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Lincoln, Oak Park, MI 48237 • Phone 547-7972 ilfl PRIM' SFPTFMRFR R 1989 Special to The Jewish News T he furor over the pro- Palestinian film, Days of Rage, which was broadcast on the Pub- lic Broadcasting System Wednesday evening, has left the network in the peculiar position of being a stalwart defender against censorship, but perceived as possibly com- promising its own policy regarding funding of in- dependently produced pro- gramming that it airs. The latest capstone on the checkered history of the film came last week when the New Republic published an in- vestigatory article by Steven Emerson, a senior editor at U.S. News and World Report. Emerson charged that Jo Franklin-Trout, the pro- ducer/director/writer of Days of Rage, had sold the distribu- tion rights to the film in May 1988 to the pro-Arab Arab- American Cultural Founda- tion in Washington. The foun- dation director, Hisham Sharabi, a professor at Georgetown University, told Emerson that the organiza- tion had purchased all rights to the film after it had been aired by PBS. Through this mechanism, charged Emerson, "Franklin- Trout could claim technically that she funded the • film herself, and any money that was generated after its broad- cast would not have to be disclosed." The foundation, wrote Emerson, raised most of the money for this agreement with Franklin-Trout in Kuwait, and from_ private donors. "After the agree- ment," he said, "Franklin- Trout was elected to the foun- dation's board of directors." This sale, alleged Emerson, had_helped finance the pro- duction of the $180,000 film. If true, this could violate PBS policy which bars under- writing "which could lead the public to conclude that the program has been influenced by the funder." In response to the New Republic article, PBS con- ducted its own last-minute in- vestigation of the funding of Days of Rage. Although it con- cluded that the film had largely been funded by Franklin-Trout, it did add a notice before and after the broadcast of Days of Rage ad- vising that the film had been the subject of intense allega- tions which, to date, had yielded no firm credence. As Mary Jane McKinven, director of national press rela- tions for PBS said, "Our viewers are served by more in- formation, not less." Two days after the New Republic article surfaced, Franklin-Trout told the New York Times that she had been been on the board of the Arab- American Cultural Founda- tion for the last two years. But she maintained that she had financed Days of Rage with her own money raised from the sale of videocasset- tes of previous films she had produced and that her rela- tionship with the foundation did not compromise her in- dependence as a filmmaker. The New Republic article also charged that: • Franklin-Trout had false- ly claimed that she had had "repeated confrontations" with Israeli authorities while filming Days of Rage. She said that soldiers had "brutally" attempted to stop her filming, had arrested her and had con- fiscated her film. Three members of Franklin- Trout's production crew told Emerson that none of this had occurred. • As a senior Washington producer of the "MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour" from 1975 to 1980, she had developed "an extraordinari- ly close relationship with the Saudis," according to a former associate on the program. In 1980, while still on the show's staff, she had relayed Saudi anger to PBS over the show- ing of Death of a Frincess, which documented the beheading of a Saudi princess for adultery. - • Franklin-Trout produced a three-part documentary for PBS about Saudi Arabia that was aired in 1982. This serv- ed, in effect, as PBS' "counter- weight" to the airing of Death of a Princess, and had been funded by four American multinational companies that annually did billions of dollars of trade with Saudi Arabia. In 1981, according to Emerson, each of these firms had lobbied for the sale of the advanced radar surveillance planes, the AWACS, to the Saudis. "PBS officials claim they were unaware at the time of the extent of the relationship between the show's sponsors and its subject," writes Emerson.