Lipstadt's Letter to N.Y. Times re C-SPAN

March 25, 2005

C-Span's Coverage of a Book About the Holocaust
To the Editor:

Re "C-Span Plan to Cover Talk on Holocaust Is Under Fire" (news article, March 18):

C-Span's statement that it was prevented from covering my new book, "History on Trial," because "Professor Lipstadt closed her book discussions to our cameras," is disingenuous. I told C-Span that I would welcome coverage, but not if my talk was juxtaposed with one by David Irving, a man British courts found to be a Holocaust denier.

C-Span, in the name of "balance," was trying to force me into a debate with a man whose treatment of the history of the Holocaust and Dresden was described by a British judge with these words: "perverts," "distorts," "misleading," "unjustified," "travesty" and "unreal."

Debating deniers is like debating flat-earth theorists. How can one debate someone, on any topic, who deliberately lies and falsifies history?

I would be delighted to appear on C-Span, but not as part of a debate that is no debate.

I note also that C-Span was prepared, until it was hit with a wave of criticism, to put him on, even if I refused. Where's the balance in that?

Deborah E. Lipstadt
Atlanta, March 20, 2005
The writer is a professor of modern Jewish and Holocaust studies at Emory University.