CPTV Show Earns A Rebuke: PBS Ombudsman Criticizes Child-Support Documentary

By ROGER CATLIN
Courant TV Critic

December 14, 2005

The new ombudsman for PBS wasn't going to start his work until later this month. But criticism of a nationally distributed documentary, co-produced by Connecticut Public Television this fall, got him started early.

"Breaking the Silence: Children's Stories," which aired in October, "was a flawed presentation," Michael Getler concluded in his first report as Public Broadcasting Service ombudsman Dec. 2. He hadn't intended to write his first report until Dec. 20 but he wanted to respond "while the events are still reasonably fresh."

Before the one-hour special that tread on the minefield of child custody aired Oct. 20, CPTV described it as a "powerful new documentary" that "chronicles the impact of domestic violence on children and the recurring failings of family courts across the country to protect them from their abusers."

Critics say fathers were demonized in the show and not given a chance to respond.

"Breaking the Silence," which mostly featured interviews with victims of abuse, including New York Yankees manager Joe Torre and Parade Magazine Chairman and CEO Walter Anderson, was broadcast on 235 stations nationwide, about 69 percent of all PBS stations.

A senior editor at the Times-Union in Albany wrote in an op-ed piece that the film "deserves a Nobel Prize for honesty." But other commentators noted its lack of balance, including a Boston Globe writer who said it "presents a skewed and sensationalist picture."

Since then, criticism of the documentary has grown - PBS reports receiving almost 4,000 e-mails, most of them negative - which led Getler to weigh in with his first ombudsman report. (He was named PBS' first ombudsman in October; he previously held the same position at The Washington Post.)

PBS' own internal report on the documentary's fairness has been delayed to consider additional material, its officials said Tuesday.

Critics of the program say it lacks objectivity and balance and does not provide evidence to back up the show's assertions, and note "the complete absence of fathers and their perspective in the documentary," Getler said.

Not only is an opposing view not offered, he said, there isn't evidence that an opposing view might exist.

Critics particularly railed against the documentary's dismissal of parental alienation syndrome as "junk science." The syndrome is one in which one parent poisons a child's opinion of the other in custody cases.

A CPTV press release asserted that "despite being discredited by the American Psychological Association and similar organizations, [parental alienation syndrome] continues to be used in family courts as a defense for why a child is rejecting the father."

The American Psychological Association fired back in its own statement, saying it "does not have an official position on Parental Alienation Syndrome, pro or con. The Connecticut Public Television press release is incorrect."

The co-producers of the documentary, at their website, have offered a clarification: "We do not make the assertion that the phenomenon of alienation does not exist, simply that PAS seems to be wrongly used as scientific proof to justify taking children away from a protective parent."

The documentary was co-produced by filmmakers Catherine Tatge and Dominique Lasseur, who had previously made "The Question of God: C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud" for public television.

"I have no doubt that this subject merited serious exposure and that these problems exist and are hard to get at journalistically," Getler wrote. "But it seemed to me that PBS and CPTV were their own worst enemy and diminished the impact and usefulness of the examination of a real issue by what did, indeed, come across as a one-sided advocacy program."

By not recognizing opposing points of view, he wrote, "there was a complete absence of some of the fundamental journalistic conventions that, in fact, make a story more powerful and convincing because, they - at a minimum - acknowledge that there is another side."

While PBS' objectivity guidelines may not have been "clearly breached," he said, "Breaking the Silence" "came across as quite tilted to me."

The program got a similar response from one of the two newly installed ombudsmen at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the private, nonprofit entity that seeks funding for programming on PBS.

"There is no hint of balance in `Breaking the Silence,'" Ken Bode wrote in a CPB report late last month. "The producers apparently do not subscribe to the idea that an argument can be made more convincing by giving the other side a fair presentation."

The program continues to be available to public broadcasting stations nationwide while it is under review at PBS, said Lee Newton, director of national programming communications at CPTV.

"We stand behind the program," Newton said. "Serious reporting was done on this program and we believe in it."

"Breaking the Silence" is one of dozens of national programs produced for national distribution by CPTV, the most famous being the children's series "Barney Friends."

"Breaking the Silence: Children's Stories," a sequel of sorts to the 2001 "Breaking the Silence: Journeys of Hope," was also underwritten by the Mary Kay Ash Charitable Foundation, which is devoted in part to "putting an end to violence against women."

But the website for the foundation, started by the founder of the cosmetics giant, says CPTV and the production company had full independence in the show's content.

The avalanche of e-mail complaints, Newton said, was the result of "fathers' rights groups [being] mobilized against this program."

But Newton said the program has also received "lots of praise that say this is a story that is not being told because people frankly are afraid to address this issue because it's a bit of a hornet's nest to walk into."

Getler said this week he was "a little surprised" that PBS hadn't yet published its response to criticism.

A PBS spokesman said Tuesday that the response has been delayed in order to consider more information provided by the interest group Fathers and Family.

"They had additional material they wanted us to look at before we concluded our review and we received that yesterday," said Jan McNamara of PBS corporate communications.

Getler said he'll be interested in their conclusions. "I think PBS has its own way of explaining things and reflecting their side of it in addition to what I reported."

A discussion of this story with Courant Television Critic Roger Catlin is scheduled to be shown on New England Cable News each hour today between 9 a.m. and noon.

Copyright 2005, Hartford Courant