Columnist: The History Channel's Apology--And Why It's Important

Dave Addis, Virginia Pilot (April 9, 2004):

Wednesday night, with no new episode of “The West Wing” in sight, my wife and I tucked ourselves into our couches and watched an hour long apology on The History Channel.

This would not normally be considered compelling television. The program consisted solely of four middle-aged white males – a news anchor and three musty historians – sitting motionless in their chairs and talking for an hour.

What could be more boring? There was not a bachelor, a bachelorette, a survivor, an amateur crooner or a Donald Trump in sight.

It's not the sort of thing you see on TV much these days, although it involved more reality than the “reality shows” that dominate the evening fare. But the story behind it was fascinating.

The panel was put together for this special event by The History Channel to atone for a program it ran last November, called, “The Guilty Men.” That show, which was timed with the 40th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, claimed that Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson was guilty of arranging the murder of the president of the United States.

That, of course, is complete and total balderdash, which is what Wednesday night's panel of historians went to great pains to point out.

Afterward , The History Channel returned to its normal programming, which in this case was a feature on the construction of the pyramids of Egypt.

So, who cares? Well, we all should. The muddling of what actually happened in humankind's past and what some Hollywood film director decides would be more entertaining is having serious consequences.

One of the professors on Wednesday's panel, for example, was discouraged at how many of his bright young university students believe that Oliver Stone's loopy conspiracy film, “JFK,” was an accurate portrayal of the events of November 1963.

Further evidence of a reality breakdown in the history department can be found in a fascinating survey published this week by a respected British newspaper, The Independent.

Of 2,000 Brits who were polled, 11 percent thought Adolf Hitler was a fictional character. Thirty-three percent said Benito Mussolini was a fictional character. And this is from a nation that was nearly wiped off the map, just 60 years ago, by the Hitler-Mussolini coalition.

Conversely, the fictional character King Arthur was thought by 57 percent actually to have ruled their realm at one time. Magical sword and all.

Equally discouraging were the results when Brits were questioned on real events.

Some 52 percent thought World War II's Battle of the Bulge never actually happened. Custer's Last Stand was judged by 48 percent never to have occurred, and 44 percent thought the Hundred Years' War never really took place.

The Cold War, which was still frosting us just over a decade ago, was judged by nearly one-third of those polled to have been a figment of our imagination.

I don't mean to pick on the Brits here. It's likely that an American audience, absorbing much of its history education from the tube and the silver screen, would poll just as poorly, if not worse.

To its credit, The History Channel apologized to Lady Bird Johnson and her family and to the public at large. Its slander of Lyndon B. Johnson, the network said, “failed to offer viewers context and perspective, and fell short of the high standards that the network sets for itself.”

That's a good first step. Maybe a good second step would be a voluntary system that warns viewers whether they're watching a documentary, a drama or a fanciful mingling of the two – a step that The History Channel failed to take when airing “The Guilty Men” in November.