From Skeptic vol. 2, no. 3, 1994, pp. 34-37.
The following article is copyright © 1994 by the Skeptics Society,
P.O. Box 338, Altadena, CA 91001, (626) 794-3119. Permission
has been granted for noncommercial electronic circulation of this
article in its entirety, including this notice.
{Note: This article first appeared in the September issue of
The REALL News, the official newsletter of the Rational
Examination Association of Lincoln Land, before George
Jammal had talked to anybody about the hoax. It has been
updated for this publication.}
THE INCREDIBLE MYSTERIES OF SUN PICTURES
By David Bloomberg
Over the past year, CBS has shown several specials produced by
Sun International Pictures, Inc. These shows have all dealt with the
Bible in one way or another and have been heavily biased towards the
pro-literalism, pro-creationism side. Skeptics are included for
short segments that believers then seemingly tear apart, along with
acting clips supporting the stories as they appear in the Bible.
There have been a number of reports questioning the veracity of these
previous shows, but new information warrants another, much closer,
look at Sun and their methods.
As reported in earlier articles, Time magazine and the
Associated Press (AP) ran stories claiming that George Jammal, one of
the claimants who appeared on Sun's "The Incredible Discovery of
Noah's Ark," actually fabricated the entire story to expose Sun's
shoddy research. This he did with the help of Dr. Gerald Larue, a
professor emeritus of biblical history and archaeology at the
University of Southern California and Skeptics Society advisor, who
had appeared in an earlier Sun production.
Jammal's story, as told on the Sun show, was that he and a
companion had gone to Mt. Ararat to search for the Ark. According to
the story, they found it and took a number of pictures, but Jammal's
companion was killed and all of the photos were lost. Jammal had one
bit of evidence to show for his trip--a piece of wood that supposedly
came from the Ark. This entire story has now been shown to be false.
However, when Larue first described the hoax to Time and
others, Jammal did not immediately address the issue. During a
telephone interview before he began discussing the issue publicly, he
said that, under his lawyer's advice, he had no comment at the time.
According to Skeptics Society Director Michael Shermer and Dr. Larue,
Jammal was not saying anything because he was afraid of getting sued
by Sun and/or CBS. In a phone interview at that time, Sun's David
Balsiger was asked what would happen if Jammal came out and admitted
that the story was fabricated. Balsiger said that there may be legal
implications to hoaxing a network. He also said, "CBS attorneys were
trying to speak to Dr. Larue and he would not get back to them." To
this day, Larue says he has never been contacted by CBS or their
attorneys. Since that time, Jammal did face the issue at the Freedom
From Religion Foundation (FFRF) convention on October 23, and now
discusses it freely. Balsiger said, in a recent telephone interview,
that there are no plans for Sun or himself to take legal action
against Jammal or Larue, as it would probably be "impractical" (Jammal
has no money) and the press might construe it as being an attack by
CBS behind the scenes.
But Sun's actions before Jammal discussed the hoax deserve some
attention. After the Time article, Sun fired back with a six-page
response (see Skeptic Vol. 2 #2) while CBS remained mostly silent.
The Sun response sought to address four issues: Who is making the
claim that Jammal fabricated his account? Did Sun perform due
diligence in its research of the Jammal account? Was the piece of
wood alleged to have come from the Ark authentic? Is Mr. Jammal's
account still factual?
In answer to the first question, the response talked about Dr.
Larue. They claimed the following: "Dr. LaRue [sic] is probably
conducting some type of a vindictive campaign against Sun." They went
on to say, "Since 1982, Dr. LaRue has served as chairman of the
Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion, a group
dedicated to refuting Bible claims; was the consulting editor
(1987-1989) and Emeritus President of the National Hemlock Society, a
euthanasia advocacy organization; and is the senior editor of Free
Inquiry, a humanist magazine published by the U.S. Council for
Democratic and Secular Humanism, another group with goals of removing
religion from society and Bible oriented programs from public
broadcast."
But what did this have to do with whether or not Larue coached
Jammal, or whether the story, as printed by Time, was true?
