Getting 9/11 Documentaries broadcasted on TV
Not too long ago I wrote about my efforts in trying to get a couple of documentaries about 9/11 broadcasted on TV in Suriname. In that post I went into details about my experiences with dealing with RTV, one of the local TV stations, and how the US Embassy in Suriname got involved and tried to intimidate RTV into not broadcasting the documentaries. As you will see when you read that post, the US Embassy succeeded in intimidating RTV enough for them to decide not to broadcast the movies because of the consequences it may have for them. Before that I had already successfully organized an event on 9/11, where I had screened all of the documentaries which I wanted RTV to broadcast.
After RTV said they couldn’t broadcast the documentaries, even though I was willing to pay for it and had sponsors lined up for it as well, I went on to the next TV station which was SKY TV. I found a company that was doing business with SKY willing to pay for the costs of broadcasting the documentaries on SKY. After about a month of waiting for SKY to finally make the time to talk about broadcasting the movies, they finally responded when the sponsor was getting a little angry and wanted to get things done faster. I had a meeting with Zurina Lallmohamed of SKY TV and the sponsor to talk about broadcasting the documentaries. At that meeting SKY agreed to broadcast the documentaries and a schedule was made and agreed upon. We would have started airing the documentaries the following week, but instead, I got a phone call from SKY the next day that they would not be able to air the documentaries. And the reason they gave was that they saw the material and found it to be too controversial, and were afraid they would get in trouble with the US Embassy. As far as I know, the US Embassy didn’t even talk to them about it, so this is even worse than RTV – they felt intimidated even before the US Embassy talked to them about it! They explained that they were afraid of getting boycotted by the US Embassy if they aired the movies because all their equipment comes from the USA and they do a lot of business with the USA. They also mentioned that they did agree with the content of the documentaries and knew they were taking a hypocritical position on the matter, but that they had no other choice.
After I kept insisting and calling up several people at SKY, including the director, about this, they said they could air the documentaries if I could get the US Embassy to participate with me in a debate about 9/11, which they would then organize and broadcast. According to them, they wanted to show that they are upholding journalistic ethics and were bringing both sides of the story to the public. But it was clear to me that they were essentially seeking the approval of the US Embassy, just like RTV did. I knew beforehand that the US Embassy would never agree to participate in a debate on 9/11, but I thought that if the US Embassy officially refused, SKY would have no choice but to go ahead and broadcast the documentaries. So I emailed Andy Utschig of the US Embassy in Suriname and asked him if they would want to participate in a debate with me on SKY TV about the issues surrounding 9/11. A day later he called me saying that “they could not participate in the debate because they did not want to give credence to the conspiracy theories.” I had ofcourse expected that answer, because the US Embassy wouldn’t be able to come up with any kind of argument against the content I was presenting that made sense, and any representative they sent would just make a fool out of him/herself on live TV if he/she would disagree with me. What this also shows is that given the opportunity for them to bring the other side of the story to people, as they pretended to require with RTV, they still refused, thus showing that their argument about journalistic ethics was just bullshit to scare RTV into not broadcasting the documentaries.
So I called SKY again, explaining to them that the US Embassy refused to participate, and then they said that in that case, they wouldn’t be able to broadcast the documentaries at all. They again went on to explain how afraid they are of the consequences if they do air the material (I’m not making this up). And keep in mind that I was willing to pay for the airtime and one of their own sponsors was willing to pay for it as well and was asking them to do it. It seems SKY would rather lose a good client and some business instead of making the US Embassy a little angry.
After SKY refused, I continued talking to SCCN about airing the documentaries. The director, Isfahany Nagessersingh, at first liked the idea of broadcasting the movies. During our first meeting, I explained to him what it was all about and he was willing to do it and seemed very enthousiastic about it mentioning how he “loved such controversial information.” I left a copy of the documentaries with him for screening purposes and during our second meeting, he told me that having seen the content, he didn’t think it was suitible to broadcast it on SCCN. So I asked why, and he went on to explain how he didn’t think viewers would be very interested in the material. I told him about the good feedback I was getting and how people kept asking me to see the documentaries, and that didn’t seem to change his mind. Then I suggested doing a poll in the local media to see if people would want SCCN to broadcast the documentaries. A bit surprised by my suggestion, he tried to talk his way out of it basically saying that it wouldn’t be neccessary because he was pretty sure his audience wouldn’t like it. Finally he came with the argument that at SCCN they only broadcasted entertainment (stuff like movies and music videos) and that the content in the documentaries wasn’t in line with their broadcasting policy. So that made me wonder why, if that was the case, he was so enthousiastic during our first meeting about broadasting the documentaries, because afterall, I had explained to him in details what they were about. Somewhere between our first and second meeting, he changed his mind about it. Not wanting to put too much pressure, I left it at that and continued to the next TV station.
I spoke to Henk Kamperveen, director at ABC TV about wanting to broadcast the documentaries and left him a copy for screening purposes. It took about 5 weeks before he was able to view some of the content, and after he did, he told me that ABC would not be able to broadcast the documentaries. When I asked why, he explained that “the documentaries expressed a certain point of view and that they wanted to be careful with what kind of material they broadcasted.” It seemed to me that ABC was just as afraid as the others, so I just accepted their answer and moved on.
I finally went to another TV station called Trishul, and they were interested to broadcast the documentaries. It appears that not too long ago, they had already aired a similar documentary on the various issues surrounding the events on 9/11. I made sure I explained to them in details what this is all about and left copies of the documentaries for them to have a look on the first meeting. At the second meeting they were still very much interested in broadcasting the documentaries after having screened the content, and so we went on to create the broadcasting schedule for the documentaries and talk about other details. If everything goes as planned, the first documentary will get aired on Friday May 18th. So I’m currently very busy preparing the material and getting the promotion of the documentaries started.
I continue to learn a lot from my experiences so far. It’s amazing how many of these companies who pretend to be independent and often very critical media start to shake in their boots when they come up against the US Embassy or other powerful people and organizations and refuse to talk about certain subjects. Who knows what else they don’t talk about while they pretend to report everything to the public and pretend to be very critical. In any case they’ve now been exposed, and I hope people find this information useful and get to know how independent some of the media in Suriname really are.
Update, May 14th: It’s important to note that the documentaries I’m talking about are listed in a previous post of mine, and that these documentaries are available for download all over the Internet. You’ll be able to find most, if not all of them, on Google Video. In addition, you can also buy most of them from various websites on the Internet. For example, “Terror Storm” is currently selling on Amazon.com.
I mention this because I want to make clear that even though these documentaries are accessible to anyone with an Internet connection, even in the USA, some TV stations are still too afraid to broadcast them. It’s just mind boggling.
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