NEW CAMPAIGN: PBS Assaults Fathers!

[Brent]

NEW CAMPAIGN: PBS Assaults Fathers!

October 19, 2005

I want all of you to join me in [a href=http://www.glennsacks.com/pbs]our new campaign[/a] protesting PBS' national broadcast of the anti-father film Breaking the Silence: Children's Stories. The film, which airs on PBS affiliates throughout the country on Thursday, October 20,  portrays fathers as batterers and child molesters who steal children from their mothers.

The film is a one-sided assault on fatherhood which presents a harmful and inaccurate view of divorce and child custody cases. We want PBS to give fatherhood and shared parenting advocates a meaningful opportunity to respond on the air.

I am launching this campaign in order to provide popular support for efforts by Fathers and Families, Help Stop PAS Inc., the American Coalition for Fathers & Children, and the Coalition of Fathers and Families NY, Inc. (FaFNY) to help PBS resolve the problem.

I want all of you to act. Our supporters--dubbed "The Sackson Horde" by one critic--have conducted numerous successful campaigns in the past. We drove "Boys are Stupid" products out of 3,500 stores worldwide--95% of their total distribution--last winter, and we made newspapers around the world doing it.

Last summer over 2,000 of our supporters bombarded Sacramento with calls and letters and helped kill SB 730, a bill which would have given custodial mothers the unlimited right to move our children whenever and wherever they want to. All the Sacramento experts said we would lose that campaign, and all the experts were wrong.

In October we helped fatherhood activists defeat an anti-father billboard campaign in Michigan.

In November, over 2,000 of our supporters called or wrote Verizon to protest its father-mocking "Homework" commercial. Our efforts made newspapers all over North America and the Verizon ad stopped running shortly afterwards.

This Spring we helped provide support for SB 1082, a bill to protect military parents, as well as AB 1307, the California Shared Parenting bill.

To join our campaign, go to our campaign page here: http://www.glennsacks.com/pbs

Best Wishes,
Glenn Sacks
GlennSacks.com
HisSide.com
 

[Hawkeye]

Glenn's not the only one jumping on TAXPAYER supported PBS....

RADAR ALERT:

PBS Smears Fathers Who Contest Child Custody

Beginning this coming Thursday, PBS stations around the country are planning to air a film entitled "Breaking the Silence, Children's Stories". This film denigrates divorcing fathers with it's bald-faced assertion that in "75% of cases in which fathers contest custody, fathers have history of being batterers".

The flaws in this film are as numerous as they are flagrant:

The film paints a false picture of a world in which the only abusive parents are fathers, ignoring the fact that far more children are abused and killed by their mothers than by their fathers (U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services http://faq.acf.hhs.gov/cgi-bin/acfrightnow.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=70&p_created=1001611491 and http://www.acf.dhhs.gov/programs/cb/publications/cm03/figure4_2.htm)
The film misleads the viewer by failing to explain that psychiatrists who've called Parental Alienation Syndrome "junk science" don't mean that parental alienation doesn't happen, but rather that it's not an officially recognized mental illness. (http://www.mediaradar.org/mr_breaking_the_science.php#pas)
The program makes a number of very serious accusations against fathers without allowing the accused to defend themselves.
A detailed analysis of the flawed logic and biased "research" this PBS program is based on can be found at http://www.mediaradar.org/mr_breaking_the_science.php.

Public Broadcasting Service and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting are funded out of your tax dollars, and have a responsibility not to disseminate bias. The CPB's own Code of Ethics (http://www.cpb.org/aboutcpb/cpbethicsguide.pdf) requires employees to "avoid any conduct that might result in the loss of public confidence in CPB's programs and activities ... or might reasonably give the appearance of ... the compromise or loss of complete impartiality of judgment and action."

This week, we're asking you to contact the officials at PBS and CPB listed below to cancel the show as currently edited, and revise it so it reflects commonly-accepted journalistic standards of fairness, accuracy, and balance.

The revised program should interview adult children of abusive mothers, as well as fathers who've been forced to stand helplessly by, unable to protect their children, due to decisions by biased court officials.

The most important point of contact is your local PBS station:

Go to the website of your local PBS station. To find that website, go to http://www.pbs.org/stationfinder/index.html and enter your zip code.
Each PBS station's website is laid out differently, but somewhere on the website will be a link labeled something like "Contact Us". If this takes you to a webform, enter your comments. If it shows a list of contact names, identify the station manager. If there's no email address listed, call the station and ask to speak with the station manager.
As always, remember to courteous and respectful in your communications with them.

If you're still bothered about PBS' unfair depiction of fathers, there are a number of other people you can contact. If you don't have time to contact all of them, contact as many or as few as you have time for.

