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The original series' producers argue that the AIM program is a shallow and polemical response to an exhaustively researched work of scholarship. "If PBS feels that a reply to this series is appropriate, why does AIM get a monopoly?" asks Executive Producer Richard Ellison. "It's a precedent that I consider dangerous in and of itself, and also because it is part of a general atmosphere of pressure on the media from the right."
Some have charged that PBS succumbed to at least indirect pressure from the Reagan Administration to telecast the AIM program. The film was partly funded by a $30,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, awarded by then NEH Chief William Bennett, now Reagan's Secretary of Education. The program was later given a special screening at the White House, to which PBS officials were invited. Such interest at the top levels of Government, critics say, can hardly be ignored by a TV service depending on federal funds for its existence.
PBS officials deny that Administration pressure influenced their decision. Barry Chase, vice president for news and public affairs programming, points out that the original series evoked numerous complaints from veterans and Vietnamese refugees, and he contends that the AIM show is a legitimate way to air some of those concerns. "I think a response mechanism of some sort is badly needed on TV," says Chase. "And there's no reason in the world why a producer ought not to respond to attacks."
Network news executives, while hardly sympathetic to AIM, are reassured by the fact that PBS is placing the show in a larger context. "I think the format they have ended up with is a justifiable one," says Van Gordon Sauter, executive vice president of the CBS Broadcast Group. Indeed, except for its length, the AIM program seems little different from -- or more troubling than -- the "editorial replies" run frequently by local stations or guest editorials on a newspaper's op-ed page. The danger is that the Viet Nam skirmish may intensify. AIM Chairman Reed Irvine is contemplating a reply to ABC's recent three-hour documentary on the nuclear threat. Says Irvine: "I'd love to do a program showing the other side of that coin."