C-Span: A long overdue comment about a very old issue

I have been remiss not to have long ago added this comment about the C-Span controversy which occurred when my book, History on Trial: My Day in court with David Irving was first published.

As some readers will remember C-Span insisted on my appearing either with David Irving or back to back [a segment by him and then one by me]. In other words, we would appear as two sides of the issue.

At first the Ethics Scoreboard supported my refusal to appear. I blogged about that.
It subsequently retracted its support. I failed to explicitly blog about that. That was wrong on my part.

The reason it withdrew its support was that C-Span told it that all it wanted to do was show the views against which I was fighting, e.g. when the fight against evolution is discussed the views of creationists are shown. This, the Ethicsscoreboard says, is good journalistic practice.

If that is what C-Span planned to do, that is not what they told me or reporters from the Washington Post, New York Times, and other papers that covered the incident.

If this is what C-Span planned to do, when then did it ultimately admit its error or use the word "balance," when it said it planned to balance its coverage of me with coverage of Irving.

C-Span's producer was quite explicit: either appear with David Irving on the same platform and we will film that or we will show you in one segment and then follow up your presentation with one of the same length by Irving.

This is precisely what deniers want, to be thought of as an "other side." For a prime example of this approach by deniers, see my previous post on how Al Hurra covered the Iranian Holocaust conference.

Creative Loafing, Atlanta's "alternative" paper attacks me

Creative Loafing's editor, John Sugg, has penned a vitriolic attack on me. I am used to that. Problem is that it is full of fabrications. Here's the letter I just sent to Creative Loafing.

John Sugg has penned an attack on me which is full of inventions and distortions of my words. I would not mind his vitriol if he had his facts straight. He writes: “She basically said that any action by Israel – however horrific, violent and at odds with international law – was justified by the Holocaust.” Will John Sugg show me where in my article I said anything to that effect? I made no such statement.

I argued that in a chronology of incidents relating to the Arab/Israeli situation Carter fails to include anything of any importance happening between 1939 and 1947. The Holocaust is one of the primary events which makes many Israelis and Jews worldwide feel that a Jewish state is an absolute necessity. To write a book trying to advance the cause of peace and ignore this is to show either a total unfamiliarity with the situation or a terribly unbalanced view… or both.

Mr. Sugg says that I “makes much of the fact that Carter's critics are "being silenced" (so obviously untrue that it defies any response).” Could he show me anyplace where I said that? Carter claimed that people with his view were being silenced. I pointed out that he has appeared on every relevant show on television. I did argue that Carter refuses to debate anyone who criticizes his book. If Mr. Sugg could show me that that is wrong, I would appreciate it.

Mr. Sugg then goes on to argue that that I am “an architect of silencing debate” because I supposedly tried to convince C-SPAN “not to air a speech Irving made to a Buckhead audience.” Once again Sugg gets it all wrong. I told C-SPAN that I would neither appear “with” Irving, as they proposed, or wanted my talk paired with his. I do not debate deniers because, as we showed in my 6 year court battle, deniers are, to quote the judge, “liars” and "falsifiers of history.” The “distort” and their version of history is a “travesty.” [Actually the judge was talking about Irving specifically but his comments can be extrapolated to pertain to all deniers.] I observed that C-SPAN had the right to air Irving anytime they want to. I just did not want to be paired with him.

Finally, in his ringing defense of “free speech,” Mr. Sugg ignores the fact that I have been one of the leading critics of laws against Holocaust denial. I criticized Mr. Irving incarceration in Austria and have spoken out forcefully, including on Al Jazeera TV, against the proposed EU legislation against genocide denial. All this is recorded on my blog, www.lipstadt.blogspot.com. Seems that is part of the story too.

Free speech is one thing. Making up facts to fit your argument is what deniers do. I would expect more of John Sugg. I was wrong.

Sincerely,

Deborah E. Lipstadt, Ph.D.

"The Final Word"

In the Summer 2005 issue of Emory University's Emory Magazine, Associate Editor Paige Parvin writes about Prof. Lipstadt, History on Trial and the C-SPAN controversy. Here are some excerpts:

The Final Word
By Paige P. Parvin 96G

History Professor Deborah Lipstadt recounts her court battle against Holocaust denial and how she became a public defender of historical truth

Deborah Lipstadt is not accustomed to being quiet.

Even as a kid growing up in Queens, Emory's Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies and chair of the Rabbi Donald A. Tam Institute for Jewish Studies earned a reputation as "feisty and combative" at the Jewish day school she attended, frequently causing her mother to be summoned to the principal's office to defend her red-haired daughter's argumentative nature.

"I had the impression that although she did not appreciate these school visits, she admired my gumption," Lipstadt writes in her most recent book, History on Trial . "I knew I had been named Deborah because she loved the biblical character. When I was still quite young, she had described how Deborah led her people in battle and dispensed justice. I liked the notion that I was named after such a person."

So it follows that some five decades later, when Lipstadt was sued for libel by British author and Holocaust-denier David Irving, she was hardly at a loss for words. But her defense team deemed it best she remain silent throughout the three-month trial, staying out of the witness box and away from the press, in order to keep the focus where it belonged: on Irving's credibility rather than her own.

An eloquent, outspoken college professor and scholar to whom words are as powerful as weapons, Lipstadt called the imposed quietude "excruciatingly hard." Dutifully biting her tongue, she took notes and filed away her impressions, waiting for the time when she could tell her own story. That time came in February of this year with the release of her book History on Trial: My Day in Court With David Irving .

In the months since, Lipstadt has appeared on TV and in the press around the U.S., Europe, and even in Australia, now unfettered by a promise of silence. The book, described as a "legal thriller" with commercial appeal, has been favorably reviewed and is selling well, she reports.

History on Trial is a blow-by-blow account of the Irving v. Lipstadt trial, from the moment Lipstadt learned of the lawsuit in 1995 to the judge's sweeping ruling in her favor five years later. At issue was Lipstadt's 1993 scholarly book, Denying the Holocaust: An Assault on Truth and Memory , in which she referred to Irving, calling him "one of the most dangerous spokespersons for Holocaust denial." Irving sued her for libel in Britain, where the burden of proof rests with the defense--meaning Lipstadt had to prove, in essence, that Irving was indeed a Holocaust-denier as her book claimed. The lawsuit put Lipstadt in an international spotlight and so dominated her professional and personal life that when it was over, she was compelled to depart from academic writing to put the experience into her own words.

A blend of journalism and journal, historical fact and human feelings, History on Trial was both more and less difficult to produce than a scholarly work, Lipstadt says--and considerably more intimidating because of the deeply personal nature of the work.

"The book was a chance for me to tell the story from my own perspective," Lipstadt says. "After keeping silent throughout the trial, it was a chance for my voice to be heard."

[...]

During the late 1970s and 1980s, Lipstadt taught history at the University of Washington and later at the University of California in Los Angeles; but UCLA was a poor research fit for her and she was denied tenure. Soon afterward, two professors at the Center for the Study of Anti-Semitism of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem asked if she would be willing to look into the Holocaust denial movement, an international network that seeks to minimize the devastation of the Holocaust and cast Jews as sympathy-seekers.

Lipstadt agreed, somewhat dubiously.

"Convinced that deniers were fringe extremists," she writes, "I asked these two leading Holocaust scholars: why study the historical equivalent of flat-earth theorists? [The scholars] believed this a new, potentially dangerous form of anti-Semitism. Though they thought it should be analyzed, I was not entirely convinced."

