This is reported by the International Documentary Association(IDA) in its magazine"Documentary" in an article by Anthony Kaufman entitled '"C" for Censorship: PBS cuts documentary "Art Spiegelman" and other dubious acts by the questionable broadcaster'.
US public television decided to censor part of the documentary Art Spiegelman: Disaster Is My Muse (2024) before airing it on its network.
US public broadcaster Public Broadcasting Service(PBS) reported that they had cut a 90-second clip from the documentary before it aired on American Masters in which Art Spiegelman comments on a series of anti-Trump cartoons in which he describes the president as "smug and ugly mug" and depicts his hairstyle as something that looks like shit with flies in it. One of the images reads"you can't mask the toxic force of fascism".
According to the filmmakers, the decision was imposed by national PBS programming executives and accepted by the management of WNET, which is one of the largest of PBS's network of 350 member stations and produces American Masters.
In a response from a WNET group spokesperson to Documentary, he justifies the edit"because it was no longer in the current context. The change was made to maintain the integrity and appropriateness of the content for broadcast at this time".
It seems to me to be one of the most over-the-top, cynical and insulting justifications I have ever read. Now the censor, in addition to amputating a work, is giving lessons in "integrity" to its authors.
Part of the deleted scene | @artspegelmandoc
Interestingly, this piece, dated 2016, is the only known piece in which Spiegelman draws Donald Trump and was created by Art for the publication of Womans March. As can be read in one of these vignettes, Spiegelman states that he has "resisted drawing his ugly face".
The filmmakers, directors Molly Bernstein and Philip Dolin, who produced the documentary along with Sam Jinishian and Alicia Sams, had a choice. According to Sams, they could choose to buy back the licensing deal or accept PBS's decision and go ahead with the broadcast. "We were told that the documentary still had an anti-fascist message, and that the audience could make up their own minds," he explains. "The irony of censoring someone who defends free speech may have escaped PBS, but it didn't escape us.
For Documentary, the deleted sequence - part of which can be seen in this Instagram post - may be short, but it explicitly links the anti-fascist themes of the documentary and Spiegelman's seminal graphic novel Maus to a timely Trumpian critique.
As Spiegelman scholar Hillary Chute says in the festival cut of the documentary: "In this Trump and post-Trump moment, (Spiegelman) recognised how useful Maus was as a text for people who are explicitly reacting against fascism and fighting against it".
In addition to cutting off discussion of the documentary's political vignettes, the PBS version also removed Chute's words "at this time Trump and post-Trump", altering the meaning of his comments and removing the filmmakers' original context.
A PBS spokesperson told Documentary: "We at PBS stand by our editorial decisions and affirm that they have nothing to do with responding to political threats. We have not changed our long-standing editorial guidelines or practices this year.
The Documentary magazine article also mentions other cases in which PBS appears to obey in advance and/or be intimidated by the Trump administration and its congressional cronies.
Related:
There Is No Dignity in Capitulation | Atlantic
