Lawsuit Tells How PBS Bought into Right-wing Series

Originally published in Current, August 5, 2002
By Karen Everhart

A civil lawsuit filed against a right-leaning producer in Los Angeles County July 19 offers an intriguing account of how public broadcasting leaders negotiated to bring conservative programs to public TV after members of Congress attacked PBS for liberal bias in 1992.

Writer and commentator David Horowitz, who led the right's attack on pubcasting during the CPB reauthorization process in the early '90s, tells in his lawsuit how he used his political leverage to gain CPB and PBS support for a conservative public affairs series that he proposed to counterbalance Frontline.

Horowitz is suing former partner Lionel Chetwynd, whom he blames for ending the conservative documentary series National Desk (originally Reverse Angle) in 2000. The two had been leaders of the Wednesday Morning Club, a prominent right-wing Hollywood group that hosted luncheons with speakers.

In the suit, Horowitz claims a major role in launching the series. He says he recruited Chetwynd, co-founded the nonprofit production company Whidbey Island Films and raised a portion of the series budget from conservative foundations.

At the same time, Horowitz was maintaining pressure on PBS by publishing the newsletter Comint, which battered pubcasters with negative articles by Laurence Jarvik.

A central figure in the complaint is former PBS President Ervin Duggan, who negotiated directly with Horowitz to launch a four-part series, according to the complaint, but later reacted angrily when Horowitz lobbied Congress to push for its expansion into an ongoing series on par with Frontline. Duggan did not respond to a request for an interview.

In his complaint seeking damages from Chetwynd, Horowitz alleges that his former collaborator conspired to force him out of Whidbey Island. Alleging that Chetwynd profited substantially from his relationship with PBS, Horowitz demands a share of the profits plus other monetary damages. Norman Powell, an executive producer with Whidbey Island, also is named in the suit.

National Desk went off the air in 2000 after PBS negotiated a new deal with Chetwynd to produce higher-profile documentaries, the first of which, "Darkness at High Noon," debuts next month (earlier article). Horowitz tried to keep National Desk going by informing influential House Republicans, and says the cancellation partially motivated the lawsuit.

Chetwynd "destroyed my project" and "enriched himself at my expense," Horowitz told Current. "I need some justice, and that's what this suit is about." Horowitz "seriously misperceives the nature of the business and his lack of a role in it," replied Mark Brifman, Chetwynd's attorney. "There's no fraud and conspiracy, and there's no money."

The complaint describes how Horowitz's campaign against liberal bias on public broadcasting in the early 1990s opened the door to talks with CPB and PBS leaders about corrective right-leaning programs. CPB President Richard Carlson gave $250,000 for a treatment for Horowitz's proposed six-part attack on 1960s leftism based on Destructive Generation, a book co-written by Horowitz and Peter Collier. The treatment was completed but never funded for production, Horowitz said. CPB also backed two installments of Reverse Angle, which was re-configured as the limited series National Desk after a meeting between Carlson, Duggan and Horowitz in spring 1994.

At this meeting, Horowitz proposed "a 22-segment PBS current affairs series, as a parallel to Frontline," according to the complaint. "Duggan countered by asking whether four parts would be satisfactory to begin." CPB and PBS committed $1.3 million to the project.

Horowitz approached funders of his own organization, the Center for the Study of Popular Culture, to raise the $300,000 that completed National Desk's first-season budget, according to the complaint. Whidbey paid a 20 percent commission to the Center for Horowitz's fundraising activities. To skirt a foundation's prohibition on fundraising commissions, Whidbey booked the expense as a purchase of rights to Destructive Generation, the complaint alleges.

Horowitz continued to lobby Congress for more conservative programs, according to the complaint, and he did this with Chetwynd's "full knowledge and support." By June 1995, an irate Duggan confronted Horowitz at an event in Nashville.

"He really unloaded on me," Horowitz recalled. "I was quite taken aback and didn't defend myself."

Two months after the blow-up, Horowitz resigned from Whidbey after Chetwynd told him that Duggan delivered an ultimatum that his continued involvement with the company jeopardized the series' future. Horowitz said he understood that he could return after the situation cooled off.

The complaint alleges that Chetwynd lied about Duggan's threat. Horowitz said he regards the former PBS prez as "fair-minded" and is grateful that he "brought us into the system."

Duggan did not lean on Whidbey to force Horowitz's resignation, nor did Chetwynd tell Horowitz that Duggan was behind the ouster, said Brifman, Chetwynd's attorney.

The defendants have until late August to respond.

See Comment by CIPB Executive Director Jerold Starr