But as she began to examine the practice of Holocaust denial more closely, Lipstadt quickly came to understand their concern. What was most alarming about Holocaust deniers, as she explained to the audience during a talk at the Atlanta History Center in April, was their mask of legitimacy, their insidious portrayal of the Holocaust as a two-sided "issue" subject to academic debate. Leaders of the movement had created scholarly looking organizations such as the California-based Institute for Historical Review; held national and international conferences; and published journals that aspired to academic credibility.

Indeed, Holocaust deniers were so successful in cultivating a serious image that throughout the 1990s college newspapers accepted advertisements from these groups, despite policies that otherwise prevented ads promoting hostility toward any religious or ethnic group. The editors claimed that to reject these ads would be to curb academic freedom of speech.

"If you appear looking like a neo-Nazi, people know exactly how to categorize you," Lipstadt says. "So [the Holocaust deniers] figured out instead how to become Holocaust revisionists . . . they were [posing as] serious historians looking at an issue. And there is a direct link between the attempt to rewrite history and the attempt to push a certain political agenda."

With his silver hair, square jaw and ruddy complexion, David Irving is the picture of the tweedy British history buff. Although he did not finish college, his first book, The Bombing of Dresden , was published when he was only twenty-five to considerable acclaim and commercial success. Known for his thorough research methods that relied mainly on primary sources, Irving quickly became a prolific historical writer. He has written more than two dozen books on history and World War II in particular.

But even in his early work, a theme began to emerge: Irving repeatedly sought to elevate the wrongs of the Allied Forces while minimizing those of the Nazis. [...]

When Lipstadt began researching Holocaust denial, the trail naturally led to Irving. In scholarly circles, he was beginning to gain a reputation for his sympathy with Hitler and the Nazi party and his questionable research and theories on the Holocaust itself. Many historians believed his personal ideology was compromising his work. When Hitler's War was re-released in 1991, for instance, Lipstadt found striking contrasts between the two versions: the gas chambers had disappeared, as had any mention of the Holocaust.

As a public figure, Irving left no doubt where he stood ideologically. A frequent speaker to far-right-wing audiences and groups associated with the neo-Nazi movement, he had publicly declared Auschwitz "Disneyland for tourists," Hitler "the best friend the Jews had in Europe," and the Holocaust a "fabrication" and "legend." He is infamous for tastelessly quipping, "More women died on the back seat of Edward Kennedy's car at Chappaquiddick than ever died in a gas chamber in Auschwitz."

So it's not surprising that when Lipstadt first learned Irving was suing her and British publisher Penguin for libel because she had called him a Holocaust denier, her first response was to dismiss it as "nothing more than sound and fury."

Despite the weighty evidence in the court of public opinion, the British Royal High Court required a more deliberate analysis, and Lipstadt was obliged to mount a formidable defense. While funding for the trial ultimately came from a range of sources, Lipstadt has long praised Emory for its early and sustained support. When she first learned of Irving's intent to sue, she became panicked about money, wondering where the funds for her legal expenses would come from. Emory's board of trustees voted to allot $30,000 to her defense before she even asked. Later the University gave more, as well as leave with pay to attend the trial. "I am grateful for the University's commitment to moral engagement," she says.

"Every so often a colleague tackles a problem of such immense social consequence that the university must support the efforts," says University Provost Earl Lewis. "Deborah Lipstadt earned University support for courageously and truthfully speaking about the relationship of the past to the present. She knows that to deny the Holocaust is to render damage to all humanity. It was an important call, and correct call, for Emory to support her in the ways it did."

[...]

During the trial--in which Irving represented himself, declaring no one else as capable of doing so--Lipstadt's defense produced instance after instance in which Irving twisted the truth to conform to his own skewed views of history. Cambridge historian Richard Evans was recruited as an expert witness and worked with two researchers to examine Irving's writings. After some initial skepticism on his part, what he found shocked him deeply.

"A knotted web of distortions, suppressions, and manipulations became evident in every single instance we examined," Evans wrote in his report for the court. "I was not prepared for the sheer depths of duplicity which I encountered in Irving's treatment of the historical sources, nor for the way in which this dishonesty permeated his entire written and spoken output. ...His numerous mistakes...are calculated and deliberate."

Throughout History on Trial , Lipstadt often quotes directly from the court proceedings, giving the reader a window into the courtroom and a sense of the drama that pervaded the ordeal. Many of the most sensational moments sprang not from testimony about Irving's historical research--although that certainly provided ample evidence against him--but from accounts of Irving's public expressions of his personal views.

Ultimately, Justice Charles Gray agreed with Lipstadt that Irving was both an antisemite and a racist, as well as a liar and a cunning manipulator of history. In his 355-page judgment, he found that Irving's "falsification of the historical record was both deliberate and ... motivated by a desire to present events in a manner consistent with his own ideological beliefs even if that involved distortion and manipulation of historical evidence."

Irving was ordered to pay the $3 million cost of the trial, and the judgment was the lead story in newspapers and media around the world. After trying to have her "libelous" book pulled from shelves, David Irving had instead given Lipstadt and her work the spotlight on a world stage.

[...]

For Lipstadt, at the heart of the Irving trial lay conflicting desires--one to speak out against Irving in the name of Jews and Holocaust victims, and another to refuse to dignify his arguments by engaging in a debate. The notion that the very existence of the Holocaust is a matter for discussion is one that Lipstadt has resisted from the beginning.

"Our objective was not to prove the Holocaust had happened. No court was needed to prove that," she writes of her legal defense. "Our job was to prove the truth of my words, namely that Irving had lied about the Holocaust and had done so out of antisemitic motives."

[...]

Five years after the trial, Lipstadt continues to battle the misguided perception that she and Irving are on opposite sides of an argument. A few weeks after her book appeared, the TV network C-Span invited Lipstadt on Book TV to discuss History on Trial --welcome publicity for any author. C-Span planned to air a lecture by Lipstadt at Harvard to educate viewers about the book.

But there was a catch: C-Span also intended to feature a talk by Irving in the next time slot, for "balance." When she learned of this plan, Lipstadt canceled her appearance on a long-held principle.

"How can one debate someone, on any topic, who deliberately lies and falsifies history?" Lipstadt wrote in a letter to the New York Times. "I would be delighted to appear on C-Span, but not as part of a debate that is no debate."

C-Span's decision to air Irving back-to-back with Lipstadt sparked a national response. Editorials appeared in newspapers around the country, including one by Richard Cohen of the Washington Post : "This is the Crossfire mentality reduced to absurdity, if that's possible," he wrote. "For a book on the evils of slavery, would it counter with someone who thinks it was a benign institution?"

The network received more than three thousand letters and e-mails, including one from Emory's Edward Queen of the Center for Ethics, objecting to the move. Some five hundred university historians and high-profile journalists signed a petition supporting Lipstadt and criticizing C-Span:

[...]

C-SPAN wound up producing and airing a show that offered commentary on History on Trial by Washington Post writer T.R. Reid, as well as video clips from past appearances by both Lipstadt and Irving. For Lipstadt, the controversy was a sobering reminder that even though she had won a resounding victory against Irving in court, the dangers he and others like him pose are still clear and present--and must continue to be brazened out.

