over the next few months. Maybe they would do so at 3:00 a.m. or Sunday afternoons when practically no one is watching. There are no guarantees of pick-up in any, let alone all, major markets.

Worse yet, the Oregon distributors have announced that they will accompany the film with the equivalent of a consumer warning label – a “discussion” that will provide “context” for viewers. Presumably, this means the sort of “context” our film’s critics at PBS and WETA kept trying to impose on us: Changes that they believed would make it, in their words, less “one-sided” (read, more fair to the Islamists) and less “alarmist.”

If past practice is any guide, those recruited to provide such “balance” will likely be representatives of organizations like the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Muslim Students Association (MSA). Despite the fact that these groups are well-known Saudi-funded, pro-Islamist fronts, their views were exclusively and highly sympathetically featured in a documentary called “The Muslim Americans.” PBS seemed to have no reservations about airing this wholly one-sided film during the “Crossroads” series roll-out in April.

In short, now that widespread criticism has made it impossible to sustain PBS’ suppression of “Islam vs. Islamists,” the anti-Islamist Muslims who are its subjects are to be remanded to decidedly second-class coverage. Call it CPB’s version of the “Rosa Parks treatment.”

Recall that Rosa Parks could have gotten to her job via public transportation – as long as she “knew her place” and agreed to ride in the back of the bus. So, too, moderate Muslims can have their stories, as recorded in a film produced with some $675,000 in public monies, shown on the public airwaves – in at least a few locations at some point in time.

But these heroic figures must know their place, too. And their place is not in prime time, nor national distribution. Only Islamists and their apologists are entitled to front-of-the-bus treatment from those like Robert MacNeil (the host of the “Crossroads” series and producer – thanks to a sweetheart deal – of “The Muslim Americans” show), Sharon Percy Rockefeller (wife of one Senator and daughter of another, Jay Rockefeller and Charles Percy, respectively, and president of WETA) and the handful of others responsible for PBS’ rejection of “Islam vs. Islamists.”

If ever there were a time when the American people are entitled to the most comprehensive presentation possible of information concerning the struggle for the soul and future of Islam, this should be it. After all, last week a Pew Research poll found that roughly a quarter of the Muslim-American population thinks suicide bombing is legitimate in at least some circumstances. An even larger percentage claimed not to believe that Arabs perpetrated the attacks of 9/11.

The particular irony is that the whole idea behind “ America at a Crossroads” was that it was intended to offer the American people twenty programs featuring differing viewpoints and a variety of stories that would, taken together, help inform the public about the post-9/11 world. This creative vision demands that the experiences and warnings of authentically moderate, pro-democratic and tolerant Muslims be treated at least as favorably as the portrayal of those in the Muslim community determined to stifle their voices. Certainly, public broadcasting should not be party to such suppression.

A bipartisan group of legislators have called for prompt, national distribution of “Islam vs. Islamists.” They have been as impressed by the quality of the film PBS doesn’t want you to see as they are outraged by the way people entrusted with responsibility for the public airwaves have handled it and those involved in its production. The “Rosa Parks” treatment is not what they have in mind, what the courageous anti-Islamist Muslims deserve, nor what will be acceptable to the national audience that expects to be able to view this documentary without further delay.

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. is a partner in ABG Films, Inc. which produced “Islam vs. Islamists: Voices from the Muslim Center .” He is also a columnist for the Washington.

China Neutralizes Cutting-Edge Magazine

Source: RFA.

HONG KONG, May 3, 2007—China’s powerful propaganda czars have pronounced the death knell for a magazine that ran hard-hitting exposes of official corruption, turning it into a cultural and lifestyle digest of mainly previously published materials, Radio Free Asia (RFA) reports.

Baixing, whose title translates roughly as “ordinary people” but is known in English as Commoners, was a popular monthly magazine under the aegis of the agricultural department, which made a name for itself exposing corruption among local officials in the countryside.

In an interview, former editor-in-chief Huang Lingtian told RFA’s Mandarin service that from the May 2007 edition, Baixing would take a digest format. “They want to turn it into a sort of digest publication, a cultural magazine aimed at young people in the countryside,” Huang, who has been moved to edit another publication under the agricultural department, told reporter Shen Hua.

“They will try their best not to produce any original material at all. Our treatment will be the same as for LifeWeek,” he said. This radical transformation into a lifestyle publication that cherry-picks the best writing from the Web effectively means Baixing will no longer employ in-house staff to originate its own articles.

