CBS refuses Rabbi Bleich's requests for fair portrayal (01/01/95)

CBS refuses Rabbi Bleich's requests for fair portrayal

by Andrij Wynnyckyj

NEW YORK - In a face-to-face meeting with Rabbi Yaakov Dov Bleich, chief rabbi of Ukraine, Morley Safer and Jeffrey Fager of CBS's "60 Minutes" refused to air a fair portrayal of ethnic relations in the country and his statement decrying the misuse of his testimony.

Rabbi Bleich carne to New York while on a recent visit to the U.S. that coincided with Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma's official sojourn. Rabbi Bleich met with the two individuals primarily responsible for the defamatory portrait of Ukraine drawn in the now notorious program titled "The Ugly Face of Freedom."

Contacted by telephone in Kyyiv on December 14, 1994, Rabbi Bleich spoke to The Weekly about his encounter with the news program's co-editor, Mr. Safer, and the segment's producer, Mr. Fager.

Rabbi Bleich said the trio met "on neutral ground" because he feared the pressure that would be exerted upon him if he went to CBS headquarters on New York's Fifth Avenue.

During the meeting, Rabbi Bleich requested an on-air reading of his October 31,1994, statement, in which he faulted the program for having quoted his words "out of the context that they were said" and that "the broadcast did not convey the true state of affairs in Ukraine." Rabbi Bleich said he would consider this gesture a retraction of sorts.

In reply, he was told: "We already read off the Cardinal's [Myroslav Lubachivsky's] letter and we won't read yours."

When the Jewish religious letter suggested that "60 Minutes" make another segment, and this time show the positive things about Ukraine, "since there are many more positive aspects to life in the country than what they showed," Rabbi Bleich reported that Morley Safer said: "Right now we have no interest."

Rabbi Bleich also brought up the issue of the false pretexts under which the interviews were conducted in Ukraine. Cardinal Lubachivsky had been told CBS was doing a story on religion in post-Soviet Ukraine, while Rabbi Bleich expected to speak about "the help American organizations were providing for rebuilding in Ukraine."

The rabbi challenged the newsmen, saying, "why did you say this to me if those were not your intentions?" He was told "Well, we were planning on doing that type of report, but while we were there we chanced on this other story, which we thought was much better."

As to the question of his words having been taken completely out of context, Rabbi Bleich said he protested specifically about the reference to the renaming of streets. "When you asked me about the naming of streets after Petliura and Khmelnytsky, I said that it doesn't bother me," he related, explaining that "it was when I was talking about something completely different that they used the part they quoted me on."

Rabbi Bleich said Mr. Safer replied: "Well, the truth is that we heard it from people, we heard this from the locals, so that's why we put it in there."

Rabbi Bleich said a correspondent from the Ukrainian television network UT-2 interviewed him on December 13, 1994, and asked about CBS's motive in airing "The Ugly Face" program. "I told him," said Rabbi Bleich, " 'Look, you journalists are all the same anyway, if you don't have a story, you create one.' "

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