Archive/File: holocaust/england/irving irving.aus.004
Last-Modified: 1994/10/27

David Irving  Film Scheduled, Dropped by  Adelaide Television 
(written for hlist by Jeremy Jones)

Adelaide's Community and Educational Television, ("ACE-TV"), which had
originally defended a decision to schedule a one-hour program produced by
what the station spokesman described as "neo-Nazi apologists", has revoked
the decision following a series of protests.

The film, which  features English writer and Holocaust denier David Irving
arguing that the facts of the Nazi Holocaust are myths created by the
Jewish world and the State of Israel for propaganda purposes, was submitted
for broadcast by Frederick Toben, who runs an organisation which
disseminates Holocaust denial propaganda under the name of the "Adelaide
Institute" (which until recently was know as "Truth Missions"). The video,
called "A Search for Truth in History", had been shown in an Adelaide
social club last year while withdrawn from broadcast by a number of planned
Australian venues. ACE-TV is an open access community station which "has a
charter to reflect the views of the total community, including extreme
views", according to the station manager.

The Executive Council of Australian Jewry,  which is the elected
representative organisation of the Australian Jewish community, wrote to
ACE-TV to record the Jewish community's "strongest possible objection to
having your station serve as a vehicle for the broadcast of what appears to
be neo-Nazi propaganda".  

"To maintain that any intelligent understanding of the philosophy of
liberalism, which includes the ideal of freedom of speech, includes the
right of any individual to deliberately cause harm to another individual is
to display a gross misunderstanding of the basis of that philosophy", the
ECAJ argued.

Jack Hines, the President of the Jewish Community Council of South
Australia, also wrote  to the station arguing that "Holocaust denial is
clear, unambiguous anti-Jewish propaganda".  

He added that to broadcast the program would be in breach of the guidelines
of the Australian Broadcasting Authority which state that "a licensee may
not transmit a program likely to incite, perpetuate hatred against or
gratuitously vilify any person or group on the basis of ethnicity,
nationality, race, gender, sexual preference, religion or physical or
mental disability". Hines' letter  said that "the Jewish community of South
Australia includes many Holocaust survivors and that to present for them on
television the works of a so-called historian (who has no academic
qualifications) is only going to create further anguish for them".

The influential daily, the Canberra Times, ran an editorial favoring the
broadcast of the programme, claiming that "in a free and open society the
best way of making sure that inhumane and intolerant views or political
movements do not take root, is to expose those views to public scrutiny and
debate".

The program was scheduled to be broadcast on September 1, but on August
12the ACE-TV board met and reversed its decision .

Rita Freeman said that ACE-TV "will never allow the channel, or the
cultural resource it represents, to be used to incite racial acrimony
especially by a non-member of the community [David Irving] whose expressed
views do not appear to reflect the opinions of the majority", noting that
"the so-called 'search for truth' [in the film's title] is merely a
denigration of the Holocaust".

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