Past Columns
Good Intentions
The Chicago Reporter held a documentary contest. Not even the winner’s happy.
By Michael Miner December 6, 2007
Do you believe art drives social change? Venita Griffin does, and as director of marking and communications for the Community Renewal Society, she found herself in a position to act on this belief. CRS publishes the Chicago Reporter, which this year sponsored the first ever John A. McDermott Documentary Film Competition. It was her idea. The good news is that Griffin and Alysia Tate, editor and publisher of the Reporter, say there will be a McDermott competition next year, and hopefully many more to come. The bad news is that the first time out, the competition ended in something of a shambles. The winners feel rooked because their film won’t be shown as expected on WTTW’s Image Union, and the producer of Image Union wishes his program weren’t getting blamed for breaking a promise he says it never made in the first place.
The late John McDermott founded the Reporter some 30 years ago to explore issues related to race and poverty that the mainstream press wasn’t paying enough attention to. More agenda driven today than it was when it simply laid out grim facts for a city that wasn’t eager to hear them, the Reporter put out a call last April for films that examined “racial and economic disparities.” This criterion would be loosely applied, and so would another, that the entries “should not exceed 15 minutes.”
The call for entries promised a public screening of the top three entries. Moreover, it said, “one winning entry will be aired during WTTW11 Chicago’s Image Union.”
On October 14 Beyondmedia Education, a production house that focuses on marginalized women, got an e-mail from Griffin that began, “Congratulations.” Turning a Corner, a Beyondmedia documentary on prostitution in Chicago, had won the McDermott. There’d be a screening and panel discussion October 19 at the Cultural Center and other screenings at “several venues” to be determined.
Associate director Joanne Archibald e-mailed back. “There was also a statement that one of the films would be chosen to be on Image Union. Is that Turning a Corner?” she asked. “Sorry for the confusion,” Griffin replied. “Turning a Corner is our main winner—so yes, you guys will be shown on Image Union. I will put you in touch with the Producers there.”
But Image Union producer Eddie Griffin had a different idea. “We were asked to be a judge and we were asked if we’d be willing to pick a film and put it on the air,” he says. “And that’s what we did.” They watched the DVD the Reporter sent them, which contained six films, and picked No Half Steppin, a 17-minute documentary on local rapper Sharkula, a dreamer who hustles his recordings on the street.
Six judges graded the six films according to such criteria as “Social justice issue tackled was clear and apparent” and “Film successfully communicates the challenges/special needs of a certain economic and/or racial or ethnic group.” Filmmakers Brendan Kredell and Tom Bailey do a nice job of capturing Sharkula’s charms and torments, but No Half Steppin doesn’t reflect those judging criteria, which probably helps explain its appeal to Image Union. (The anthology show likes work that’s “out there,” says Eddie Griffin’s predecessor, Annie Porter.)
“We’re the only winner that was ever announced,” says Salome Chasnoff, executive director of Beyondmedia and director of Turning a Corner. “It’s like they pulled the other one out of a hat.”
On October 26, Venita Griffin e-mailed Beyondmedia to let them know that an upcoming screening of Turning a Corner at the National Museum of Mexican Art in Pilsen had been canceled.
“Also,” she went on, “Image Union has decided to air the second place winner of the McDermott film fest on its show, saying it fit better with the theme of the episode they planned to show it on. I am truly sorry that Turning a Corner won’t be shown, but Image Union has final say on what show they will air.”
Second-place winner? “That’s what really grabbed our attention,” says Chasnoff, “because there had been no mention of a second-place winner or any place winner as far as we knew.” (Tom Bailey says he and Kredell found out from the Reporter “significantly later” than October 14 that their film was the runner-up and would be shown on Image Union.)
A conference call with Alysia Tate followed. According to the notes of the Beyondmedia participants, Tate said Image Union had turned down Turning a Corner because of the “sensitivity of the material.”
Tate and Griffin have apologized, and apologized again. “We do regret any miscommunication on our part,” they wrote in a November 19 letter to Beyondmedia. “At this time we feel it is most appropriate for you to speak directly with Image Union around your questions and concerns about why your film was not selected for airing.”
Eddie Griffin is new in his job. Venita Griffin originally negotiated WTTW’s role with his predecessor. But Annie Porter and Eddie Griffin both say Image Union would never have committed itself to the judges’ choice. “The jury selected Turning a Corner and we selected No Half Steppin,” Eddie Griffin told me. “We reserve the right to make our own decision.”
As Tate suggested, Archibald called Eddie Griffin. “I said, ‘What’s objectionable?’” she says. “And he said it was the subject matter, prostitution. ‘This isn’t HBO.’ And I said you can see more controversial material on prime time any day. There was no nudity. The way it was presented was not lurid or sensational. It’s real.”
HBO? “I’m not here to speak out against the film,” Griffin told me, declining to discuss his conversation with Archibald.
