MediaWatch: August 1991
Table of Contents:
Still More Controversey Over P.O.V.
STOPPING ACT UP. On August 12, PBS announced that it would not air the 23-minute documentary Stop The Church, a film about the radical gay group AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) and their 1989 raid of New York's St. Patrick's Cathedral. The film by ACT UP member Robert Hilferty had been approved for the P.O.V. series by Glenn Dixon, the network's Director of News and Public Affairs Programming. But P.O.V. Chief Executive David Davis said PBS executives made the decision because of the "tremendous stress" Tongues Untied had already put on its affiliates. On August 13, the P.O.V. series continued with Metamorphosis: Man Into Woman, an hour-long film about a man getting a sex-change operation.
P.O.V. is also planning to air Maria's Story, a documentary on a female guerrilla with the FMLN, the Marxist rebels in El Salvador. Series producers showed their ideological colors when they placed ads for a new communications director: the ad appeared in the August 12/19 edition of The Nation.
