Truth in advertising

Submitted by Gershom Martin (Israel), Dec 18, 2002 at 03:11

The point isn't banning the documentary or depriving the editor of his editorial prerogative. It is truth in advertising. Let me use an analogy: (un)kosher restaurants.

If run a restaurant and serve gefillte calamari and pork kreplach to my customers, and they come back for more, that is my prerogative in a free market. If I serve the same food items while claiming to be running a kosher restaurant, I would be liable to lawsuits under "truth in advertising laws". In fact, the PBS situation is more akin to that in some European countries, where kosher restaurants get indirectly subsidized from (self-imposed) Jewish community taxes (which is the Jewish community's "public money", in a way).

The same issue arises when the BBC (British Bull.. Corporation) broadcast flagrantly partisan material without any disclaimer or without presenting a rebuttal from the other side.

If this movie were presented as part of a programming slot allocated to the Islamic community and clearly presented as such and as under its responsibility (not PBS's), I would have much less of an issue with it. Obviously, it would then be up to the Jewish (Catholic, Episcopal, Baptist, SDA, ...., secular humanist) programming slots to present their own side of the equation.

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