Naperville's community access television station has put on hold its plans to air a program dealing with living conditions in occupied Palestine.
"Life in the Occupied Territories" was scheduled for broadcast Saturday, Sunday and Thursday, but NCTV pulled the program in response to residents' concerns about hate speech and propaganda in an earlier program by the same producer, interim Executive Director Bob Copenhaver said.
"As a community access station we provide access to virtually anyone within very, very narrow definitions of what's unacceptable," Copenhaver said. "We have reviewed the tape and consider it airable, but since the controversy has arisen we want to take an extra step and make sure we are serving the community as we should."
"Life in the Occupied Territories" was reviewed last week by Copenhaver, the station's lawyer and a board member and cleared for broadcast, Copenhaver said. However, after Wednesday's meeting of NCTV's board of directors, station officials changed their mind.
At the meeting, residents Kanan and Vivian Rosenstein, Vish Agrawal and Richard Hetzler were among those who objected to the station's airing last month of "From Palatine to Palestine," which included a speech these residents felt glorified suicide bombings in Israel.
The Rosensteins asked NCTV to draft a policy requiring the station to contact groups targeted by hateful speech in a prospective program and wait until those groups had taped their own rebuttal program before airing both. The board agreed to review its policies on hateful speech and consider the change at its June 18 meeting.
"NCTV does not want to be an outlet for every group to express their hateful or propaganda viewpoints," board President David Miller said. "We want to provide a balanced and fair presentation of fact and opinions."
As of Friday, no one from NCTV had contacted John Bagley, the producer of both shows, to tell him his second program would be delayed, he said. He defended his work.
"I absolutely deny that my video has anything to do with hate and propaganda and I'm a little bit perturbed that no one gave me the chance to say it," he said.
Bagley has aired several programs on NCTV during the past decade, usually dealing with social concerns, he said. He belongs to the End the Occupation Coalition, the monthly potluck dinners of which include speakers reporting on conditions in Palestine. It's a peaceful group, Bagley said, that draws from many cultural and religious backgrounds.
"Life in the Occupied Territories" features the words of Brayton Gray, a Quaker missionary who visited Palestine and told of his travels at an April 25 potluck. Friday, Bagley was planning to tape a third program at that evening's dinner, a talk by Wheaton College professor Gary Burge about his book "Whose Land? Whose Promise? What Christians are not Being Told About Israel and the Palestinians."
Bagley was concerned the policy change the Rosensteins suggested might endlessly delay broadcast of his and other programs.
"My wife is allergic to cats and (NCTV has) that ADOPT program for animals," Bagley said. "So I really don't like cats — cats make my wife sick. I could do a rebuttal to that. Where do you stop?"
Although NCTV policy allows for anybody, including the Rosensteins, to submit a rebuttal program, Kanan Rosenstein said Friday no plans for one were in the works.
He was pleased with the NCTV board's decision to review its policy and place Bagley's second program on hold, but said the issue is broader than his opinion of those programs. The issue turns to what defines hateful speech and whether NCTV should be an outlet for groups that condone it or programs that include it, Rosenstein said.
"It's not a question of right or wrong, and not a question of the First Amendment," he said. "Of course the First Amendment indeed affects even hate speech, but does not obligate a broadcaster to air hate speech. Broadcasters make these decisions daily."
A decision from the NCTV board to air "Life in the Occupied Territories" could come as early as this week, Copenhaver said. The station was waiting for board consensus to proceed with airing the program.
Contact staff writer Colt Foutz at cfoutz@scn1.com or (630) 416-5196.
05/25/03
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