"Our all-encompassing victory notwithstanding, [the trial] was not the last battle against deniers or, for that matter, against antisemites, because anti-Semitism itself cannot be 'defeated'," she writes in History on Trial. "It will wither away, or not--probably the latter--of its own accord. Since anti-Semitism and, for that matter, all forms of prejudice are impervious to reason, they cannot be disproved. Therefore, in every generation they must be fought."

Lipstadt says she is looking forward to returning to the research on modern anti-Semitism she had only just begun ten years ago, when the letter from Penguin hijacked her academic career. But she acknowledges that the Irving trial has changed her and shaped her as a scholar and teacher.

"My voice has more resonance now," she says. "I happen to be one of those people whose battle got a lot of attention. It's no more important than anyone else's. But students tend to resonate to people who stand up and fight for something."

Jacob Cherry, an Emory College junior from Westchester County, New York, took Lipstadt's Holocaust studies course last year. Although she routinely devotes only one lecture during the semester to the Irving trial, Cherry says Lipstadt's personal experience lends an added layer of poignancy to her teaching about the Holocaust.

"She is one of the most inspirational, passionate people I've ever known," Cherry says. "She is one of those professors who you know, when you look back thirty years from now, you will remember what she said. It's amazing to get to take a class from such a central figure in Holocaust studies."

Although Lipstadt has maintained she never set out to defend the truth of the Holocaust, in many ways the Holocaust survivors and Jews who supported her fight looked to her to do just that. It was a bittersweet burden she both resisted and bravely embraced. And it was finally the victims who brought out the strongest emotion in Lipstadt, leaving her feeling "particularly unnerved." Many survivors contacted her during the trial and afterward; [...]

"Dear Professor Lipstadt," one woman wrote. "You do not know me and we will probably never meet. ... My mother was killed in Auschwitz. If David Irving had won my mother would have been a victim a second time! So too would everybody else who perished there. I loved my mother very much and have not seen her since April 14, 1939 when I was fourteen years old. She was killed on October 23, 1944. Gratefully yours, Anna Bertolina."

This letter, and dozens of others, touched Lipstadt deeply. In a moving passage of her book, she describes her feelings about those who perished in the Holocaust and her role in preserving their memory.

"In Jewish tradition...Taking care of the dead is called hesed shel emet, the most genuine act of loving-kindness, because it is then that we most closely emulate God's kindness to humans, which also cannot be reciprocated," Lipstadt writes. "For five years I had the privilege to do hesed shel emet, to stand up for those who did not survive or who could not stand up for themselves. I did not choose this field of research in order to perform this act of hesed. I did not write my book on deniers expecting to engage in this act. I did not choose this fight. But now, as I look back, I am filled with gratitude. If someone had to be taken out of the long line to fight this battle, I feel gratified to have been the one."

Ventura County Star on C-SPAN Controversy

In the April 18 issue of the Ventura County Star, columnist Beverly Kelley comments on the C-SPAN controversy. Here are some excerpts:

Some opinions don't have intellectual merit

Think about a historian specializing in slavery who, because of his ability to cite journals, transcripts and other legal documents, has acquired renown as a painstaking researcher and eminent scholar. Now imagine he reaches the conclusion that slavery never really existed and that anyone who believes otherwise is perpetrating a massive fraud.

Eventually, another historian takes a look at the first historian's research. In fact, she submits every citation to intense scrutiny. What she finds is a consistent pattern of misquotation, misinterpretation and fabrication. The second historian accuses the first, in print, of manipulating evidence "in order to reach historically untenable conclusions."

The first historian, who sues the second historian for libel, loses big time. In fact, the judge's verdict not only calls the first historian a "racist" but finds that his "falsification of the record was deliberate and ... motivated by a desire to present events in a manner consistent with his own ideological beliefs even if that involved distortion and manipulation of historical evidence."

Hmm -- is all this just some sort of ethical "what if" game? No, Virginia, these events actually transpired -- all you have to do is substitute "the Holocaust" for "slavery." The name of the first historian is David Irving and the second is Deborah Lipstadt.

Now you have all the information you need to understand the raft of outraged phone calls, letters, and e-mail battering C-SPAN last month. It seems a producer thought she needed to "balance" Deborah Lipstadt's book interview with an appearance by the debunked Holocaust denier.

[...]

It's about time we realized that not every cockamamie opinion should be accorded equal intellectual merit. The C-SPAN debacle raises legitimate concerns -- has a journalist sought the truth if he merely cites opposing authorities? What factual backing is required for a viewpoint to make it to a "letters to the editor" page?

In a 1990 speech, Irving declared, "The holocaust of Germans in Dresden really happened. That of the Jews in the gas chambers of Auschwitz is an invention." In 1991, he pontificated, "More women died on the back seat of Senator Edward Kennedy's car at Chappaquiddick than died in the gas chambers of Auschwitz." Irving also maintained that Adolf Hitler played no role in the Final Solution.

Holocaust deniers would have you believe that "The Diary of Anne Frank" was actually a forgery and that concentration camp gas chambers were used for delousing. With respect to genocide statistics, these folks have whittled down the generally accepted 6 million Jews to 200,000, claiming many succumbed to disease or perished at the hands of the Allies. Despite the existence of contrary evidence galore (Germans kept impeccable accounts) they allege Zionists perpetrated the Holocaust hoax to bilk Germany out of heavy-duty reparation dollars.

[...]

On his Web site, Irving argues the C-SPAN dispute is "blind censorship, that is what this country now has to fear." It might be worth noting that in "History on Trial," Lipstadt, who is Jewish, likewise opposes censorship, not just from a freedom of speech standpoint but because it might give Holocaust deniers' nonfact based vision of history a platform. She has no objection to Irving making an appearance on C-SPAN. As a matter of principle, however, she won't debate him.

"You can convince anyone of anything if you just push it at them 100 percent of the time. They may not believe it completely, but they will still use it to form opinions, especially if they have nothing else to draw on." Do you know who said that?

Charles Manson. Think about it.

-- Beverly Kelley, who writes every other Monday for The Star, is an author ("Reelpolitik" and "Reelpolitik II") and professor in the Communication Department at California Lutheran University. Her e-mail address is kelley@clunet.edu. Visit her blog spot at beverlykelley.typepad.com/my_weblog.

C-Span's Holocaust Denier Sinks Show

Intervention Magazine, a "webzine" on "War, Politics, Culture", has an article on the C-SPAN controversy, posted on March 25. Here are some excerpts:

C-Span's Holocaust Denier Sinks Show

When C-Span decided to "balance" a scholar's lecture at Harvard University with a confirmed liar speaking in a Georgia diner, it joined the reality TV crowd by favoring sensationalism over serious reporting.

By Frederick Sweet

More than 200 college historians nationwide had sent a petition to C-Span, protesting its plan to add a Holocaust denier to its coverage of a lecture by Deborah E. Lipstadt, a professor of Holocaust studies at Emory University. C-Span had planned to "balance" Lipstadt's speech with one by the British writer David Irving who argues that Hitler is not responsible for the mass murder of Europe's Jews.

"Falsifiers of history cannot 'balance' histories," said the petition, delivered to Connie Doebele, the executive producer at C-Span that had been scheduled to cover Lipstadt's Harvard lecture. The petition continued, "Falsehoods cannot 'balance' the truth," as reported in the New York Times (3/18/05).

[...]


When Lipstadt learned that the cable network had planned to include a lecture by Irving along with her remarks for "balance," she refused to give C-Span permission to tape the Harvard event. "I called the producer at C-Span and told her that this [Irving] was a man who was a Holocaust denier, and this idea of using both of us made no sense to me," Lipstadt said.

