Islam vs. Islamists, PBS

Long a leftist shill, PBS leans even further

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Editor’s note: I bumped this to the top (originally posted May 5, 2007) after Bill Moyer’s spokesman, Rick Byrne, sent in the comment that is published below the post. I have emailed Rick Byrne inviting him to respond to my questions and Brent Bozell and Frank Gaffney inviting them to comment as well.

PBS saying they don’t allow advocacy programming has always made me laugh. Yet I still wondered why it pulled Islam vs. Islamists after the Center for Public Broadcasting authorized its creation last year and funded it with $675,000. Brent Bozell describes today in the Washington Times what changed since then:

The left maintains an iron grip on PBS with all the maturity and sophistication that a 4-year-old hangs on to a Happy Meal toy. The motto of its campaign against Mr. Tomlinson’s alleged transgressions should have been: “Mine. Mine. All Mine.”

Mr. Tomlinson is long gone, and Democrats now control Congress. But another step was necessary for classic PBS propaganda to re-emerge: the return of Bill Moyers. He was back to full-time fulminating duties April 25, with a special titled “Buying the War.” The entire thesis of this 90-minute taxpayer-funded lecture? The national media were willing cogs in the neoconservative machine that took America to war.

How is this for PBS balance: Mr. Moyers didn’t allow a single conservative, neo- or otherwise, to challenge this ludicrous idea. Oh, there were assorted clips of conservatives (myself included) speaking in the months after September 11, 2001, but only to “prove” his case for a noxious “patriotism police” that allowed no dissent.

He did invite far-left media critics like Eric Boehlert and Norman Solomon to echo his conspiracy theory that the major media were stuffed with sticky pro-Bush saps. But then, Mr. Moyers also added major media players, from disgraced CBS anchor Dan Rather to former CNN boss Walter Isaacson, to agree with him that they were all woefully lacking in antiwar fervor.

In the same week, defense expert Frank Gaffney was telling a far different story — in fact, the opposite story. Unlike Mr. Moyers, Mr. Gaffney had proof. Back in the Tomlinson era, CPB pursued the idea of a broad-based documentary series on how America would respond to the post-September 11 world. Mr. Gaffney’s documentary proposal on “Islam vs. Islamism,” focusing on moderate Muslims’ efforts to challenge Islamofascists, was given a green light as one installment in the 11-part series called “America at the Crossroads.”

But once Mr. Tomlinson was out, the permanent liberal bureaucracy kicked into gear. The series was shipped to PBS’ Washington, D.C., superstation WETA. It promptly expressed horror that anyone would allow Mr. Gaffney anywhere near a PBS production because of his “day job” with a conservative advocacy group. They wanted Mr. Gaffney fired as an executive producer. When that didn’t happen, they censored the film, refusing to air it.

This is a clear double standard. Take Mr. Moyers as Exhibit A. Even as he constantly produces PBS programming, he has an advocacy-group job, as well, as president of the leftist Schumann Center for Media and Democracy — no one at PBS ever cared.

CAIR, Political wind

Only Arabic public school choice wrong: NY Sun

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New York City axed plans Friday for a publicly funded Arabic school in Brooklyn. The Khalil Gibran International Academy would have been co-located with P.S. 282 and its curriculum would have been “devoted to the study of the Arabic language and culture.” This morning, the New York Sun offered an equitable solution to liberals there while making no apologies for that newspaper’s critical commentaries of the school and its promoters:

“…Its principal, Dhabah “Debbie” Almontaser, accepted an award in 2005 from the Council on American-Islamic Relations. When Mayor Bloomberg in 2002 named a CAIR official to the city’s human relations commission, it set off a firestorm of complaints. CAIR had cosponsored an event at Brooklyn College where attendees chanted “no to the Jews, descendants of the apes,” and the organization posted a letter on its Web site suggesting that Muslims could not have been responsible for the attacks of September 11, 2001.

CAIR is a highly divisive institution in this city and country. It is funded in part by the same Saudi prince, Alwaleed bin Talal, whose $10 million donation Mayor Giuliani rejected after the terrorist attacks of September 11, when the prince called for America to rethink its support for Israel. When one of our reporters asked Ms. Almontaser whether she considers Hamas and Hezbollah to be terrorist organizations and who she thinks was behind the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, she declined to answer, suggesting she shouldn’t be singled out for such questions.

Yet if Ms. Almontaser cannot bring herself to address such questions from a newspaper, how is she going to do it in school? We do not believe such skepticism makes one intolerant, or, as some have insinuated, an anti-Arab or anti-Muslim bigot. Arabic Islamist terrorism in Brooklyn is a genuine threat. This is a city that saw Ari Halberstam shot to death on the Brooklyn Bridge after his assailant, Rashid Baz, listened to a sermon at the Islamic Society of Bay Ridge. And more recently saw a clerk at an Islamic bookstore in Bay Ridge, Shahawar Matin Siraj, convicted of a plot to blow up the Herald Square subway station.

Not long ago, a man from Yemen who owned an ice cream shop in Brooklyn was convicted of sending nearly $22 million abroad for use by a sheik with ties to Hamas and Al Qaeda. The “landmarks plot” to blow up the United Nations and the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels was hatched on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn by Omar Abdel-Rahman and others. A civil rights lawyer and her interpreter were convicted of aiding Abdel-Rahman by transmitting messages from him to a terrorist organization in Egypt. This is not a time when concern over these issues can be dismissed as bigotry.
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How to sort all this out? … A taxpayer-funded Arabic school would only underscore the injustice of allowing one group of parents to educate their own children in a school that elevates their language, civilization, and religion at taxpayer expense, while depriving other parents of the same choices. Our test for whether all of the parties to this controversy are standing on principle will be their position on vouchers.

Separating children in public schools from other cultures, religions, and ethnic groups does nothing to promote tolerance. CAIR attempted to create a mini-madrassa in Brooklyn and New York City officials once thought that was a good idea. Politicians wanted to make a political payoff to a targeted group using public funds. Yet those same politicians routinely cite the separation of church [and state] when denying school vouchers to those wishing to educate their children in other religiously oriented private schools.