Over the past several years PBS has aired several programs by Ken and Rick
Burns, I for one have found these to be seriously flawed.  Take BASEBALL  and
THE WEST for example. With NEW YORK , this has happened again.  I will not try
and summarize the criticisms, beginning with the NEW YORK TIMES review of
November, however, I feel as professional historians we should speak out
forcefully on what has happened.  Perhaps a letter writing campaign to PBS might
be the answer.  I do not want to appear as someone against free speech,
however, PBS can do a better job in  sponsoring programs by these
producer/directors  to address the criticisms from the profession.

John T. Reilly
Cindy Robins wrote:

> I was gearing up to respond as well.  I was quite disappointed, as I'd
> mentioned
> earlier.  David Voorhees quite accurately sums up my feelings about it.  One
> other thing
> I wil mention is that someone had mentioned that the non-historians liked it
> better and
> viewed it for the sake of learning/entertainment/etc.  What bothers me about
> that is
> that they walk away with a fairly skewed  view.  I'm quite proud of being of
> Dutch extraction and
> I really felt they were shortchanged in the documentary.  I actually stopped
>
> watching it, I think by the third day.
>
> Cindy Robinson
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: David Voorhees [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Thursday, December 02, 1999 5:22 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: NYC Documentary
>
> The first episode of Ric's Burns New York unfortunately set the tone for
> the rest of the series.  His stereotypical characterization of the Dutch
> was offensive at best, and downright crude and ignorant.  Had the same
> things been said about any other people, he would be facing a serious law
> suit. Indeed, the entire series pandered to a stereotyping of all New
> Yorkers (though not always so negatively) throughout the city's history
> into neat little packages, depending on today's popular political
> correctness. New Yorkers of all groups and classes have from the very
> beginning been an immensely complex people that defy easy catagorization.
> The first two-hundred years of the city's history was crammed into two
> hours and showed an almost absolute ignorance of the period and the
> scholarship on it. Popular, and incorrect myths, such as Lord Cornbury's
> cross-dressing, were presented as fact. Particularly insulting was the use
> of visual caricatures from Washington Irving's satiric works as if they
> were historical representations of Dutch New Amsterdam. Although Mr. Burns
> thesis seemed to be that New York City was the great democratic testing
> ground (though evidence is that class differences have always been huge in
> the city, and that the descendants of the city's 17th-century Anglo-Dutch
> oligarchy continue to exert a powerful influence today), virtually nothing
> positive seemed to have occurred in New York City with the exception of an
> insatiable "greed."  Yet, the very legal foundations for the freedoms we
> enjoy in America today were often first fought in New York City. There was
> no mention of the battles between Stuyvesant and the Lutherans, Jews, and
> Quakers in their appeals for religious toleration, which the minority
> religions won precisely because of the Dutch constitution and not because
> of the "greed" of the West India Company; the Leisler Rebellion was glossed
> over and the show's assessment of it as an uprising against the English
> rather than as a part of England's Glorious Revolution was totally
> incorrect and its impact on the city's development should have been futher
> explored; there was no mention of the John Peter Zenger trial, which
> established freedom of the press.  And one could go on and on.  Indeed,
> many of the institutions which continue to shape New York today, such as
> New York Hospital, Columbia University, etc., had their formation in this
> period, yet were barely touched at all.  Moreover, no colonial city has a
> greater amount of surviving contemporary visual materials from which to
> draw, which Mr. Burns seemed particularly ignorant of.  His use of the 1730
> Carthwian view of the city with an American flag pasted on it to represent
> the city after the Revolution is but one silly example.
>
> One can appreciate that only so much can be covered in brief program space,
> and that selectivity in putting together the presentation is always going
> to offend someone who would like their particular interest receive fuller
> coverage.  But to mislead the public with stereotypes is a more serious
> problem that this program suffered from.