CPB national headquarters:

Mr. Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, Chairman of the Board
Corporation for Public Broadcasting
401 Ninth Street, NW
Washington, DC 20004-2129

Ombudsmen:

Webform at http://www.cpb.org/ombudsmen


or


U.S. mail to:


Ombudsmen
Corporation for Public Broadcasting
401 Ninth Street, NW
Washington, DC 20004


PBS national headquarters:


U.S. Mail:

Pat Mitchell, President & Chief Executive Officer
Public Broadcasting Service
1320 Braddock Place
Alexandria, VA 22314


Michael Getler, Ombudsman
Public Broadcasting Service
1320 Braddock Place
Alexandria, VA 22314

Connecticut Public Broadcasting (co-producer of the film):

U.S. Mail:
Connecticut Public Broadcasting Inc.
1049 Asylum Avenue
Hartford, CT 06105-2411

Phone: 860/278-5310

Jerry Franklin, President and Chief Executive Officer
Email:

Larry Rifkin, Head of National Programming
Email:

Lee Newton, CPTV "Breaking the Silence" contact person
Email:
Phone: 860-275-7285


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Date of RADAR Release: October 17, 2005

Respecting Accuracy in Domestic Abuse Reporting (RADAR) is a coalition of men and women working to assure balance in the domestic violence issue: http://www.mediaradar.org.

[Hawkeye]

October 19, 2005  
 
Dear Steve,
On Thursday, PBS (Public Broadcasting System) stations around the country will air a one-hour documentary entitled "Breaking the Silence; Children's Stories." This film is an arrow aimed at the heart of the shared parenting movement. It says that those of us who want to share the custody of our children are wife beaters, and child abusers too. It gives no air time to opposing points of view.

We must respond.

Your mission is to help us generate heat on this taxpayer-supported network for abandoning balanced journalism and broadcasting blatant propaganda. You can do this by going to the link at the bottom of this email, which will take you to a website where you will have everything you need to respond: contact information for PBS executives, more details about the program, suggested letter, etc.

Responding to this show is extremely important. It is being picked up by radio stations, newspapers and other media outlets. We are demanding an opportunity to rebut.

A coalition of organizations around the country is working cooperatively to respond to this slander. We will generate a substantial response, but your participation is essential.

The program claims that in 75% of cases in which fathers seek either shared or sole custody of their children, they have a history of being batterers. The show also claims that two-thirds of the time mothers allege domestic violence, custody goes to the fathers anyway. The show further implies that almost all child abusers are fathers and that parental alienation is a ruse by batterers to win custody. These assertions are false.

Our demand is that PBS give us an opportunity to rebut these smears on the air.

Please act right now by going to:

Glenn Sacks's web site //www.hisside.com Look in the upper right corner for the link to join!

****************************************

BTW, one of the most important things that you can do as a member of this e-list is get other people to join. If you think of anyone who would enjoy or benefit from receiving our e-mails, please click on the link below that says "forward email."

Best Regards,


Ned Holstein, M.D., M.S.
Fathers & Families

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email: [email protected]
phone: (617) 542-9300
web: http://www.fathersandfamilies.org  
 

[CNTD]

I have, I filled out the email on the Glenn Sacks site, and I've done 15 different PBS stations in my state, sending them emails to the station manager, and the state next to me... they've heard me, loud and clear.

CNTD

[determined]

Dear Dr. Holstein,
 
Although I was originally notified of this show by the Glenn Sacks mailings (http://www.glennsacks.com/pbs/index.php), I was pleased to see your posting on the SPARC (//www.deltabravo.net) website.  
 
I have sent out mild emails (straight from Glenn Sacks website) of protest to PBS as I don't feel that any stronger protest will help in their eyes, but as a custodial father in Massachusetts, I felt I was victimized by an unbelievably biased court system only to have PBS libel me with the claim to the effect that 'most all Fathers who win custody are batterers'.  Perhaps there exist additional venues of protest that might be useful in this case.
 
1.  I further resent that I as a taxpayer am paying for this television show which I understand violates their own ethic rules requiring fair, unbiased and accurate reporting.  Are you aware of any disciplinary action that is being taken in this case?
 
2.  I would like to obtain the transcripts for this show as I was totally shocked by what I thought I was hearing and feel that I need to make sure that I have the statements correct.  Are you aware of any actions for libel that are being initiated?  Reluctant as I am to approach the courts of all places to seek justice, I feel that this may be an attack that I can ill-afford to ignore.
 
Thank you for taking the lead in protesting this outrage.
 
 

[Hawkeye]

I've lost all faith in PBS and in particular, IPTV, being objective and non-biased, as I was taught in journalism at Iowa State University.

Shame on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Disgracefull.