The Armenian Affairs: PBS So-called “Balancing Panel”: A Case Follow Up

With the increasing number of the signatures collected in the online petition http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?pbspanel against the PBS discussion panel, the number of collected signatures jumped in few days from 300, to 3,000 to 6,000 and reached well over 10,000 signatures on last Monday.

As a reaction to the Armenian Online Petition, the Assembly of Turkish American Associations (ATAA), a coalition of more than 60 Turkish organizations, issued its own copycat petition, mimicking the Armenian one.

For the past 2-3 days, I was following both of the petitions and signatures… Although signing psudo names, one name (not full name), celebrity names, and sometimes without names, the Turkish petition’s signatures are increasing tremendously if compared with the Armenian one. I don’t know if protesters from Turkey or Azerbaijan will have any saying in what to air or not to air on an American National TV , but the fact is that vast majority of the Turkish copycut petition signers are from Turkey and Azerbaijian according to the petition website..

I tried to compare the voting frquency in both the Armenian petition site, and the Turkish one, but I must say that it was not in the favour of the Armenian petition. First of all, let’s look at both the “text” of the petition of each one...

"The Armenian Petition"
Petition Against the Armenian Genocide Panel Discussion on PBS
To: Ms. Jacoba Atlas, Senior Vice President of PBS programming

It is welcome news that PBS is planning to broadcast Andrew Goldberg's "The Armenian Genocide" documentary on April 17, 2006. However, we are immensely hurt by the news that this will be followed by a 25 minute long discussion by a panel that includes two genocide deniers. We are confident that the Armenian Genocide scholars will present a superb scholarly case, but we strongly feel that debating the Armenian Genocide is akin to arguing about the Jewish Holocaust in order to project a sense of balance. Would PBS ever contemplate such a program? Turkish denials of the genocide are part of a state-sponsored policy of propaganda that serves only the interests of Turkey.
The historical truth of the Armenian genocide has been established beyond reasonable doubt by abundant documentary and eye-witness evidence from thousands of sources. Furthermore, denialist views of genocide are already included in the film; thus the panel discussion would serve to emphasize the Turkish state's official position and undermine the non political nature of your programming.

Broadcasting the panel discussion may result in a substantial loss of support from viewers of PBS. We the undersigned urge you not to approve the airing of the panel discussion.

Sincerely,

The Undersigned

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"The Turkish Copycat"
Armenian Revolt and Deportation
To: PBS
PBS should air both sides

of the story on Armenian genocide allegations. Showing only "Armenian Genocide"
movie but blocking "Armenian Revolt" is not fair. Equal time should be supplied
to both sides on conflicts between two nations.
Sincerely,
The Undersigned

So at the first look to the numbers I had two days ago, I saw this and I wanted to share it with you all, to let you know what’s going on...

Wednesday morning, Feb. 22 2006

After few minutes, and after “refreshing” the webpage ... the numbers increased ...

A couple more of refreshes the webpage, showed the following increasing rates..

Now, the next morning I checked it again, and here's how it increaded.

Thursday morning, Feb. 23 2006....

Few refreshes later ...

Going through the pages of the Turkish copycut petition, I found out that there are fields of comments that the petitioers had left. Those comments show so much about the people that are voting, and why they are voting ...

Some of them, Had no idea what that petition was all about such as ...

Another group, thought that it was a good opportunity to publish personal and commercial ads ... such as ...

Some thought that it is a war ....

Or some sort of game...

Or obviously fake, repeated many times...

Some signed with fake names, or just first names, and some didn’t bother even write a name (it appear as "line voided"), yet surprisingly their votes still counts !! like...

And most of the rest were all purely racist hate messages againt all armenians ... yes dear compatriots against us all ...take a look

I’m surprised how can any website allow such racist comments to be presnted in it’s pages !! I hope that Armenians won't use this website as a host for any petition in the future, because of an immoral act of tolerating and provide space for "Racisim".

If you still haven't voted yet, allow me to show you how much "Racisit & Hate Votes" are being recorded against Armenians !! Take a look at the latest results, of the petitions right now !
Please Vote, and send this link to all your friends, Support The Armenian People http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?pbspanel

Votes of Armenian Petition ....