From: schuck@fraser.sfu.ca (Bruce Jonathan Schuck)
Subject: Re: Senate Interrogation
Reply-To: Bruce_Schuck@sfu.ca
Organization: Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C., Canada
Distribution: can
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 1992 23:15:02 GMT

The Nov 12th issue of the G & M contains several stories on the V & H
controversy including summaries of the Ombdusman report and Brian
McKenna's rebuttal to that report.

It's nice of the G & M to offer rebuttal space, but it would have been
nicer if the CBC had offered rebuttal time to those who found factual
errors in the V & H.

I'll start with a sentence from the G & M editorial attacking the
Senate and the Ombudsman.

"The documentry is chastized for unsupported allegations, quotations
taken out of context, and some minor errors of fact. But as much could
be said of half a dozen things the CBC shows every night..."

What a ringing defence. The CBC screws up all the time, so why get all
hot and bothered about it this time. Thats such a sad defence.

The Ombudsman report criticizes the V & H for many reasons including:

1) The Canadian government "knowingly" sent 2,000 men to be
   slaughtered in Hong Kong.

   Brian McKenna countered by saying he had the right to use an actor
portraying a Hong Kong vet to make this charge even though there is no
documentation to support it, only the justifiably bitter feelings of a
man who spent 4 years in the horror of a Japanese POW camp.

   Brian Mckenna also went on to claim the CBC Ombudsman didn't
consult his sources while the OR clearly reports what McKennas source
said and the source never said "knowingly" was proper.

2) Exagerations about losses on D-Day.
 
   With a pathetic response from McKenna.

3) Unjustified attacks on Arthur Harris and using an actor who
normally portrays villians and didn't look or sound like Harris in
order to make Harris appear the villian.

4) Factual errors when comparing bomber losses on the Nuremberg raid
to the Battle of Britain. 

   I found McKennas defence sad. He was comparing losses on 1,000
plane raids attacking Germany with 10-12 crew memebers to losses
during the Battle of Britain's single seat fighters -- McKenna left
out other plane losses -- when Britain was defending and pilots who
parachuted out had a good chance of getting back home.

The Ombudsman said:

"Each of these programs seems designed to fit in its subject 
matter within a framework, of which the program makers
themselves were apparently convinced, of incompetent, brutal or
obsessive and villianous leadership, protected by secrecy or a
conspiracy of silence now broken at last by those who made the
programs and who are letting the audience hear the 'full' or 'real'
story for the first time."

"The problem is that the case against the leadership is for the most
part not proven."

Also, from historian Peter Buitenhuis:

"There is a fairly general consensus among academic historians that
this program was biased. It is not acceptable to make dramatization
appear as fact. This series showed a distinct bias for revisionist
history, and although it is true that every telling of history is an
interpretation, I think the filmakers crossed the line." pg A14


-- 
============================================================================
"We've got to get bigger guns" -- Dick Durkin                  schuck@sfu.ca
============================================================================
Newsgroups: can.politics