Irving Loses 2000 Libel Suit Brought Against Lipstadt

In May 2000, I met Professor Deborah E. Lipstadt in St. Louis at her lecture on Holocaust deniers after she had just returned from England, exhausted from her London trial. Lipstadt was obliged to prove that she had not libeled the Third Reich-loving writer David Irving. Asked why she had decided to go through with the trial instead of settling out of court with the Holocaust denier, she simply said, "When you face evil, you have no choice."

Irving has written Goring: A Biography, The Destruction of Dresden, Goebbels: Mastermind of the Third Reich,and Nuremberg, the Last Battle that are sympathetic to his country's World War II enemies. Indeed, in Hitler's War, Irving intimates that Hitler never ordered anyone to murder the Jews. Some sort of killing may have happened to the Jews in the fog of war ... as had happened to other civilians. But, wrote Irving, nothing close to 6-million Jews had been killed, and certainly not systematically. Irving claimed his books establish him as a "published historian."

In her book, Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory, Lipstadt charged Irving with knowingly lying in his writings on the Holocaust by denying that between 1940 and 1945 six and a half million Jews had been systematically robbed and then murdered by the Nazis and their accomplices following Adolf Hitler's orders. Rather than write a rebuttal to Lipstadt's expose of his writings on Holocaust denial, Irving sued her for libel in England.

This wasn't the first time Irving used the law to shake down a detractor for money with threats of a libel suit and to gain notoriety from it. Up until Lipstadt's trial, Irving's dodge had always paid off. But this time it didn't work because the scholar defended her work.

[...]

The Court ordered Irving to pay the cost of Lipstadt's defense, reportedly running over a million dollars. During the trial, a German expert on World War II history corroborated Lipstadt's criticism that Irving had falsified the record and wrongfully denied Hitler's "Final Solution to the Jewish Question" while also ridiculing the victims of the Holocaust.

The German expert charged Irving with dangerously using Germany as his "playground" for furthering his political ambitions. Irving retorted that he didn't throw bombs or harm anyone; he was merely a writer of words.

The German professor accused him of being worse than a terrorist because he "throws words" that induce others to violence. And indeed, it came out at the trial that Irving recently collaborated on editing a book by the notorious American racist, David Duke, a former high-level officer of the Ku Klux Klan.

Rebuffing C-Span's Bizarre Show

Lipstadt and many of her supporters believe that adding Irving's speech on Holocaust denial to an account of her views would be like accompanying a story on American slavery with remarks from someone who insists that slavery never happened.

"I told C-Span that I assumed that if they weren't going to tape my lecture, they also wouldn't use David Irving, but they said no, they were committed to having him on," Lipstadt told New York Times reporter Lewin. "This is a man who's said that Holocaust survivors are all liars, and that more people died in Senator Kennedy's car at Chappaquiddick than in the gas chambers."

[...]

Lipstadt is a distinguished Holocaust scholar who has taken it upon herself to confront the anti-Semitic Holocaust deniers with historic truth. Irving is a British court-confirmed liar who makes a living out of selling books that distort the historic record by denying that the Holocaust ever happened. The puzzler is, why did C-Span decide to "balance" the scholar's lecture at Harvard University with that by a confirmed liar speaking in a Georgia diner?

Evidently, C-Span has joined the reality TV crowd by favoring sensationalism over serious reporting.

Frederick Sweet is Professor of Reproductive Biology in Obstetrics and Gynecology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. You can email your comments to fred@interventionmag.com.

lipstadt.blogspot.com and the CSpan Saga

A number of people have contacted me asking for my reactions to one or another developments in the "CSpan Saga." I have really said all that can be said about it and don't think I will be commenting further.

We will continue to post various other people's comments about the issue, whether they agree with my position or not. Generally, we will post them without comment. [We will continue our practice of providing a brief introduction and link to the source.]

And now I am going swimming.

C-SPAN: An "Ethics Dunce"

The Ethics Scoreboard has a Dunces Corner which is "Reserved for those individuals and organizations who display a complete ignorance of ethics through their persistence in, defense of, or comfort with blatantly unethical conduct."

Here are some excerpts from the Scoreboard's assessment of C-SPAN who received top billing on the list of March 2005 Ethics Dunces:

What really puts the "Dunce" in this Ethics Dunce is a seemingly obvious truth: lies do not provide balance. The laudable objective of balance in discussing public affairs or any other controversial issue is to promote fair analysis and broad-based understanding by presenting varying and legitimate points of view on the topic at hand. Lies do not promote either. Lies foster un-fairness and misunderstanding. Is it possible that C-SPAN doesn't know this? The mind boggles.

The contention that the Holocaust occurred is not controversial, any more than the contention that the Pacific Ocean is wet or that the Confederacy lost the Civil War. Since David Irving has made a reputation by claiming the Holocaust didn't happen, there is also no controversy over his legitimacy and integrity as a serious historian: he has none. He is incapable of providing balance to Lipstadt or anyone else.

A fun parlor game could come out of this, called "C-SPAN Balance." The idea would be to find the perfect balance to anyone discussing an established fact. Let's see… [...]

[...] It is too horrible to contemplate that the executives at C-SPAN actually believe that Irving's position isn't a lie, so, with a shudder, we will put that idea aside. Instead, this Ethics Dunce should write on the blackboard a hundred, no, a thousand times:

Lies aren't balance.

Maybe it will sink in.

Reaction to CSpan

From: Edward Queen
Sent: Wednesday, April 13, 2005 10:45 AM
To: 'booktv@c-span.org'
Subject: History on Trial

I honestly must admit that my imagination could not conceive that Book TV on C-Span2 could have acted even more irresponsibly, ignorantly, and cowardly regarding its handling of Professor Deborah Lipstadt’s book History on Trial than it did with its initial planning for the program. As a textbook case of management and institutional response driven by a “cover yourself” mentality this event soon will find its way into my teaching, ranking with the Japanese government’s handling of the the country’s banking collapse and the Nixon White House’s handling of Watergate. This, however, will feature as an even more as pointed example of the idiocy of such behavior, since the stakes for Book TV were so low.

The entire event would be that laughable, if it weren’t for the seriousness of the issues. From the beginning Book TV has acted in a manner that demeaned, degraded, and denied the importance of Prof. Lipstadt’s work, from its initial desire to place video David Irving and Prof. Lipstadt back to back, not to provide some illustration of Irving and his work as Book TV later claimed (a point on which both Prof. Lipstadt and Irving agree), but to provide, in Connie Doebele’s own words “balance.” (And I shall avoid undue tangent’s but why did Book TV’s program with Ward Churchill not require balance?) Book TV did this when the entire premise of Prof. Lipstadt’s book and her career is that there is nothing to balance. Irving, as the British court determined, is a liar. There is nothing to balance between truth and falsehood.

When Ms. Lipstadt pointed out this fact, Book TV did not acknowledge the idiocy of its initial perspective, but threatened Prof. Lipstadt claiming it would run Irving’s talk without her. In doing so it moved from mere idiocy to immorality. Fortunately, the appropriately pointed column of Richard Cohen in the Washington Post embarrassed Book TV sufficiently to save it from itself, albeit just barely. Rather than such a stupid undertaking, Book TV went on the offensive, putting together a program that appears to have been nothing other than a hatchet job on Prof. Lipstadt. It began by interviewing itself in the person of Connie Doebele with the simple of goal of completely misleading anyone who might be watching the program about the previous events and then featuring as their main speaker, T. R. Reid, someone who had never read the book under discussion. Every excerpt it used of Prof. Lipstadt was designed to place her in a most unfavorable light, subtly trying to imply she is a difficult person, thereby validating Book TV’s refusal to deal with her.

