C-SPAN and the Holocaust Denier

[tishaLA]

You will not be seeing Deborah Lipstadt on C-SPAN. The Holocaust scholar at Emory University has a new book out ("History on Trial"), and an upcoming lecture of hers at Harvard was scheduled to be televised on the public affairs cable outlet. The book is about a libel case brought against her in Britain by David Irving, a Holocaust denier, trivializer and prevaricator who is, by solemn ruling of the very court that heard his lawsuit, "anti-Semitic and racist." No matter. C-SPAN wanted Irving to "balance" Lipstadt.

The word balance is not in quotes for emphasis. It was invoked repeatedly by C-SPAN producers who seemed convinced that they had chosen the most noble of all journalistic causes: fairness. "We want to balance it by covering him," said Amy Roach, a producer for C-SPAN's Book TV. Her boss, Connie Doebele, put it another way. "You know how important fairness and balance is at C-SPAN," she told me. "We work very, very hard at this. We ask ourselves, 'Is there an opposing view of this?' "

As luck would have it, there was. To Lipstadt's statements about the Holocaust, there was Irving's rebuttal that it never happened -- no systematic killing of Jews, no Final Solution and, while many people died at Auschwitz of disease and the occasional act of brutality, there were no gas chambers there. "More women died on the back seat of Edward Kennedy's car at Chappaquiddick than ever died in a gas chamber at Auschwitz," Irving once said.

For obvious reasons, Lipstadt cited Irving in her 1993 book, "Denying the Holocaust," which was also published in Britain. Irving sued her for libel. Under Britain's libel laws, Lipstadt had to prove the truth of what she wrote, which, after a lengthy trial, she did in spades. Her lawyer's opening statement -- "My Lord, Mr. Irving calls himself a historian. The truth is, however, that he is not a historian at all, but a falsifier of history. To put it bluntly, he is a liar." -- ultimately became the judgment of the court itself. In matters of intellectual integrity, Irving is an underachiever. Wash Post

I really cannot believe this is true, but it is. WTF is happening to this country? Are they really trying to see how close we can get to Nazism?

Also check out mediamatters.com for more coverage of this....

[asthmaticeog]

1. All too typical.

True balance is certainly something to strive for in journalism, but it isn't achieved when the opposition view is espoused by a proven liar. But that seems to be the way now - "balance" is sought after by simply locating a naysayer, and no weight is placed on the evidence.

[Colorado Blue]

2. Here's another DU thread on this topic:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=1323144#1323321

[Ellen Forradalom]

3. Irving's Freeperish way with words.

"More women died on the back seat of Edward Kennedy's car at Chappaquiddick than ever died in a gas chamber at Auschwitz," Irving once said.

That's such a typically freeperish, gratuitously obnoxious thing to say.