It’s not like the fate of Turning a Corner hinges on Image Union—a program that airs at the not-so-prime times of 10:30 PM Thursday and midnight Monday. What Beyondmedia entered in the McDermott competition was a 14-minute preview of a 53-minute film that premiered at the Northwestern University law school auditorium in February 2006 and has been screened frequently since. “Image Union is not that important to us,” says Chasnoff. “What was important to us was the false promise and the lack of information we were getting so we couldn’t figure out what was going on, and we felt it was wrong. When we started talking about it in the office and researching it we began to expose a lot of issues that concerned us, like the lack of access to public media and censorship.”
Censorship? Does she believe that’s what this is about? “I do, I do,” she says. “If public media isn’t a place where these women can have a platform for their message, that’s censorship. If they’re not considered part of the constituency for public media, that’s censorship to me. Look at it from our point of view. First of all, we were told the winner would get a screening on Image Union. We were told we were the winner. We were told we were top winner and we’d get a screening. All of a sudden we weren’t going to get a screening. What’s that about? It felt like censorship.”
In other words, Beyondmedia isn’t mad at the Reporter for meaning well but making some mistakes. It’s mad at WTTW for stiffing their film. Chasnoff made it clear to me that she likes the Reporter. She regularly reads the Reporter. Last year the Reporter ran a long interview with her on the making of Turning a Corner.
Chasnoff might want to get in touch with Barbara Allen and Dan Soles. Allen’s a WTTW producer who sat on a panel that talked about independent media and social change the night Turning a Corner was introduced as the winning film at the Cultural Center. She admired it. “I had to reevaluate what I thought about prostitution,” she says. “I’d never thought about it on that human level.” Soles is WTTW’s senior vice president of TV content. He told me about other locally created documentaries coming to WTTW, and he said that if Chasnoff and Archibald send him the full 53-minute version of Turning a Corner he’ll certainly consider it. Send a letter to the editor.
From the Reader blogs News Bites Michael Miner: Gerould Kern, new editor of the Chicago Tribune, talks to Reuters.
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FC at 12:10 PM on 12/9/2007
I think WTTW is another Chicago white yuppy controlled organization that wishes to maintain their image of minorities by deciding on the rapper and not the prostitutes. "Let's talk about the happy black story we want to talk about, it'll be fun right Ted, we'll give them air time?"
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Tsehaye Hebert at 12:44 AM on 12/11/2007
It is regrettable that WTTW’s Image Union refused to air Turning A Corner. Having worked with ex sex workers both inside and outside of the prison system, I fully support Beyondmedia and my colleagues there, who work tirelessly to tell the stories of marginalized women.
As a writing teacher, I brought my own biases and stereotypes to my work. After hearing story upon story of how countless women and young girls are brought into prostitution - most often because of poverty, violence and childhood sexual exploitation – one cannot help but want these stories to have a wider audience. Too many lives have already been destroyed and lost because of our willful ignorance about prostitution.
If issues of great social significance cannot find a platform in public media through vehicles such as Image Union, then where can they be told? That more objectionable material appears in prime time, yet Turning A Corner, was deemed "too sensitive" for WTTW, is laughable. When you combine shameless lack of courage and programming cowardice you get censorship. Sadly, this is what we’ve come to expect from WTTW.
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Ann Folwell Stanford at 1:31 PM on 12/11/2007
How is it that a society that maintains prostitution as avidly as ours does, can't seem to bear acknowledging that it exists and that the sex workers are, indeed, real people?
I urge WTTW to rethink the uses of public television. Leave the sensationalistic, salacious material to corporate TV and allow the voices of real people--all of us--to be aired in prize-winning documentaries such as "Turning A Corner.
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Starchild at 7:49 PM on 12/12/2007
I haven't seen either film, so I can't comment on the content. But if the TV station turned down "Turning A Corner" just because it was about prostitution, or especially because it focused on getting the laws reformed, that is really a shame. No one should be criminalized for engaging in sexual activities with consenting adults. I recommend this short animated video for a background discussion of why such laws are wrong -- http://www.isil.org/resources/introduction.swf
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RG at 11:11 PM on 12/12/2007
This is hugely disappointing news. Beyondmedia is known nationally for its quality work, and it's such a shame that WTTW refuses to acknowledge that by censoring _Turning a Corner_. This is a very real story that shouldn't be censored just because it involves sex work (esp. considering, as you mentioned, that Image Union airs late at night). I'd really like to know exactly what WTTW's objections were and strongly encourage Soles to air the full film.
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Jesse Wheeler at 10:59 AM on 12/13/2007
I commend Michael Miner for writing his article "Good Intentions" (12/6) in Hot Type and bringing to our attention the case regarding Beyondmedia's documentary Turning a Corner, WTTW's program Image Union and the Chicago Reporter's John A. McDermott Film Festival. It isn't often that we get a chance to see what goes on behind the programming of a television station. Though WTTW is a publicly funded station, they still aparently reserve the right to choose what they want to show, and they don't feel the need to make their reasons public. It reminds me of George Bush's declaration that one of the perks of being commander-in-chief was that he didn't need to explain himself. Both Bush and Image Union's Eddie Griffin hold in contempt their obligation to justify their actions with reasons to us, the public. If the consequences of their actions can impact and affect us or our interests in some manner or another, it is their moral duty to us; if they shirk this, they are denying us our moral worth as partners. This is called accountability, and publicly funded institutions and entities like WTTW and democratically elected governments have no legitimate motive for seeking exemption from this, one of the most important aspects of our democratic social contract.