After receiving significant fallout from this bit of offensive persona vendetta, Book TV reverted to the tactic of every tin-horn despot that exercised control over information, it proceeded to deny it ever happened. It did this by completely pulling the programming from its website. I guess we might offer one cheer to Book TV for finally acknowledging, albeit obliquely, the egregiousness of its errors, but how about a simple apology to Prof. Lipstadt, Book TV’s viewers, and, most importantly, the victims of the Holocaust whose suffering and pain Irving has done so much to dismiss. It is time for Book TV to stop denying its errors of judgment and history. Atonement must follow, however. Invite Prof. Lipstadt on to the program apologize publicly and then let her talk about her most important book and the trial. It is never too late to rectify one’s mistakes and to learn from them.

Edward L. Queen Ph.D., J.D.
Center for Ethics
Emory University

CSpan Wipes Out History [The Saga Continues]

This matter has gotten completely bizarre. After the strange events of yesterday [see previous post], we, i.e. Hilary, decided to go back to the BookTV schedule page, to get a screen capture of their April 3 programming and we discovered that the 4:30 p.m. TimeSlot for Apr. 3 has now vanished, and the "content" of the program page has changed - again. This now reads:

After Words
A Weekly Look at Selected Book TV Programs
No program has been scheduled for this category at this time.

When I wrote yesterday that CSpan had left the content of the program page blank, I described them as having pulled an "Irving, making something that happened disappear." A friend of mine felt I had pushed the boundaries at bit too far by saying that. Now that CSpan has done this, I don't feel that way anymore. After all, there was a program, a pretty shoddy one featuring someone who had not read the book in question, but a program nonetheless.

What is particularly strange is that CSpan could have pointed to the awful program that they did on April 3rd as evidence that they tried to do the "right" thing and that I was the culprit by closing my lectures to them. Now they have obliterated that possibility.

This is the strangest thing I have ever seen [and I was on trial for 3 months for libel in a court where they wore wigs and gowns for calling a Holocaust denier a denier].

CSpan Rewrites History: Again

Hilary, who has been helping post things on this site, had noticed that the content of BookTV's page on the program is now blank - except for the dates and times.

Up until last night she could still access the RealAudio via the link we had posted but now it's dead too!

Not only that, but if you search for either "Lipstadt" or "History on Trial" on the BookTV site nothing turns up. Whereas a search for T.R. Reid yields blurbs on two programs of his books!

But wait ... there's more ... If you go to their Schedule page, the item for the 4:30 p.m. Apr. 3 timeslot reads: "General Assignment: 48 Hours of Non-Fiction Books" [which is reflected on the page above, too!] So now, according to BookTV, the Apr. 3 program didn't happen.

The only "evidence" that there *might* have been a program on Apr. 3 can be found in the C-SPAN archive, which includes one of the most unflattering pictures of me that I have ever seen. It's as if they ran through the entire clip and picked the worst shot [though this is probably how they see me] they could find.

Interview
Lipstadt/Irving Libel Trial
C-SPAN
Washington, District of Columbia (United States)
ID: 186164 - 04/01/2005 - 1:09 - NS

Book TV presented a look at the 2000 libel trial between World War II writer David Irving and Emory University professor Deborah Lipstadt. Dr. Lipstadt's latest book, History on Trial, examined the trial. T.R. Reid of the Washington Post, who had reported on the trial, as well as historian John Lukacs were included in the program. The program also featured video clips of past remarks by Deborah Lipstadt and David Irving.

So here is how CSpan handled this whole matter:

1. They started out by insisting on "balance." [They used the word repeatedly until a storm of criticism came raining down on their heads.]

2. They were willing to put Irving on alone. [Then they said that was just a ploy to get me to agree to being filmed and then broadcast back to back with him.]

3. They issued a disingenuous statement claiming that I had "closed" my talks to them but failing to mention why, i.e. that I would not be forced into a debate with Irving by being filmed back to back.

4. They produced a program about which they informed me, despite my efforts to make contact with them, 6 hours before broadcast.

5. They asked someone to be the anchor on the show who had not read my book and who told them he had not read the book.

6. They claimed that they never intended to put Irving and me on back to back. [Irving even said this was the case.]

7. They made it sound as if I wanted to silence Irving and failed to mention that Irving's intention was to silence me and have my book pulped.

8. And now they have rewritten history so that the show never even happened.

Classical Music aficionados comment on C-SPAN coverage

[Note to readers: For some reason the content on the BookTV program page is currently blank - except for the date and time of the program, although the RealAudio recording of the April 3 broadcast is still available (but not via the BookTV program page).]

One of the members of the Classical Music Guide Forums' "Corner Pub" viewed the program and posted her impressions on Friday:

Lipstadt/Irving Trial & Book-TV

I watched Book-TV's in-house special on what happened in the recent kerfuffle about Deborah Lipstadt's libel trial. It was very interesting to finally see the contendas and put faces to names. They had Connie Diebele standing for C-SPAN and T.R. Reid of the WashPost, who covered the trial in its tedious totality, talk about the trial. They ran clips of Lipstadt's previous appearances in which she discussed the phenomenon of holocaust denial and a couple clips of Irving talking about the trial.

Reid's judgment was that the only audience for Irving was right-wing nut cases. The C-SPAN clips of him were speaking in some restaurant in the south. It wasn't as good as the real thing, but I understand there's a transcript of the trial somewhere on the web. Lite bedtime reading, no doubt.

In a later post in the thread, the same member observed:

Very interesting about Irving's control of the docs. Reid did mention that as Irving's one saving grace, that he was very good at documentation. His description of Irving acting as his own attorney was comical, like something out of Gilbert and Sullivan.

Solomonia on C-SPAN's broadcast

Other bloggers have commented on the April 3 program. Here is an excerpt from Solomonia:

The C-Span Lipstadt Broadcast - Updated

Of course you cannot simply toss both sides out there on equal time and leave it up to the marketplace of ideas to sort out truth from fiction in a one hour program - even without commercials. It is irresponsible to put a truth-teller up against someone who has no qualms about lying with a straight face and expect even an above-average audience to sort out the truth from fiction. First of all, neither side has the time necessary to truly craft their case, nor would most people have the attention-span to focus on it even if they did. The trial took months and the issues cannot possibly be done justice to in a one hour program. Further, most people do not have the resources at hand, nor the ability at hand to fact and context-check every claim. Holocaust-deniers are masters of twisting the truth to form wholely new creations.

Given two reasonable-sounding cases, and little but the presentations themselves to recommend either, many well-meaning people will find themselves being drawn somewhere toward the center - the fallacy of the golden mean is a particularly seductive one.

Think of some controversial issue of which you are somewhat expert but that can easily be misunderstood and the public mislead when presented by someone you know to have a fringe view. Think of some court case or some disagreement you've had in which you know you were 100% right given someone taking the time to really sit down and examine your case, and how dangerous and frustrating it is if they don't - how easily a false impression can result from too little information gleaned too casually.