LifeWeek is a magazine that suffered a similar fate, following the publication of articles on the politically sensitive topics of the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) and the Tangshan earthquake (1976). It was then ordered to stay off current affairs topics by the Communist Party’s central propaganda department, which runs tight monitoring and controls of China’s media.

Police probes

Under Huang, Baixing had already received a lot of heat from the authorities because it dared to report on real situations. The magazine’s online edition had been repeatedly closed, and Huang himself was relieved of his position there at the beginning of the year.

According to a source familiar with the situation, Huang has remained the target of several police investigations since leaving the magazine.

Huang said: “First, there is absolutely nothing to be done about it. Second, we have to be firm about what we believe in.”

Staff reassigned

Huang said nearly all his former team at Baixing, from deputy editor, to reporters, to circulation and advertising staff, had almost all left the magazine after he did.

A journalist with Baixing who called himself “Mr. Wu” said he too was in the process of leaving the magazine.

“We are being posted away, too. We are following editor-in-chief Huang Liangtian. I am in the process of doing the paperwork. I’m going to work for him on the Agricultural Products Weekly. It’s also a Department of Agriculture publication.”

Both Huang and “Wu” said the order to change the content of Baixing hadn’t come from the department of agriculture, but from the propaganda department at a high level. “Wu” said most of the new staff of had been posted there from another publication run by the department.

“They all come from within the system. From Chinese Countryside. Our magazine is one of a stable of five or six publications. The leaders and the staff all rotate between them. Some people are hired from outside.”

Long process

Sources said the decision to change Baixing’s format and content had been taken long ago, but Huang, who still cared about the magazine, had tried even after being moved elsewhere to convince those in charge not to go ahead.

He had also been instrumental in ensuring that his staff were all placed in good jobs after he left Baixing: “I did it to preserve the deep ecology of Chinese culture, and also my own sense of justice, fairness, and conscience,” Huang said.

Asked if he thought that qualities of justice, fairness, and conscience were common among journalists in China today, Huang said: “These qualities are being severely challenged. But as intellectuals in public service, we should try to stand by them. It’s really not easy, not easy at all, to be an intellectual in China.”

Critical story

Last August’s edition of the magazine printed an article titled “Ground-level investigation into evictions and demolitions in Jiangyin city,” an expose of how Jiangyin municipal government officials had grabbed land from local rural families and evicted them, imprisoning their representatives with manacles.

Just before the issue went to press, the editors came under pressure from the city government and officials higher up in its chain of command, in the agricultural department, to spike the article.

But then editor-in-chief Huang stuck to his guns and printed the article, providing a major boost to the civil rights movement in Jiangyin and causing major shocks in official circles in the city, with some officials losing their jobs. That was the last of such articles to appear in Baixing.

Internet surveillance

As well as issuing regular edicts and daily guidelines limiting news coverage in traditional media, Beijing has invested billions of yuan in a nationwide Internet surveillance system and manages to block Web sites it considers sensitive.

Many prominent Chinese academics and journalists have spoken out against the Propaganda Department, saying it has become more restrictive since the change of leadership from Jiang Zemin to Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao.

Critics also say such heavy-handed oppression of the media will harm the country’s overall development because so few channels exist to monitor the actions of officials.

Original reporting in Mandarin by Shen Hua. RFA Mandarin service director: Jennifer Chou. Translated and written for the Web in English by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Sarah Jackson-Han.

The Mainstream Media: Islamist Facilitators

Reprinted with permission by FamilySecurityMatters.org.
Author: M. Zuhdi Jasser
Source: The Family Security Foundation, Inc.
Date: April 19, 2007

In this riveting, damning exposé by FSM Contributing Editor M. Zuhdi Jasser, the mainstream media is identified as one of the most significant reasons why moderate Muslim voices are utterly silenced in America. You won’t want to take this outrage sitting down!The PBS censorship of Islam vs. Islamists highlights one of the major obstacles to hearing the Moderate Muslim Voice.

By M. Zuhdi Jasser.

