Word: pbs
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...with such impassioned advance notices. Even before it was aired this week, Death of a Princess, a British-American two-hour "dramatized documentary" dealing with the 1977 executions of a married 19-year-old Saudi princess and her young lover, prompted angry blasts from top Congressmen and some of PBS'S biggest corporate backers, as well as much top-level squirming in the State Department. The cause: a sharply negative review from the Saudi Arabian government, which protested that the show presented a "completely false" picture of the desert kingdom and warned that it could "undermine the internationally significant...
...Saudis had reason to feel wronged. Like so-called faction literature, the TV hybrid known as documentary drama typically consists of real-life events embedded in a marzipan of speculation and romance. In Princess, co-produced by Britain's independent Association Television network and WGBH, the PBS station in Boston, the marzipan is the message. South African-born Director Antony Thomas set out to film a straight drama on the life and death of Princess Mashall, a lively young grandniece of Saudi Arabia's King Khalid. Mashall, whose arranged marriage soured, supposedly went to study at a Beirut...
...broadcast date, May 12, approached, PBS came under public relations pressure to do the same, although much of the pleading seemed pro forma, recognizing that the First Amendment would make any real effort to censor the program not only impossible but counterproductive-a fact of life about U.S. freedom of expression that even the Saudis acknowledged. Exxon, which spends $5 million a year on public TV and is also one of the four U.S. partners in the Ara, bian American Oil Co., issued a statement that it would be "extremely unfortunate" if the show were to hurt U.S.-Saudi relations...
However, the ambassador's letter, which was forwarded to PBS President Lawrence Grossman, emphasized: "We recognize your constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech and expression, and it is not my purpose to suggest any infringement upon those rights." In a covering letter to Grossman, Christopher reiterated: "I want to assure you that the Government of the United States cannot and will not attempt to exercise any power of censorship...
Throughout the controversy, PBS never wavered in its determination to air the show, but decided, as it has done on other occasions, to follow it with a discussion of the film's veracity by a panel of experts. At week's end only six of the 141 PBS stations originally slated to run the show had decided to scrub...