Lewis Regenstein: "Deniers should not go unchallenged"

Lewis Regenstein is an Atlanta writer who also attended Irving's performance at the Landmark Diner. His view, however, is that Prof. Lipstadt could have used the BookTV program as an opportunity to debunk Irving in a widely-viewed public forum. Here are some excerpts from his account of Irving's presentation, posted April 6 on JewishPress.com:

Holocaust Deniers Should Not Go Unchallenged

A few days ago I went to see Revisionist historian David Irving, who was in Atlanta for a dinner meeting and speech (taped by cable TV’s C-SPAN). It was an interesting evening, one that has created an uproar in the press and among Jewish groups, with much of the coverage being partially inaccurate, misleading, and incomplete.

The subject was Irving’s lengthy and bitter court battle with Emory professor and Holocaust expert Deborah Lipstadt, who declined an invitation to appear on C-SPAN in a separate program in order to avoid any association with Irving. More than 500 historians have signed a petition asking C-SPAN not to air the Irving talk.

(Last Sunday, C-SPAN aired what may be its version of a compromise, running a program that featured short excerpts from talks by Lipstadt and Irving, with commentary by others.)

In his talk, Irving did not rant and rave and engage in hate-filled speech, but rather built his case calmly and methodically. His scholarly style was impressive; indeed, this is what makes his rhetoric so dangerous, and, unfortunately, believable to many people.

Addressing a few dozen people, Irving focused on his legal battle with Lipstadt, describing in detail how she and her lawyers had, in effect, destroyed his reputation and ruined his career.

[...]

He said he is not a “Holocaust denier” but “questions certain aspects of it.” He spoke of “the great Jewish tragedy of World War II,” and acknowledged that “unpleasant things happened to very large numbers of Jews killed at the camps.” He described mass shootings of Jews on the Eastern Front, which the British learned of contemporaneously through intercepted and decoded messages from the perpetrators. But that is about the extent of his concessions that there might have been a Holocaust.

Irving makes the most of the host of misconceptions, misunderstandings, and falsehoods that have been circulated about the Holocaust.[...]

[...]

The thing that struck me about Irving’s fascinating and skillfully delivered talk was how flimsy some of his arguments and "facts" are, and how easy it would be to refute them and discredit him.

For example, Irving`s suggestion that Hitler did not order and may not have fully known about the Holocaust is literally laughable. Just mentioning this one oddity of his repertoire — based on the lack of any known written order from Hitler, who obviously did it verbally — should be enough by itself to discredit him among many people. Kick out this one flimsy prop and the whole rotten structure collapses.

I am no expert, but I could have refuted much of what he said, in a way that would have made it clear to the audience that he was not being candid with them. In fact, I tried, successfully I hope, to do so by asking a detailed, three part question at the end which disputed the veracity of some of his statements — a pebble of truth tossed into a sea of distortions.

I hate to think of all the people who come to hear him and go away with so much misinformation left unquestioned. I understand the position taken by Jewish organizations and leaders that debating or appearing with Holocaust deniers lends them respectability and helps spread their views. But since so much of what they, and Irving, say can easily be refuted, perhaps some selective exceptions to this position should occasionally be considered, such as appearing separately on C-SPAN.

I think it is important that legitimate Holocaust historians find some appropriate way to publicly and effectively counter Irving and set the record straight. But this cannot be done if the true experts pass up opportunities to go on camera, tell the truth, and discredit the misinformation that is now being fed to audiences all over America and is going largely unchallenged.

Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, writing about “falsehoods and fallacies,” stated that “the remedy…is more speech, not enforced silence….”

Lipstadt and her colleagues worked hard to defeat Irving in a London court. I think they could do the same in the court of public opinion.

Lewis Regenstein is a writer in Atlanta. He can be contacted at regenstein@mindspring.com.

The American Thinker on CSpan

The American Thinker on CSpan.

C-Span's spin

Yes, of course the media have a need to present all sides of an issue--provided the presenters are all responsible. A serious geography discussion would not offer a forum to a member of the Flat Earth Society; an important panel of economic experts would not include an alchemist revealing his formula for turning dross into gold.

But C-Span, that normally sober and responsible media outlet, recently did the equivalent of the above, carrying fair and balanced to new depths of fair and unbalanced. Historian Deborah Lipstadt wrote a book about her trial and vindication against a racist and Holocaust denier in England. Somehow, C-Span decided this individual had to appear with Ms. Lipstadt if they were to fairly interview her about her book. She rightly declined to be interviewed with her tormenter.

So C-Span interviewed the racist alchemist instead!

The protests to C-Span were many.

Herewith, Ms. Lipstadt tries to restore some balance.

C-Span? What happened?

Ethel C. Fenig 4 7 05

Correction re CSPan broadcast

In my New York Sun piece I incorrectly said the person interviewing Connie Doebele was unidentified. I just rechecked the tape and it turns out he works for CSpan as one of their producers. So here is another curious twist in this entire saga: CSpan interviewing CSpan about what they told me and my publisher.

Lipstadt in N.Y. Sun: C-SPAN Off Balance

Prof. Lipstadt has an Op-Ed in today's edition of the N.Y. Sun:

C-Span Off Balance
BY Deborah E. Lipstadt

April 6, 2005

C-Span and I must occupy different planets and speak different languages. But more on that in a moment. Let me start by saying that "Book TV" is a national treasure. The only thing wrong with "Book TV," the 48 hours that C-Span devotes to serious discussion of non-fiction books, is that it does not run all week. This is especially true today, as most TV news networks are more interested in infotainment. With wall-to-wall coverage of Martha Stewart, Michael Jackson, and Scott Peterson, we need C-Span more than ever.

I cannot, however, figure out what they were thinking when it came time to cover my book "History on Trial: My Day in Court with David Irving." First of all, as readers of this page already know, after inviting me to appear on the show they insisted on giving Holocaust denier David Irving a slot parallel to mine, in order to "balance" my presentation. I told them that I did not debate deniers and that, by putting us back to back, they would be creating the debate I would not have. They then told me that they intended to put Irving on by himself. Where was the balance in that?

A storm ensued, prompted in part by a column by Richard Cohen in the Washington Post and my own thoughts on this page. C-Span received more than 3,000 e-mails criticizing their position, and they also were sent a petition signed by more than 500 historians and social scientists. They canceled their plans for the broadcast with Irving and placed a statement on their Web site, claiming that, though they wanted to cover my book, I had closed my talks to them. They never mentioned why I had done so and that I was always more than willing to talk with them and appear on their air without Irving.

Anxious to help them dig themselves out of this hole, I contacted them, but they never returned my calls. Then on Sunday morning, I received an e-mail notice from Connie Doebele, the executive producer of "Book TV," that they had "produced" a show on my trial, and it would be broadcast that afternoon. The e-mail arrived six hours before the broadcast.

The show began with something I have never seen on "Book TV": an interview with Ms. Doebele that was designed to allow her to give her version of events. In un-C-Span style, the interviewer remained nameless and unidentified. She said that they had originally planned to present my talk at Harvard and follow that up with a discussion with a journalist to contextualize the trial. The discussion, she explained, would include clips of David Irving.

At that point I almost fell off my chair. In the course of a series of conversations my publisher and I had with C-Span, no one had ever said that this was what they planned to do. They had always given us the distinct impression that they intended to juxtapose a talk by me with a talk by David Irving. This is, in fact, one of the few things upon which Irving and I agree. He had, he told a New York Sun reporter, the same impression.

