As the creator of popular documentaries for public television like Baseball and The Civil War, Ken Burns often seems like the face of documentary filmmaking at PBS.
So, when Burns faced journalists at a virtual press conference Wednesday, he was asked a probing question: Does he “take umbrage” at being considered an example of “white producer privilege” after more than 140 filmmakers signed an open letter to PBS citing him as an example of how the service unfairly highlights white creators?
“I didn’t take it personally at all,” said Burns, speaking during PBS’ portion of the Television Critics Association’s summer press tour, touting his upcoming four-part series on boxing champion Muhammad Ali . “We will take this on and we will figure out how to make it right and do a better job. I personally commit to that. … How could you possible take umbrage at the idea there could be more empowerment, there could be more representation, there could be more stories told?”
His response — saying, essentially, we do a good job, but we’ll work hard to do better — mirrors the reaction at the Public Broadcasting Service.
On Tuesday, PBS revealed $11 million in grants for diversity initiatives, including funding for mentoring programs, a series of short-form videos on science and technology issues featuring Black and Hispanic communicators and several new digital series featuring a diversity of creators. The service also hired a new senior vice president of diversity, equity and inclusion.
But at least one of the filmmakers who signed the open letter, released in March, remained skeptical — saying the initiatives announced so far don’t set specific goals for diversity levels or reveal detailed information about the diversity of major projects on PBS.
Citing data from Burns’ website, the open letter noted he has created about 211 hours of programming for PBS over 40 years, through an exclusive relationship with the service that will last until at least 2022.
A PBS spokesman countered by saying, over the past five years, PBS aired 58 hours of programming from Burns and 74 hours of projects by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., an African American scholar, director, executive producer and host of programs like The Black Church and Finding Your Roots.
Still, producer Grace Lee expressed concerns PBS hasn’t revealed the kind of data needed to judge its progress on systemic changes.
We asked PBS for transparency and accountability around the data, and these announcements sort of missed the point of the questions we posed.
Filmmaker Grace Lee
“We asked PBS for transparency and accountability around the data, and these announcements sort of missed the point of the questions we posed,” said Lee, a producer on the PBS documentary Asian Americans. She’s also a member of Beyond Inclusion, the group which drafted the open letter; a non-profit collective of non-fiction filmmakers and executives led by individuals who are Black Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC).
“We don’t see answers to how this will lead to structural change,” Lee added. “You can’t fix deep rooted structural concerns with a few months of thinking from the same folks who created the system in the first place.”
PBS president says she “did not fully appreciate” the problem
PBS President and CEO Paula Kerger said she convened a diversity council within the service to consider diversity, equity and inclusion issues last year, not long after the murder of George Floyd by a police officer kicked off a worldwide civil rights reckoning.
But the letter from Beyond Inclusion convinced Kerger that even mid-career filmmakers of color with some success felt disenfranchised. And the problems with inclusion reached beyond PBS to the producers and companies which funnel programming to the service.
