Breaking the Silence on "Breaking the Silence"

Dear PBS Executives:

One hopes the film you recently purchased and approved for PBS stations regarding Parental Alienation Syndrome/Domestic Violence--"Breaking the Silence"--is far more biased than you had originally imagined. Or perhaps you have discovered that villifying the male of the species is getting harder and harder to do.  Wherever you stand in on this, you might at least belatedly familiarize yourselves with the facts.

As per usual with any Feminist propaganda, an example of which the film you approved most certainly is, the "statistics" they quote never fully gibe with the truth. In fact they have no reasonable relationship to it; factual data, and proper perspective on how to view it, never being offered by their lot.

You may remember statistics that came out during the early days of Feminism that appeared to show women had fewer auto accidents than men. From this Feminists concluded that women were in fact the better drivers, and that the bad-woman-driver stereotype was simply the result of masculine prejudice.  This conclusion stood until someone looked into the comparative mileage travelled by men and women, and discovered that men had fewer accidents per capita per driven mile.

In such manner the women's movement always represents the "facts"--thoroughly biased to their purposes, with little regard for the truth, for proper methodology, or for the broader picture one needs to consider fairly what is being represented.

The "facts" you have misrepresented to your viewing public through this film can also be completely discredited, as can be the producers of the film, as well as--by extension--yourselves as PBS executives.

At least one outrageous claim in this film goes against all available evidence, and is clearly intended to demonize fathers:  that kids are more at risk with custodial fathers than they are with custodial mothers.  All recent studies show that fathers are less abusive toward their children in every category of abuse, including parental child murders.

Did any of you take it upon yourself to test any of the data or conclusions made in this film? Did you just assume that a film financed by the prejudiced Mary Kay Ash Foundation, backed by the infamous NOW, with data supplied by Feminist bastion Wellesley College, narrated by the anti-male Lundy Bancroft, and including supporting views of the banned attorney Richard Ducote, to be free of bias?

In view of the reality of this radically-biased film parading as expose, shouldn't you be asking yourselves what methods you employed to evaluate the content of "Breaking the Silence", and why you as a group chose to promote it?  The opening statement alone, regarding "mothers all across the nation losing their children to abusive fathers", should have been shocking enough to inspire a careful evaluation of the film's claims.

Have you abdicated your responsibility to the public to provide fair reporting by investigating the stories you broadcast? Would you rather be converted to a propaganda arm for a sliver group of anti-male-hatred-campaign extremists?

If so you should consider abdicating your positions as public broadcast executives, your salaries partially funded by public dollars, so citizens of this fine country can get back to loving one another and raising their children well.

Please forward to . .

pmitchell@pbs.org, jwilson@pbs.org, cjohanson@pbs.org, gsagastume@pbs.org, sgray@pbs.org, sheberer@pbs.org, awinshel@pbs.org, pharrison@cpb.org