Dennis Wagner of the Arizona Republic broke the story on April 10, 2007 about PBS’s censorship of the documentary, Islam vs. Islamists from its America at a Crossroads series which debuted this week. The film’s producers, Frank Gaffney, Alex Alexiev and the veteran filmmaker, Martyn Burke of ABG Films, Inc. have since presented in shocking detail their painful protracted experiences trying to navigate the censors at PBS and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting which funded the film with $675,000 of the taxpayers’ monies but now has chosen to shelve it. In just the last week of public debate, there has been a firestorm of outcry from the public who are demanding that oppressive methods of editorial content control by power brokers at PBS be investigated and the real story behind the shelving of Islam vs. Islamists be exposed. PBS’s exploitation of the public dime and the public airwaves for the narrow point of view of the Islamist sympathizers with the exclusion of the anti-Islamist Muslims is just now beginning to be understood.

As one of the subjects of the documentary, I was able to experience first-hand the professionalism and in-depth journalistic standards of veteran filmmaker, Martyn Burke, and his first-class team of consummate professionals. It was refreshing to have a documentary set out objectively to look into the deep-seated internal struggles of anti-Islamist Muslims like myself. Our work at the American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD) here in Phoenix has been riddled with continual blowback and resistance in many forms from the power structure of the activist Muslim community in the Phoenix Valley . The Valley Council of Imams, the local Muslim Voice newspaper, and organizations like CAIR-AZ have provided a laboratory of typical Islamist responses to an American organization of Muslims, like AIFD, who are trying to rescue spiritual Islam from the death grip of Islamists—Islam vs. Islamists. I do this out of love for my faith and its spiritual path to the God of Abraham in order to free it from the corruption of the political imam which has become so ubiquitous.

I have previously discussed the harm of our government’s enabling of Islamists (like CAIR, MPAC, MAS, MSA, or ISNA) in the United States and how the governmental endorsement of Islamists publicly empowers them and allows them to dodge their responsibility of countering Islamism as an ideology. This order of magnitude is greater in impact when it concerns the media’s inability to wage the debate of the “struggle for the soul of Islam”. Stories about Islam and Muslims have been more and more ubiquitous since 9-11 and now are actually commonplace. Yet, the actual debate within the Muslim community has barely begun. Where’s the disconnect? Look no further than the Islamist enablers in the media.

When so many ask across the nation, “where are the moderate voices of Islam?”, one cannot help lately but exclaim that they are being suffocated by misguided political correctness and by Islamist influence within mainstream media and government. The PBS censorship of the documentary, Islam vs. Islamists, highlights one of the best examples to date of the symbiosis of both government complicity and media complicity with the Islamist ideology.

The recent RAND corporation research project highlighting the dire need to Build Moderate Muslim Networks in this new global “long war” against militant Islamism and its ideological siblings will never come to fruition with the current blinded pro-Islamist mainstream media approach. The mainstream media (MSM) is apparently blind to the real ideology of Islamism and they allow Islamists to hide their theocracy behind minority politics. The MSM not only avoids the free flow of ideas within the Muslim community, it effectively allows the Islamists completely to stifle any and all debate which would have allowed Muslims to question those in positions of authority within the Islamic community.

It is time for the MSM to stop protecting Muslims from one another and to stop stifling the debate many anti-Islamist Muslims would like to wage against leading Islamists. If Muslims are going to form a public expression of Islam which is reconciled with western democracies which separate religion and government, this debate against Islamism needs yet to begin, let alone blossom into cultural change for Muslims.

Islamists fear nothing more than credible and genuine debate against the core political ideology of Islamism from pious anti-Islamist Muslims. With an ideological counter from anti-Islamist Muslims- the Islamist emperor “has no clothes”. At every level, they are using America ’s naïveté about Islam in order to continue their theft of Islam for the political agenda of Islamism. The Islamists know that anti-Islamist Muslims rob them of their minority trump card of Islamophobia and force them to come to terms with the anti-freedom, and anti-liberty and anti-pluralistic ideology of Islamism. Anti-Islamist, pro-Islamic Muslims expose the real motives of Islamists—which is the exploitation of the spiritual path of Islam for political and governmental power and coercion.

The MSM would prefer to facilitate the current Islamist organizations and Islamist imams. Why? It could be a fear of litigation, minority victim politics, or simple ignorance regarding the goals of Islamism. As in the case with PBS, it could also be the internal influence and infiltration of Islamists within the media and government who will go to great lengths to suffocate the opinions of anti-Islamists, especially anti-Islamist Muslims.