If this had been what they planned all along, I would never have objected. In my talks I quote Irving all the time. There is nothing wrong with showing clips of him.

They then proceeded to have a discussion with the Washington Post's T.R. Reid in Denver, who, during the trial, had been chief of the Post's London bureau. Mr. Reid started out by calling Irving an amateur historian who had been "forum shopping" for a place to sue me. He noted that Deborah Lipstadt and her lawyers set out to "prove he was a liar and they proved it." The trial was a "disaster" for Irving. Mr. Reid said he did not understand why Irving brought this suit. He was "outgunned in legal terms. He was outgunned on the facts."

So far so good. But then things took a strange turn. There was no mention of the fact that Irving denies that there were gas chambers or that he denies the legitimacy of Anne Frank's Diary. He calls it a novel. Listeners would not have known that he denies that Auschwitz was a place where Jews were murdered. He denies that the Nazis intended to murder European Jewry. He denies that Hitler was intent on harming the Jews. He denies that survivors are telling the truth and has proclaimed his intention to create an organization called "Auschwitz Survivors, Survivors of the Holocaust, and Other Liars," which he will call Asshols.

Listening to the program, I suspected that Mr. Reid had not read the book, which, he subsequently told a New York Sun reporter, was indeed the case. He had told C-Span he had not read it. Despite that fact, on a show devoted to a new book, C-Span chose a reporter who had not read the book. It was at the end of the show that things took their most disturbing turn. Mr. Reid talked about the need to hear people such as Irving and cited Justice Louis Brandeis's famous dictum, that the antidote to bad speech is more speech. I think Brandeis was right. Though C-Span listeners would never have known that was the case. They might well have gotten the impression that I was trying to silence David Irving. I was not. It was Irving who tried to silence me. He wanted my book to be withdrawn from publication and pulped. On his Web site and in his speeches, Irving often stresses that he tried to settle with me before the trial for the sum of L500. That is indeed correct. However, that offer also stipulated that I apologize to him for calling him a Holocaust denier and agree that my book be withdrawn from circulation. Who tried to silence whom?

I wish C-Span had just admitted that they made a mistake instead of engaging in this revisionist history. I wish that they had given T.R. Reid, a talented journalist, a chance to read my book. And most of all, I wish they had correctly portrayed my position. I am against silencing people, even those with nefarious claims. While David Irving has the right to speak, C-Span does not have the obligation to broadcast him and I certainly have the right to decline to be forced into a debate with a man about whom five different judges have said that his "falsification of the historical record was deliberate and ... motivated by a desire to present events in a manner consistent with his own ideological beliefs even if that involved distortion and manipulation of historical evidence."

I reaffirm an offer I have made many times since this controversy began. I would be delighted to appear on C-Span to talk about my book. At the very least, I would like the opportunity to provide the network's viewers with a correct impression of what I believe. In the name of "balance," I think that this would only be fair.

Professor Lipstadt teaches Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies at Emory University and is the author of "History on Trial: My Day in Court with David Irving" (Ecco, 2005).

David Neiwert: "C-SPAN Plays the Fool"

In his April 3 post, journalist David Neiwert promised his readers he would watch the program and report back. He has now done so. Some excerpts from his review of the program:

C-SPAN plays the fool

Though it no doubt would like to have put the controversy behind it, C-SPAN's Sunday broadcast of its BookTV program on Deborah Lipstadt's book on her ordeal by libel trial with Holocaust denier David Irving wound up only demonstrating that the concerns over its highly questionable approach were indeed well grounded.

The chief guest on the program was Washington Post reporter T.R. Reid, who, as noted earlier, was probably not the best-informed "expert" the program could have featured. As Reid himself told the New York Sun, he has not read Lipstadt's book.

[...]

Why, one must ask, did a program about books ask Reid to come talk about a trial?

Moreover, he did not actually cover the trial, at least not in the traditional sense. Usually, covering a trial requires being there for most if not every session; he resisted reporting on it at all, did no pre-reporting on the case, and appears not to have been in court for many (if not most) of the days the trial was in session. He did not even file a story on the case until after the judge began deliberating, and then filed only one further report after the verdict was announced.

[...]

C-SPAN has since issued a statement saying it regrets using the word "balance" to describe its plans, calling the term just "internal jargon" referring to the use of other voices.

Right. That would explain why no other book has ever been handled by either BookTV or its predecessor, BookNotes, in this fashion. In every previous broadcast of both shows, it has simply let the author come on and talk about his or her book. Why not Lipstadt?

Regrets about terminology notwithstanding, C-SPAN's approach to this subject makes clear that it has a great deal to learn about how extremists like Holocaust deniers operate. They count on the ignorance of those unfamiliar with their tactics to handle them "fairly" -- which is to say, to treat their lies as though they merely represent another viewpoint, and thereby spread their vicious falsifications into the mainstream,. Sunday's broadcast was a classic case of this.

Lipstadt's Reactions to CSpan Coverage

[Please note this is a revised and amended version of my original post on the show which was broadcast on Sunday afternoon, April 3rd]

CSpan devoted an hour to the trial. The program began with Connie Doebele, Executive Producer of Book TV being interviewed by some unidentified man. She explained how this entire controversy came about.

*She noted that they had received over 3000 emails, most of them quite critical of them for wanting to put me on with Irving.

*She said their intention was to broadcast my presentation and to follow that up with a conversation with a journalist who would show clips of Irving and provide context for them. [Comment: They never said this to me or to Harper Collins.]

*She quite emphatically said: “We never intended to balance the holocaust.” Though, she did acknowledge using that terminology in explaining their programming plans. It was, she said, “internal jargon” that journalists use which means, “looking for another voice.” She expressed regret for having used the term.

*Regarding their plan to air Irving by himself, she suggested that I had misunderstood, and said this was the “standard bargaining thing that journalists do.” They suggest to the person who is reluctant to go on that their voice will not be heard unless they do. [Comment: Of course, they had told this to both Richard Cohen and to me. And if they were simply trying to strong arm me into appearing, I guess that they -- just like David Irving -- did quite know what makes me tick.]

*Now, because “Deborah Lipstadt refused to allow us to tape her program,” they will be doing an abbreviated version of their original program, i.e. they would only show the part with TR Reid of the Washington Post who was in London during the trial.

COMMENT: No one at CSpan ever said that that was how they intended to cover the book. In a number of conversations with my publisher and with me they never said this was how they planned to do it. Had they told me this I never would have objected.


TR Reid:
When TR Reid came on he made the following points:

*Irving is an amateur historian.

* Irving is someone who, rather than deny the Holocaust, argued that Hitler did not know about the Holocaust. [Comment: While this was the thrust of Irving's argument in his book, Hitler War, which was published in the late 1970s, now Irving's Holocaust denial extends far more broadly than that. He says there were no gas chambers. There was no plan to murder the Jews. The survivors are all liars. In short, there was no Holocaust.]

* Irving was "forum shopping," i.e. looking for a place where he could sue Lipstadt.

*Deborah Lipstadt and her lawyers set out to “prove he was a liar and they proved it.”

*Lipstadt’s depiction of Irving in her book, Denying the Holocaust, was totally accurate,” and the trial was a “disaster” for Irving.

*“Both these people are fighters….Lipstadt felt she had to fight for history and truth… and “both of them enjoyed this battle.” [Comment: Had he read the book he would know that was wrong. I am pleased with the outcome (who wouldn't be pleased with such a verdict? -- but I wish it had never happened.]

