[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 4]
[Senate]
[Page 4387]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                 PBS: ARMENIAN GENOCIDE DENIALIST FORUM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I rise this evening to express my extreme 
disappointment with the Public Broadcasting System's decision to give a 
forum to Armenian genocide denialists following the April 17 broadcast 
of Andrew Goldberg's documentary, ``The Armenian Genocide.''
  PBS should be commended for deciding to run Goldberg's documentary. 
However, the documentary should stand on its own. I am troubled by the 
network's decision to conduct a panel discussion immediately after the 
documentary that focuses on Turkey's role in the death of Armenians 
during and after World War I.
  The 25-minute panel discussion has generated an outcry because the 
panel will include two scholars who deny that 1.5 million Armenian 
civilians were killed in eastern Turkey from 1915 to 1923.
  I urge PBS to reconsider the inclusion of the panel discussion. 
Despite the Turkish Government's continued concerted effort to deny and 
alter history, there is no serious academic historian willing to 
dispute the genocide, or extermination, of 1.5 million Armenians at the 
hands of the Ottoman Empire from 1915 to 1923. There are literally 
thousands of pages of documents in our national archive confirming the 
Armenian genocide.
  Prominent citizens of the day, including America's ambassador to the 
Ottoman Empire, Henry Morgenthau, and Britain's Lord Bryce, reported on 
the massacres in great detail. Morgenthau was appalled at what he would 
later call the ``sadistic orgies'' of rape, torture and murder. Lord 
Bryce, a former British Ambassador to the United States, worked to 
raise awareness of and money for the victims of what he called ``the 
most colossal crime in the history of the world.''

                              {time}  1930

  In October 1915, the Rockefeller Foundation contributed $30,000, a 
sum worth more than $.5 million today, to a relief fund for Armenia.
  Mr. Speaker, it is important to note that despite overwhelming 
documentation and eyewitness proof of the Armenian genocide, Mr. 
Goldberg's documentary includes denialist views to present a 
comprehensive perspective. This completely alleviates the need to 
include PBS's panel discussion. It is exceptionally inappropriate for 
PBS to include these two nonobjective scholars on the public airwaves 
so they can spread their political propaganda.
  And, Mr. Speaker, I would note that I would not feel any different 
about this issue if we were discussing Darfur, Rwanda or the Nazi 
Holocaust. Genocide deniers should not have a forum. The quest for fair 
and balanced information does not give a license to propagate false, 
misleading and offensive information about historical facts that relate 
to genocide.
  It is said that PBS continues to defend its decision to provide air 
time to Armenian genocide deniers; however, it is encouraging to see a 
growing number of PBS affiliates refusing to air the panel. And I want 
to commend each of the 25 affiliates who have already announced their 
intentions to air the Armenian genocide documentary without the 
inclusion of the panel discussion.
  Mr. Speaker, it is important that we urge PBS to maintain its 
commitment to public service, but no Member of Congress should accept 
PBS's decision to give credence to the denial of the deliberate murder 
of 1.5 million people, and I hope that PBS will reconsider its current 
position.

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