The PBS/CPB censorship of Islam vs. Islamists exemplifies the dire need to begin to educate many in the MSM of the ideological realities of the Islamists. They may protect Islamists blindly out of ignorance, fear, infiltration, or minority politics. But, at the end of the day, if the MSM editors understood the type of society the protected Islamists would create if they became a majority, their support would vanish. Feminists, social liberals, and those that would separate religion from government would be entirely ignored under Islamist control. Just ask the feminists what type of equality they have in many Islamist controlled mosques around the country.

It is interesting that even in the recent April 18 New York Times, Virginia Heffernan appropriately critiques the vacuous nature of Robert McNeil’s documentary, “The Muslim Americans”. McNeil’s documentary which did conveniently make the cut of the Crossroads series, turned out to be a puff-piece for political correctness with no insight into Islamist ideologies and its danger to America . The question remains whether epiphanies like Heffernan’s in the Times about McNeil’s piece will translate into systemic changes in the approach of the MSM toward Islamists.

When will there be a change from coddling and enabling Islamists toward critical engagement of their deep ideological inconsistencies with Americanism? Thus far, investigative journalism, hard-hitting analysis, and identification of the clear and present danger of the Islamist ideological threat remains at best, a large blind spot and at worst an intentional omission.

Islamists sneak in their political agenda free of criticism from the MSM because they do it in the name of a religion. When moderate Muslims call them on their false representation of all Muslims and the disservice they do to the spiritual faith of Islam, the MSM so far chooses to shelve and ignore our efforts to be heard.

So the next time anyone asks, “where are the moderate voices of Islam?”, tell them that the main reason they are voices in the wilderness is that the mainstream media chooses to leave them in the wilderness and prevent them from seeing the light of day. In the PBS documentary it is only Muslims interviewed throughout the film—how could that be anti-Muslim? Simply put, PBS claims that the veteran filmmaker Martyn Burke was one-sided, but it appears that PBS and often the MSM is one-sided protecting Islamist leadership from their most effective detractors—anti-Islamist Muslim moderates.

Borrowing on the old cliché of a tree falling in a forest, if Muslims speak out against Islamists but remain unheard (in the PBS forest), did they speak out at all? Without regular opportunities in the media and government for anti-Islamist Muslims to speak out, America will never know that they ever did. Without being heard the moderate voices will be as if they never existed. Without hearing the moderate voice, it is so much the easier for Islamists to continue toward their goal of political domination and demagoguery of the Muslim community and, ultimately, of America itself.

FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor M. Zuhdi Jasser is a former U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander and the Chairman of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy based in Phoenix , Arizona . He can be reached at Zuhdi@aifdemocracy.org.

© 2003-2007 FamilySecurityMatters.org All Rights Reserved

If you are a reporter or producer who is interested in receiving more information about this writer or this article, please email your request to COY7m@aol.com.

Note -- The opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions, views, and/or philosophy of The Family Security Foundation, Inc.

The Corporate Puplic Broadcasting Saga Continues

Below you find the transcript of Glenn Beck Show, CNN Headline News, 11 April 2007. The struggle to confront CPB and force them to release the film that Frank Gaffney and others have created so that we the people may view it and decide for ourselves. I have learned oh so much more. You should really read this transcript. Don't forget to read to this also: Producer: PBS dropped 'Islam vs. Islamists' on political grounds. Have a nice day.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BECK: Welcome to the "Real Story."

Last fall, I aired a special on radical Islam. It was called "Exposed: The Extremist Agenda." Got to tell you, that got so many people I mean just out of their minds and nuts. I found out quickly about the extraordinarily powerful and influential groups in this country that want to make sure that you only see one side of Islam. And, believe me, I heard from every single one of those groups.

For the first time in my life, I really started to understand how political correctness and personal agendas are silencing the voices of moderate Muslims and those in the media who want to speak out about a perversion of a religion. That`s why I was so glad when I originally heard that PBS, the Public Broadcasting Service, had spent millions of taxpayer dollars to finance an 11-part documentary series called "America at a Crossroads," to, quote, "explore the challenges confronting the post-9/11 world."

Well, one of the 11 parts, the most interesting, at least to me, was one called "Islam versus Islamists." This is just another word for extremist. This episode focused on how moderate Muslims everywhere, from the U.S. to the U.K. to France , are clashing with Muslim fundamentalists.

But the real story is, you`re probably never, ever going to see this documentary. PBS says they`re delaying the release because the film, quote, "is a mess." They say it has no structure. It wasn`t ready in time. It`s weak. It`s incoherent. Bladdy, bladdy, bladdy, bladdy. I got two pages from PBS explaining.

