Troy (NY) Record Supports C-Span while Newsday Does Not.

In addition to the articles, blog entries and wire coverage over the past week, editorials are now starting to appear.

The editorialists at Troy Record voiced their support of C-Span, one of the few newspapers or blogs to do so. They wonder:

Can there be any reasonable person in the western world who disputes the breadth and depth of the Holocaust?"

The operative word is "reasonable," as we know there are right-wing groups in our own country whose belief system springs from an anti-Semitic fountain that spews lies about the Holocaust. Indeed, one British historian, David Irving, has made a career based on challenging the extent of the Holocaust.

[...]
We agree with Lipstadt and the historians who are appalled by what Irving stands for. Anyone who could deny one of history's most horrific examples of inhumanity is a either a fool or someone carrying a misguided burden of hatred for certain people.However, because Lispstadt chose to make an issue of her court battle with Irving by writing a book, Irving's account of the same issue should be fair game for airing. Certainly his lecture would provide viewers a clearer picture of what sparked the battle in the first place.

[...]
Letting Irving be heard on a respectable medium like C-Span, a network with no agenda and no pundits, only reinforces the fact that bigotry and hate still run deep among some people the world over,....

But Newsday took a different stance:

Indelicate balance
No need for equal time on Holocaust

[...]But the channel did itself a great disservice recently when it decided, under the guise of "balance," to give coverage to Holocaust denier David Irving because it was doing a show on a book by Holocaust scholar Deborah Lipstadt.

[...]
More than 200 of this nation's leading historians have signed a letter strongly opposing the channel's decision to provide "balance" by including Irving. "Falsifiers of history cannot 'balance' historians," the historians write.

"Falsehoods cannot 'balance' the truth."

Well said. C-Span, given all the good work it has done, deserves a chance to explain better what it thought it was doing. Balance does not always serve the truth.