MEDIA MONITOR Unique Eyewear Make a 1990 fashion statement with eyewear from: cillANFRANce FERRE kenef[on Christian Dior RALPH LAUREN ROBERT LR ROCHE' OLIVER PEOPLES L.A. OS TY ME GUCCI w D.O.0 of West Bloomfield has them all... and Dr. Howard J. Rosner, Optometrist, provides personalized care in contact lens fittings and eye examinations for the entire family. Appointments avaiable daily, evenings and Saturdays. E Israeli army recruit induction scene from "A Search for Solid Ground," PBS Execs Defend Treatment Of Upcoming Intifada Telecast DOC ARTHUR J. MAGIDA Special to The Jewish News F OF WEST BLOOMFIELD West Bloomfield Plaza • Orchard Lake south of Maple 626-0200 GLATT The Schechter Family of Miami Beach Announces the Newly Renovated KOSHER Days Inn Oceanside On the Ocean at 43rd Street FOR PASSOVER ONLY * Serving 3 Glatt Kosher Meals Daily * Prepared in its modern "on premises" facility. • •Ocean Front Pool • Color Cable TV In All Rooms •Entertainment Nightly • Private Beach • Resident Mashgiach For reservations. please call or write: The Schechter Family 4299 Collins Avenue, Miami Beach, Florida 33140 Phone: Toll Free (800) 356-3017 Miami (305) 673-1513 Fax: (305) 538-0727 THE place to be! .** 4 •ti 11.11,1 ) • ODD WEST BLOOMFIELD • MICHIGAN Orchard Lake Road • North of Maple 30 FRIDAY, JANUARY 5, 1990 our weeks ago, Walter Goodman, a New York Times television critic, charged that the Public Broadcasting System had applied a more lenient stan- dard toward a film that por- trayed the Israeli side of the intifada than it had toward one that showed the Palesti- nian side. Now, in a letter published in the Times, two executives of WNET, the New York PBS affiliate, refute Goodman's accusa- tions. "A Search for Solid Ground," which will be aired Jan. 16 (10 p.m., WTVS Ch. 56 in Detroit), will be packaged differently than "Days of Rage," a pro- Palestinian film broadcast in September, not to appease Jewish viewers, as Goodman had charged, but because "it is a different film." This response to Goodman came from Arnold Labaton, WNET's senior vice presi- dent, and Richard Hutton, the station's director of public affairs programming. "Solid Ground" will be followed by a 30-minute panel discussion about pro- posals for peace in the Mid- dle East; "Days of Rage" was surrounded by two pro- Israeli mini-documentaries and a panel discussion that was critical of the film. "The kind and amount of packaging a film receives is determined by the film itself," wrote the TV exec- utives, "not by how another film may have been packag- ed." The executives also said that although Israel's counsel general in New York had helped arrange financ- ing for "Solid Ground," this did not compromise the film's integrity. "Networking is a standard industry practice," they wrote, "that all independent filmmakers rely on to find funds. If they were required to forgo their contacts, few independent programs would ever be produced." Do Foreigners Control Israel's Media? For years, according to an article by Leon Hadar in Columbia Journalism Review, the "Leftist Mafia" — Israel's left-leaning press —has been snapping at the heels of several successive right-wing governments. Now, with several of these journals financially unsteady and after many efforts by the Likud Party to intimidate them, a few are being fought over by foreign businessmen, most of whom support Likud's conser- vative policies. Among those papers in which foreigners have in- vested are: • The ultra-liberal Ha'olam Ha'zeh. Half of the paper's stock was sold re- cently to a former Israeli, Arie Genger, who had struck it rich in America. Genger is a close friend of Ariel Sharon, who had been de- nounced in Ha'olam Ha'zeh editorials as Public Enemy Number One. "It was," wrote Hadar, "as though a business and polit- ical partner of Senator Jesse Helms or Pat Robertson were to purchase a half in- terest in The Nation, say, or Mother Jones." • The more moderate, English-language Jerusalem Post. Until recently, the paper was owned by a sub- sidiary of the Labor- controlled trade union, the Histradut. When the sub- sidiary faced a financial crisis this year, it decided to sell 55 percent of the paper's stock. The 14 bidders for the paper included U.S. News and World Report publisher, Mortimer Zuckerman; British press tycoon Robert Maxwell, an ally of Ariel Sharon; and David Radler, president of a Canadian- based newspaper chain. Radler won. 111 (