To be honest with you, after reading their explanation, if I hadn`t have gone through the "Exposed" experience on the program, I probably would have been inclined to believe them. Unfortunately, I`ve seen how these things work from inside the newsroom.

What you have to understand -- and you`ll only get this from standing in a newsroom -- is there are two completely different schools of thought on who`s responsible for radical Islam. There are those that believe from the West and poverty causes the problem and, in some cases, we deserve everything we get, while others, like me, tend to blame the madrassas, the culture of hate, the extremists themselves who are only interested in a political agenda.

That clash of ideas is real, and it is happening in newsroom all over the globe. And I bet you that PBS is no different. But unlike the others who will take this material on, PBS has another problem. It`s called government money.

When you`re a taxpayer program, when you are funded by you and me, there`s another level of political correctness that you have got to worry about or else you run the risk of alienating enough people, and you put yourself out of business. That`s why I think the real story is simple: PBS is frightened.

They are scared of the groups that will inevitably threaten them with the boycotts, lawsuits. More importantly, they are scared of a lobbying campaign in Congress that could threaten their very funding. When your budget is at stake, it is only natural to stay away from controversy. But let me ask you this: Where is the controversy?

Why is it OK for me to show what the media calls a firebrand radical cleric that is spewing hate against the West, but it somehow or another is controversial for me to show a Muslim denouncing that same cleric? Why can we run Osama bin Laden`s latest propaganda video on the 6:00 news, but everybody`s got to walk on egg shells if we want to put on a Muslim who says that`s not what the Koran says, the Koran preaches peace?

There are two sides to every story, and PBS has one, but my gut and my honestly limited experience tell me that the truth lies closer to the filmmakers. Of course, there is an easy way to settle this. We called PBS. Let me see the film. PBS, I`ll watch it with an open mind. Let me look at it. If it is incoherent or just really unbalanced -- honestly, I hope you`re right. I`ll get that message out for you. I hope the film is a mess, because that means it`s being pulled for a plot, not politics.

Unfortunately, knowing what I know, I sincerely doubt that`s the case, and PBS ain`t going to show it to me. Martyn Burke is the film`s producer. Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, he is from American Islamic Forum on Democracy. He is one of the moderate voices featured in this documentary and a new contributor to this program.

Martyn, let me start with you. You believe your film is being tampered with in ways that undermine journalistic independence. What does that mean exactly?

MARTYN BURKE, PRODUCER, "ISLAM VS. ISLAMISTS": Yes, well, I`ll give you one example. We were doing an investigative report on how the Nation of Islam, the so-called black Muslims, in Chicago were being funded by the Saudi Arabian fundamentalists through the Saudi embassy in Washington , D.C. And PBS, through WETA, the flagship station in Washington, appointed an adviser to oversee our efforts, and that adviser was from the Nation of Islam.

BECK: My gosh.

BURKE: I have never, ever heard of an investigative unit having to report to a person from the very place they are investigating. That was the first thing. And, of course, we protested that. We said, "This is just not journalism as we understand it in America."

BECK: OK. So everybody knows, let me just give a quick highlight of who you are. You`re the guy who did the documentary on the "Pirates of Silicon Valley." I mean, you`re not some jokester. You`re not me doing a special. And you had real, credible journalists on this project with you.

BURKE: Yes. Well, if I can even take that a step further, we hired a team which included a Pulitzer Prize nominee from last year for his coverage of Islam in Europe . We had a woman and her team from Toronto , Canada , from "The Toronto Star," who were profiled in the "New York Times" as being one of the top journalistic teams in this field.

We had investigative reporters from Scandinavia who had won every award in their field. This was a first-rate team, which we had to -- which we, my partners, Frank Gaffney and Alex Alexiev , had to convince them and they had to convince us. This was a rigorous interpretation of the facts.

BECK: All right. Zuhdi, what was it that was in this that America is just not going to see?

DR. M. ZUHDI JASSER, AMERICAN ISLAMIC FORUM FOR DEMOCRACY: It was basically about, I believe, the struggle of moderates and why -- you know, when you ask, where the moderate voices? Martyn basically interviewed some of the imams, interviewed some of the leading Muslim propagandists locally that have tried to suffocate our voice at the American Islamic Forum that don`t want me to get out the fact that I love the spirituality of my faith and I want to raise my kids Muslim, but I don`t want them to hijack my faith for their political motives and their political agenda.