*Doesn’t understand why David Irving brought this suit. He was “outgunned in legal terms. He was outgunned on the facts".

*It is possible that Irving was playing to his "new" audience, right wingers, and holocaust denier groups.

* There was no way Irving could win this case [having a jury would not have made a difference.]

*Reid repeated on a number of occasions, “She’s a fighter. She felt was fighting for truth and history and it frustrated her not to take the stand.” [Comment: That's right.]

*She did not take the stand because we were frightened that Irving would use the opportunity to introduce correspondence I had received when writing my book about Holocaust deniers. The letter, from Professor Yehuda Bauer, suggested that I include more about Irving. It is, by the way, standard operating procedure for other historians to comment on a manuscript and give suggestions. This is what Bauer was doing.

Had I taken the stand, Reid believed, Irving would use this to argue you see there was a conspiracy.

Comment: My not taking the stand had nothing to do with this material [Guttenplan got that wrong as he got many other things wrong.] First of all, that material was introduced into the trial by Irving. It was not a secret.

I did not go into the witness box, even though I wanted to, because, as Rampton repeatedly said, you are being sued for what you wrote. There is nothing you can add that will enlighten the judge on the decision he has to make. Our job is to prove David Irving is a liar. I explain this repeatedly in the book.


Comment: TR Reid had not read the book, which he told CSpan was the case when they invited him to appear. Despite this fact, a show called Book TV, had him appear even though he had not read the book about which all the controversy revolved.

* Reid was struck by the fact that Irving expected to lose. On the morning of the verdict he bumped into Irving who told him: “I am probably going to lose.” In fact, until the day before the verdict, Irving had been predicting he would win. He boasted on his website how he had convinced the judge of the rightness of his cause. The CSpan interviewer had to point out – she had clearly read the book – that because the lawyers [and Irving was acting as his own lawyer] get the verdict 24 hours before the clients; he already knew he had lost.

* According to Reid the solution for bad speech is more speech. Comment: I agree and am not against Irving speaking. In fact, Irving tried to silence me. He sued me in order to have my book withdrawn from circulation. I don't think CSpan has an obligation to broadcast a talk by a man, about whom the court said he "deliberate[ly]" distorted history. And, should CSpan choose to broadcast him, I don’t believe it should force me into a debate which is no debate.

Some final thoughts:

1. I wish CSpan had just admitted that they made a mistake from the outset and had not claimed that they were intending to just show a few clips of Irving. CSpan is an important national institution. It gets people to read and think about books. I have no desire to fight with CSpan, but they should have been more honest about how they messed up from the outset.

2. I wish CSpan had given TR Reid, a careful journalist, a chance to read my book before going on the show.

3. Finally, as I stress in the book, I was not trying to deny Irving a right to speak. I was simply refusing to be pushed into a debate which is no debate and with someone who is a proven liar. How can you debate a liar?

4. Never, in all the years I have been watching CSpan, have I seen a policy towards "balance." Why here?

5. And since they seem to be so interested in balance and fairness, how about a chance for me to go on and correct the impression given to listeners about my views?

Harvard Crimson weighs in on C-SPAN

Today's issue of The Harvard Crimson has an article which includes coverage of the petition as well as BookTV's Sunday broadcast. The writer gets a few things wrong - including calling Irving an "historian" and an "accused" Holocaust denier. The trial 5 years ago conclusively and indisputably proved that he's not an historian and that he is a Holocaust denier. Here are some excerpts:

Harvard Profs Sign Petition Against C-Span Telecast of Holocaust Denier

Almost 600 historians and academics—including 18 Harvard professors—have signed a petition protesting the public television station C-SPAN’s plan to broadcast a lecture by historian and accused Holocaust denier David Irving.

The controversy stemmed from C-SPAN’s initial decision to air Irving’s talk immediately after a lecture by Emory University Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies Deborah E. Lipstadt.

[...]

On Sunday, “Book TV” featured a discussion with Washington Post reporter T.R. Reid about the book and the trial and showed assorted clips of Lipstadt and Irving. No lectures were aired, and Lipstadt said that to the best of her knowledge, none will.

Lipstadt had refused to appear on C-SPAN upon learning of the planned broadcast time of Irving’s lecture.

“What they wanted to do was to set me up, to force me into a debate,” Lipstadt said. “There is nothing to debate.”

The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies then organized a petition urging the station to show only Lipstadt’s lecture and circulated the petition among academics.

[...]

The petition attracted 570 signatures.

“Clearly, this had an impact on C-SPAN,” [Wyman Institute Director, Rafael] Medoff said after the Sunday program aired. “The program that they broadcast was a clear demonstration that they realized they had made a mistake,” he said.

[...]

In his books and during the trial, Irving has claimed, for example, that gas chambers were not used at Auschwitz and that the atrocities against the Jews were not mainly directed by Adolf Hitler.

[...]

“The notion that one gives this man David Irving room on C-SPAN is outrageous,” said Baird Professor of History Emeritus Richard E. Pipes, who signed the petition.

Lipstadt said Irving is a “fabricator of evidence and a liar.”

Irving defended his reputation and refused to be deemed a Holocaust denier.

“I think the epithet is completely undeserved,” Irving said, adding that American publishers have refused to print his books since the controversy.

[...]

Irving called Lipstadt an “upstart young professor,” and criticized the scholars who signed the petition for engaging in censorship and submitting to departmental peer pressure.

In a column by Richard Cohen that appeared in The Washington Post on March 15, Senior Executive Producer of “Book TV” Connie Doebele explained the decision to include Irving’s lecture: “You know how important fairness and balance is at C-SPAN....We ask ourselves, ‘Is there an opposing view of this?’”

[...]

But on “Book TV’s” Sunday night edition, Doebele said she regretted her choice of words.

“Using the word ‘balance’ is kind of an internal jargon that we use here in the newsroom,” she said. “What it means really is looking for another voice out there.”

All of the petition signatories who spoke with The Crimson agreed that including Irving does not promote journalistic objectivity.

“It is a distortion of the concept of ‘balance’ to give publicity and legitimacy to Irving and his proven falsehoods,” petition signatory and Sociology Department Chair Mary C. Waters wrote in an e-mail.

[...]

“This is not balance,” said Lipstadt. “This is a guy who is saying the historical equivalent of ‘the earth is flat.’”

N.Y. Times: "C-SPAN Regrets"

Here is the lead item in the April 5 N.Y. Times "Arts, Briefly":

C-Span Regrets

A C-Span producer has expressed regret for using the word balance to describe its plan to accompany coverage of a book by a professor of Holocaust studies with speeches by a man who has argued that Hitler was not fully responsible for the mass murder of Jews. Connie Doebele, the executive producer of "Book TV" on C-Span, said the word balance was never intended to be taken literally but was, instead, "internal jargon" referring to the use of other voices. The plan drew hundreds of protests from historians and other scholars and thousands from the public. The turmoil surrounded C-Span's intention to cover "History on Trial: My Day in Court With David Irving" (Ecco) by Deborah E. Lipstadt, a professor of Holocaust studies at Emory University. C-Span also intended to include coverage of talks by Mr. Irving, a British writer who sued her for libel for calling him a Holocaust denier. When he sued, the British Royal High Court found for Professor Lipstadt and concluded that Mr. Irving was anti-Semitic and racist and that he had persistently and deliberately misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence.