PBS Ombudsman Michael Getler discusses the uproar over the Bechtel/Schwab-funded documentary: Turmoil and Triumph: The George Schultz Years. 

The e-mails, several hundred of them, began pouring into my mailbox early Monday evening. They began very soon after the media watch group known as FAIR — for Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting and which describes itself as "progressive" in approach — took issue with a new three-part, three-hour PBS series about former Reagan-era Secretary of State George P. Shultz. As is frequently the case when FAIR gets something in its crosshairs, it tells its subscribers where to complain.

The series, "Turmoil and Triumph: The George Shultz Years," was produced for PBS by Free to Choose Media based in Erie, Pa., a "not-for-profit production company that focuses on issues of personal, economic and political freedom," according to its promotional material.

The series had not even started when FAIR put out its assessment. The first part aired later that evening on many, but not all, PBS member stations. Interestingly, none of the three stations serving the big Washington, D.C., metro area showed the film at that time. The FAIR assessment, however, was based largely on a number of pre-broadcast reviews of the series, especially one in The New York Times on July 12, plus excerpts from other ones in The Wall Street Journal, San Francisco Chronicle, and from The Nation magazine.

Once the first part of the series was broadcast, a smaller number of e-mails arrived, raising challenges that were informed by the actual broadcast. But clearly the overwhelming number of complaints I received were from those who had not seen the broadcast and were clearly cruising on what had been reported by FAIR. Normally, that is not a great idea.

Links to the Subject

But in this case, what was at the core of this pre-broadcast challenge to PBS was that some of the funding for this series came from foundations and individuals with clear links to Shultz's other life in the corporate world. So I think those who wrote to challenge this project even before they saw it make a fair point, no pun intended.

It is a point that I agree with. PBS clearly disagrees and offers a response to critics that is posted farther down in this column. And, David deVries, the producer-writer-director of the project offers a strong rebuttal "to the sneering, scurrilous accusations of prejudice and partiality about the shows" made by Greg Mitchell in The Nation and FAIR. That is also posted below. DeVries makes another point: That the overall positive tone was arrived at through his own research and that he had legitimately come to believe that Shultz has been a fine and dedicated public servant.

This series, for me, as a viewer and an ombudsman, created at least the appearance of a conflict of interest; a portrait so glowing that it overwhelms whatever modestly critical elements are included, that does not easily fit the designation one usually associates with a documentary, and that is indeed funded in part by associates of the subject. It doesn't mean that funders exerted any editorial influence, but it left me feeling they didn't have to.

A few days later, Peter Sussman wrote on behalf of the Ethics Committee of the Society of Professional Journalists to say they were "troubled" by the FAIR disclosures "suggesting serious conflicts of interest in the funding and editorial perspective" of the program. "What makes FAIR's charges most disturbing, if they are accurate, is that the content of the series seems to align so completely with the presumed interests of the primary funders, both of which have direct ties to the subject of the series. Stated another way — again, if the charges are accurate — the funders literally got what they appear to have paid for, in editorial content."

More Than Just a Funding Problem

I have viewed recordings of all three programs (which are scheduled to air on many stations on consecutive Mondays) in order to assess the pre-broadcast comments. When my viewing was over, it was more than just the funding, which I'll get to, that bothered me.

First, let me say there is a fair amount of excellent material in this series. Shultz was President Reagan's secretary of state from 1982 to 1989 and his tenure includes many dramatic and controversial episodes in the history of that time, from wars in the Middle East and Central America to the Iran-Contra scandal, upheaval in the Philippines and the emergence in Moscow of Mikhail Gorbachev in what turned out to be the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union.

Then there is Shultz, now nearing 90, who probably has one of the great resumes of his time: Princeton grad and varsity football player, Marine Corps combat vet in WWII, doctorate in economics from MIT, dean of the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, secretary of labor, budget office chief and then treasury secretary in the Nixon administration, president of the huge Bechtel Corporation for nine years, and then that second tour in government for Reagan.

'An Able Steward'

In what I thought was the review that best captured the ambivalence I felt about this series, Alessandra Stanley, writing in the Times, says there is not "anything wrong with honoring Mr. Shultz. He was an able steward of Ronald Reagan's foreign policy, a steady voice of reason in a White House often embroiled in ideological sniping." And, she adds, "It can be argued that Mr. Shultz was one of the best — and least controversial — secretaries of state since George C. Marshall," who served from 1947-49.

As a reporter at The Washington Post, I covered a lot of what Shultz was engaged in and I think it is fair to say that during the Reagan years he was viewed, by many reporters and probably the president, as perhaps the most well-prepared, wisest and most open-minded within an often contentious cabinet.

At three hours, this series also feels way too long. As Stanley points out, "The Titanic took less time to sink (2 hours and 40 minutes)."

But mostly this film is over-the-top, in my view, with praise but with relatively little critical appraisal of some of the more controversial actions of Shultz's tenure. It seems protective and goes so far as to have the unseen narrator say at one point, in the aftermath of the suicide bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983 that killed 241 servicemen, that "although George Shultz has been instrumental in sending American forces to Beirut, he has had nothing to do with tying them down to an exposed position that was difficult to defend."

Richard Reeves notes in his book "President Reagan: The Triumph of Imagination" that former President Nixon regularly advised Reagan on foreign affairs, and that "there was a bad word" from Nixon at the time of Shultz's appointment. "Beware of Shultz. If things go wrong, he wasn't part of it or never knew about it."

Iraq Didn't Figure

The series is focused on the Reagan years but tells a life story. Yet it leaves out Shultz's strong, post-administration support for the invasion of Iraq. "There is no mention that Mr. Shultz was a cheerleader for the 2003 invasion of Iraq," Stanley writes, "while still on the board of Bechtel, a construction and engineering firm that won huge contracts that were later criticized by the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction." Shultz was also chairman of a special "Committee for the Liberation of Iraq" assembled by President George W. Bush. I think, for the sake of credibility, some time should have been devoted to this in a three-hour film. Shultz's position as a respected elder statesman made his support for the invasion important.

The San Francisco Chronicle reviewer, in an otherwise positive review, describes the series as "a three-part hagiography," meaning a worshipful or idealizing biography. The Times calls it "a generous tribute but it feels more like an encomium (a victory speech) than a history lesson." The Wall Street Journal describes the on-camera commentators as "an exceptionally enthusiastic lot even by the prevailing standards for testimonials of this sort." Washingtonian.com calls it "rather rosy."

I found the deification of Shultz to be unnecessary. I felt that it actually distracted from the story line and somehow diminished him because it was so excessive. I actually felt a bit embarrassed for Shultz, who always had a modest way about him. But that wasn't the case. In an unusual interview with The New York Times Sunday Magazine on July 4, reporter Deborah Solomon described the still forthcoming documentary as "very positive." And Shultz said, "Yes it is. I'm not complaining. I'm flattered." Solomon then said: "I am surprised it's being shown on PBS. Do you think they're trying to appeal to Republicans?" Shultz replied: "I don't think it's a partisan thing at all."

The Funders

Among the funders was the Stephen Bechtel Fund, an arm of the firm that Shultz once headed and also served on the board of directors. Then there was Charles Schwab, founder of the very well known investment firm where Shultz had served as a board member. And there was Peter G. Peterson, the prominent businessman and fiscal conservative who was a Nixon administration cabinet colleague of Shultz's and whose wife, as Stanley points out, is a founder of the Children's Television Workshop, which is linked to PBS.

FAIR is also troubled by these connections, and also tells its members that "the political slant of the film is not a surprise. The company that produced it, Free to Choose Media, has had a hand in several conservative-oriented programs that have aired on public television, including 1980's 'Free to Choose,' a special PBS series celebrating conservative economist Milton Friedman." Writing in The Nation, Greg Mitchell, former editor of Editor & Publisher magazine, also calls attention to the producers and their early backing from conservative foundations.

The Friedman series, however, was a response, in part, to the widely viewed 1977 BBC series "The Age of Uncertainty," which PBS had a hand in, by famed Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith. So one could argue that the public was better off with these competing and respected views, although the series on Galbraith was produced clearly by a journalistic enterprise, the BBC. I don't have a problem with liberal or conservative-leaning producers competing for time on public TV, provided PBS programming officials take steps to "guard against the public perception that editorial control might have been exercised by program funders," as PBS's own funding standards and practices require.

Oh, That Test!

Those PBS rules about what is called the "Perception Test" go on to say: "In general, the perception test will be applied most vigorously to current affairs programs and programs that address controversial issues. In these cases, when there exists a clear and direct connection between the interests or products or services of a proposed funder and the subject matter of the program, the proposed funding will be deemed unacceptable regardless of the funder's actual compliance with the editorial control provision of this policy."

But as I've said before, like a lot of PBS rules, there are exceptions and one of those "that may make the problematic funder acceptable" is if there are "one or more neutral funders." There were other funders of the program, including some prominent California families, Sen. Dianne Feinstein and some former top diplomats.

As a viewer of this admittedly interesting and informative series, what I was left with, nevertheless, was a sense that it had a credibility problem, one that could have been fixed in the telling and in a search for other sponsors. I felt it did not meet PBS's own "perception test" ground rules when one combined the dominant tone of sainthood, the length, the sense that a critical eye was missing, the omissions about Iraq, and those sponsorships that were immediately eye-catching for anyone familiar with this period.

This funding issue has come up a number of times before — and been the subject of earlier ombudsman columns dealing, for example, with documentaries on Las Vegas and on the Armenian Genocide and the U.S. Marine Corps — when viewers have wondered whether they were being spun or propagandized. All of those, and others as well, including Shultz, are worthy subjects but the approach and funding associations diminish credibility.