BECK: Let me further this with you, because you are, in many ways, to Muslims, you are a credible voice, where PBS came back to me today and said, "Irshad Manji is on." And I love Irshad Manji. She`s been on this program. But I will tell you that, because of her lifestyle, a lot of Muslims say, "Well, she`s not really a Muslim," et cetera, et cetera.

You are a guy who lives every word of the Koran in all of its ways, correct?

JASSER: Yes. I mean, you could call me a social conservative even. And, you know, I love the spirituality, but my choice to live socially conservative is mine alone. It should not be governments`. It should not be the imams`. And they`ve stolen our pulpits for their political agenda. And when we get a story, a documentary that shows how the only pulpit I have to speak from is the media, they want to suffocate that and not let the world hear about it.

BECK: Martyn, your film was called irresponsible because it`s alarmist and unfair. How much danger do you think -- you`ve been in this business for a while -- how much danger do you think there is when there`s this kind of political correctness and pressure going on to get another side out of a story? How much trouble are we in?

BURKE: Glenn, first of all, the comments on our film became increasingly hysterical from the PBS people after we decided we were not going to be apologists for the Islamists who are silencing the moderate Muslims around the world.

And by silencing, I mean, we traipsed around Paris with a guy that had police protection 24 hours a day. We spent time with a member of parliament over in Denmark who is under police guard because he is a member of parliament. The Islamists do not want their own to participate in democracy.

And, by the way, a very important thing that you mentioned. They will call people like Zuhdi not real Muslims, because he believes in a Western way of life, because he believes in democracy and separation of church and state.

And, by the way, that`s exactly what PBS is doing to them. They sort of have told us, in so many words, that people like Zuhdi have become Westernized so they can`t really be Muslims. This small group -- and I want to emphasize, it`s a small group within WETA and PBS -- have decided they speak for the Muslims.

BECK: OK. Let me ask you this, because there was -- when we did "The Extremist Agenda," I mean, I`m not kidding you, people were on the phone trying to get the special pulled all the way until it aired. There are people who vehemently disagree. Do you believe it was out of fear or these people just say, "It`s not that big of a problem"?

What`s their motivation for this, do you believe?

BURKE: I think there are two different reasons. One is, I committed the unforgivable sin in their eyes of being partnered with two conservatives, Frank Gaffney and Alex Alexiev . And shortly after they took over the series, they flew to Toronto , Canada , where I was for a while and met me and said, "Fire your partners."

I said, "Wait a minute. I did a film on the Hollywood 10, on blacklisting in Hollywood , and I am not about to fire my partners for their political beliefs." And they uttered a statement that I never thought I would hear in America . They said, "Don`t you check into the political beliefs of the people you work with?"

BECK: Oh, my gosh.

BURKE: For the record, I just want to say, I couldn`t have cared less about the politics of the people we put on the air in this show, or I say on the air advisedly, because I have socialists, I have people who are conservatives on the air. It did not matter what their politics were.

BECK: OK.

BURKE: They were the moderate Muslims who had a right to speak out.

BECK: Martyn, Zuhdi, I would love to spend more time on this subject. I`d like to invite you to the radio program tomorrow. Let`s try to work that out, and thanks.

That is "The Real Story" tonight. If you`d like to read more about this or if you`ve found a real story of your own, please tell us about it. Go to Glenn Beck and click on "The Real Story" button. Back in a minute.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

THE FILM P.B.S. DOESN’T WANT YOU TO SEE

Background

In the spring of 2005, Frank Gaffney was among those invited to submit a proposal for a documentary film about the world post-9/11 to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s “America at a Crossroads” competition. Shortly thereafter, a partnership was formed by Mr. Gaffney with Alex Alexiev (an internationally renowned expert on Islamism) and Martyn Burke (an accomplished author and Hollywood director of feature and documentary films) – ABG Films Inc. ABG proposed to make an hour-long documentary about the plight of moderate Muslims at the hands of their Islamist co-religionists.