I was disappointed, however, that Miner's article ended with the idea that it was all a big misunderstanding and that all parties would get along if it were just cleared up. The question remains: Why won't Image Union air Turning a Corner, an award-winning documentary, in which women in Chicago who have lived lives that few people can imagine tell their stories? From the standpoint of form, it is shot and edited like all of Beyondmedia Education's work -- in a way that foregrounds the content, which is truly "out there," i.e. desirable to Image Union in the words of one spokesperson. From a content standpoint (I own a copy of the full-length movie and saw the short version that was to be aired on WTTW) it could hardly be more important to the public. It sensitively, tastefully, and sincerely reveals, in the literal sense of the word, what goes on in sex work in our city, a profession stigmatized like few--or no--others. What's disturbing about the movie are the stories the women tell, not visual imagery that could offend viewers. It is well researched and educative, providing statistical information that puts into objective perspective the women's narratives. Furthermore, sex work, or prostitution if one prefers, is a subject that though uncomfortable is an important part of the social analysis that we as citizens engage in as a nation. Those who malign sex workers (and often favor their criminalization) as immoral, divisive to marital union, and betrayers of "family values" ought to see this movie to understand something of the systemic mechanisms that entrap young women and perpetuate their involvement. They would also see wonderful examples of women who "turned a corner," got out of the profession and chose a healthier life path. Those who believe that there is absolutely nothing wrong with sex work would learn that its current semi-legal status victimizes the women all the more, while rewarding in a backwards way the pimps, johns, and policemen who look the other way. Why is it that we cannot talk about it? It is a subject difficult to discuss, regarded as dirty and vile in a prurient yet prudish society like ours. It challenges us to examine both values we individually hold and how our society works -- its laws and the people endowed with the authority to punish some, while extending impunity to others.
Perhaps that was the real reason WTTW believed it could not be aired: it indirectly accuses city officials and authorities of complicity in a corrupt and destructive system whose most immediate victims are women of color, the bottom of a totem pole whose existence we dread acknowledging, let alone that we recarve it everyday.
WTTW, get over your puritantism and show something that matters to us. Chicago Reporter, don't hide, report on this. Be true to your mission and expose what happened. If necessary, find another venue for Turning a Corner. Beyondmedia, keep up the excellent work and don't let this go. Michal Miner, keep digging and let us know how this plays out.
Jesse S Wheeler
Chicago, IL
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Silja Talvi at 6:23 PM on 12/14/2007
I'm a Senior Editor at the Chicago-based magazine, In These Times, and the author of Women Behind Bars: The Crisis Behind Women in the U.S. Prison System, published last month (Seal Press/Perseus).
While researching and interviewing for this book, I came across Salome Chasnoff's film, Turning a Corner. I was so inspired by the power of this intense, revealing film that I devoted a portion of my book to discussing several aspects of the film.
I would have all but assumed that a local documentary of this import would have been *celebrated* in its home town. To hear of this competition-turned-censorship-move isn't just disheartening, it's angering.
From what I've read, there's simply no justification for any of it. Air Turning a Corner, and celebrate what the filmmaker--and the women involved--have accomplished. These women's voices NEED to be heard.
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gaylon alcaraz at 6:53 AM on 12/18/2007
As a woman of color whose work involves the margainlized voices of other women of color, I'm disappointed (not surprised) by Channel 11's stance. The voices of these women need to be heard! Why won't the channel focus of the positve that has come from these women's lives and that they are stepping up and speaking for themselves. It wouldn't have anything to do with the fact that these very men are the contributors to the problem (porn, strip clubs, escort services)...now would it?
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Victor at 7:02 PM on 1/15/2008
This is being blown out of proportion. A producer of a public television channel made the decision that a documentary about prostitution, while addressing a legitimate social issue, was not suitable for WTTW viewers. Many of WTTW's viewers are children. Parents have come to know WTTW as a trustworthy supplement to their child's education. To say that the decision not to show Turning the Corner is misguided simply because prostitution is a "real-life problem" is ignoring the rights of parents. With the laundry list of items that can be placed under the title "harsh realities of life" (drug use, senseless violence, street gangs, etc.), parents have the right to determine when to introduce these issues to their child. As real as prostitution is, and as beautifully as the film may have addressed it, there are parents out there who don't want their kids learning about it, plain and simple. With this decision, WTTW has reinforced why parents continue to trust it as a healthy way to promote their child's education.
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Adam Bee at 7:53 PM on 2/19/2008
Who are these supposed parents who have kids staying up to watch PBS at midnight but don't want them to see prostitution?
Seems like a quite unlikely scenario, given the late night timeslot. Better rethink that avenue of rebuttal.
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The latest at 9:30 PM on 2/19/2008
Actually apparently it wasn't censorship. Latest news here:
http://blogs.chicagoreader.com/news-bites/2007/12/21/did-wttw-commit-censorship-or-something-less-sinis/
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