[images and captions added by this website] Wednesday, April 6, 2005   Wednesday, April 6, 2005 To this website: I HAVE just watched the much awaited C-SPAN program. Susan Swain was quite even handed and brought up your points of view for discussion as you were not allowed to. T R Reid made the point early in the program that he couldn't see Justice Gray, being a well connected blue blooded establishment judge, as ever ruling in your favor because of the subject matter, then later on in the program pointing out the significance of you, the plaintiff, losing a libel case in Britain where plaintiffs almost always win. Reid abused you quite a lot but also challenged your opposition to argue with you. He seemed to be asking your opposition, "what are you so afraid of?" It seems to me Reid is one of those people that has heard of the eye-witness accounts and that is all the proof that is needed. Documents and forensics are a boring and misleading distraction in this case. Reid brought up your belief in an international conspiracy against you. By his tone of voice he seemed to pooh-pooh the idea but then went on to say between minutes 46 and 48 that one of the reasons Lipstadt didn't testify was because the defense didn't want you to be able to pursue this line by producing correspondence between her and her publisher encouraging her to put more about you in her book. C-SPAN's choice of excerpts with John Lukács at minute 52 stating that all historians approach a subject with bias was interesting. It was nice of C-SPAN to include your website in their list of links. Sam Rost To Ms. Doebele, Wednesday, April 6, 2005: I FEEL that you and Ms. Amy Roach tried to provide "balance and fairness" to C-SPAN by granting Mr. Irving a chance to respond to the disinformation about himself and his scholarly works on ALL the players of the WWII era. While your efforts have failed, I respect you and Ms. Roach for acting to preserve intellectual freedom by ensuring "fairness and balance" at BookTV. I know the political pressure was immense, and you two have shown great moral courage in standing-up to those who would attempt to silence dissent and free expression. Now, I guess that we shall never see David Irving interviewed on his publication of Volume iii of the Churchill biography. A sad loss to all C-SPANners. I can remember a time when college professors stood in line to sign petitions demanding academic freedom and free speech. I do not, however, extend to Brian Lamb that same respect that I have for you and Ms. Roach. Brian Lamb has shown a lack of moral and intellectual courage in this whole affair. He has allowed a mob--not unlike the Berkeley mob that attacked Mr. Irving--to prevent the exercise of academic freedom at C-SPAN. Now, C-SPAN "fair and balanced" reporting is beginning to look more like the Fox Zoo-type "fair and balanced" reporting, conducted in the suite beneath the floors of the C-SPAN studio. The World will never forgive Brian Lamb for his complicity with Rep. Tom Lántós in the fabrication and prevarication involved in C-SPAN's airing of the "Iraqi Baby Incubator Hoax" back in 1991. Mr. Irving has said that the world's embedded journalists may not be telling the story of what is happening in Iraq, but the world's historians will not be so kind. Truly, Brian Lamb and Tom Lantos have the blood of millions of Iraqis on their hands, and the blood of thousands of non-Iraqis , too. Shame on Brian Lamb!! I guess we can now say that C-SPAN has flunked Condeleeza Rice's Town Square Test, and C-SPANers are now to live in a "fear society!" Scot Carter to [email protected] * "The world should apply what Natan Sharansky calls the "town square test": if a person cannot walk into the middle of the town square and express his or her views without fear of arrest, imprisonment, or physical harm, then that person is living in a fear society, not a free society. We cannot rest until every person living in a "fear society" has finally won their freedom."   Index to the media scandal surrounding Prof Lipstadt's attempt to silence C-Span and the history debate   The Irving - C-SPAN correspondence