This film, with the working title of “Islam vs. Islamists: Voices from the Muslim Center,” was one of thirty-five proposals selected by CPB out of roughly 440 competitors for a research and development grant. The ABG team used this grant to produce a 35-minute short film and written treatment. The ABG proposal was, in turn, one of 20 competitors further down-selected by CPB to receive a nearly $600,000 production grant. At the time, moreover, it was announced in a CPB press release that “Islam vs. Islamists” would be one of the Crossroads series films to be aired by the Public Broadcasting Service during eight prime-time hours set aside for that purpose, initially scheduled for the Fall of 2006.

At about the same time as the latter decision was made in early 2006, personnel changes at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting began affecting planning for the Crossroads project. These ultimately resulted in the entire initiative being turned over to the Public Broadcasting Service and its flagship Washington station, WETA.

The Trouble Begins

As this transition went forward, “Islam vs. Islamists” began to experience a succession of problems that have been documented in correspondence between ABG’s principals and WETA President Sharon Percy Rockefeller. They started with an unconcealed effort by PBS executives to dissuade CPB from making the production grant to ABG. The grounds given: two of the film’s executive co-producers were associated with an “advocacy” organization (i.e., in their “day-jobs” as President and Vice President, respectively, of the Center for Security Policy ). It was asserted that PBS “guidelines” would not permit such individuals to have a role in determining the content of a film aired on the Public Broadcasting Service’s airwaves.

After ABG documented that these guidelines were routinely ignored by PBS and its affiliates – resulting in the frequent broadcasting of films and even series produced by or otherwise associated with left-of-center advocacy organizations – CPB President Pat Harrison decided to approve the production grant for “Islam vs. Islamists.” Even after this decision, PBS continued to insist that it would not broadcast the film unless Messrs. Gaffney and Alexiev were stripped of their Executive Producer roles, delaying by four months the execution of our contract. PBS asserted this position again, both orally and in writing, once the production funds were finally in hand.

Death of a Thousand Cuts

In the face of ABG’s refusal to allow members of its team to be blacklisted, the WETA/PBS Crossroads series management apparently decided to use other means to accomplish the objective of preventing “Islam vs. Islamists” from being aired on the Public Broadcasting Service. As the attached correspondence makes clear, these included:

• Hiring as a series producer an individual who made known to ABG the high regard he had for his father, who happens to be a Muslim convert with long-established ties to British Islamists. This producer has repeatedly insisted that changes be made in the structure and “context” of our film in ways that seemed intended to provide a more favorable treatment of the profiled Islamists, compromise the documentary’s central concept and greatly complicate its production.

(N.B. These changes are not to be confused with more straightforward editorial changes which were also proposed throughout the process. Wherever such suggestions were warranted and constructive, we have incorporated or otherwise responded to them.)

• Engaging an outside “advisor” to the series whose well-publicized sympathies for known Islamists made it predictable that she would object to our film. In the event, this advisor actually breached her confidentiality agreement and showed the film to interested parties, who promptly threatened litigation if it were not changed to their liking.
• Handicapping “Islamist vs. Islamist” to the benefit of other films. One also dealing with American Muslims was commissioned – after and altogether outside the Crossroads competition – from Robert MacNeil, who had been brought in by WETA/PBS to serve as the series moderator. In another case, individuals who we had advised the series producers were going to be interviewed during our location-shooting in Canada became unavailable to us when they were invited to be filmed by a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation crew working for another Crossroads film.
• On 12 February 2007, PBS and WETA informed ABG that “Islam vs. Islamists” had been rejected for airing by the Crossroads series. The reasons given amounted to a repetition of previous complaints that the Islamists and their sympathizers had not been given favorable enough treatment. On 3 April, Mr. MacNeil denounced this film on a nationally syndicated NPR program as “extremely one-sided and alarmist.”

Conclusion

PBS/WETA’s highly prejudicial treatment of “Islam vs. Islamists” seriously disserves the viewing public insofar as there is, arguably, no more important topic for American (and, we believe, foreign) audiences to understand about the post-9/11 world than the plight of moderate Muslims at the hands of their Islamist enemies – and ours.

As awareness grows about the “parallel societies” the Islamists are trying to insinuate into Western democracies – and, thereby, to undermine them – the importance and timeliness of this film which illuminates these efforts and their dangers becomes all the more apparent. CPB should immediately take steps to allow “Islam vs. Islamists” to be seen in the near future by the largest possible audience. Toward that end, it should make arrangements at once to permit this documentary’s distribution by outlets other than PBS.

The proof, evidence if you will, is right here that the show was to air. Why won't they allow someone else to air it, and what are they hiding?