Nothing, but apparently Sun was trying to imply that because Larue is
a secular humanist and is upset at Sun, his claims of having aided
Jammal are automatically false. Rather than trying to defend against
his claims or find out the truth behind them, Sun began by attacking
the man making those claims, the classic ad hominem attack.
The Sun response then went on to defend their research of
Jammal's story. They said they interviewed Jammal, looking for flaws
and inconsistencies in the story, and then gave the interview tapes to
a psychiatrist, Dr. Paul Meier, who served as the field physician on
an earlier Noah's Ark expedition. Meier told Sun's Chief Researcher,
David Balsiger, that he found the accounts "totally believable."
Meier recorded an interview that was cut from the show, in which
he said of Jammal, "we would call him an 'obsessive-compulsive with
histrionic features.' What this really means is that he's a
perfectionist performer." Later in the interview, he says that Jammal
wept while discussing his alleged companion who had been killed by a
rock slide. Meier uses this show of emotion as evidence to support
the reality of the story. But earlier, he had already admitted that
Jammal is a "perfectionist performer"! He knew Jammal was an actor,
but apparently ignored the possibility that Jammal was acting.
In that interview, Meier also admitted that he did not know
Jammal personally and has only studied him from the tapes. So, the
evidence Sun is using to show their "diligence" is a psychiatrist who
is certainly not unbiased, working from tapes of an interview done
with an actor, giving testimony that it is accurate. This is what Sun
considers research?
In addition to the psychiatrist, Sun claims they analyzed a map
Jammal gave them showing expedition routes. According to Sun, "it
could not have been drawn by anyone who did not have experience with
the mountain." Sun does not, however, explain why this is so. It has
now been shown, through Jammal's admission of the hoax, that this
obviously is not so. The third portion of the response dealt with the
piece of wood Jammal showed, claiming it was a piece of the Ark. Sun
began by bluntly admitting that they did not know whether or not it is
real. However, contradictions then appeared in their response. They
said, "It has not been the practice of Sun or other production
companies to spend money or time testing and documenting artifacts
shown on the air by interviewees." That sounds fine, until it is
compared with Balsiger's comments in the AP article. He said, "We
couldn't test the wood in time for our deadline." On one hand, Sun
claimed it is not their practice to test such things, on the other,
they claimed they didn't have time to test it. It appears that
somebody needed to get their story straight.
The remainder of that section defended Sun's refusal to test such
things by saying their shows are "entertainment" and that they would
have been creating news if they had run the tests. This brings up the
question of why, through the psychiatrist and the map, they tested
Jammal at all. Where does Sun draw the line? How much research is
too much?
The final section dealt with the question that sums it all up,
"Is Mr. Jammal's expedition account of seeing the Ark still factual?"
Sun said they still stood by the account as being accurate, even in
the face of the evidence given by Larue. "Our position is not
expected to change unless there is an admission by Mr. Jammal of an
elaborate hoax, and how he managed to execute such a clever hoax to
convince a professional psychiatrist and several experienced
Ark-Ararat explorers that he was telling the truth...or until third
party collaborating evidence can substantiate Dr. LaRue's account of
the hoax."
As mentioned earlier, Jammal did exactly that. And Sun found
that they had to change tactics. Since it was now obvious that Jammal
perpetrated the hoax, they removed virtually all of their attack on
Larue from their new "response", even though it had been their number
one defense originally. Instead, they switched gears and claimed that
no amount of research could have detected Jammal's hoax, since it was
so well-executed. Elsewhere in this issue, James Lippard has made it
clear that the hoax was not, in fact, all that well executed, and
minimal research should have told them that the story was untrue (such
as smelling the wood, which reeked of teriyaki sauce!). And they still
seem to miss the point that simply testing the wood would, in fact,
have given them the information they needed to determine that it was a
hoax. Also, they are again trying to play both sides of the field by,
on one hand, claiming that no amount of research could have detected
the hoax, and, on the other hand, saying that they make entertainment
shows and don't do research.
Jammal's hoax served to bring out into the open questions
regarding Sun's methodology in writing and producing these shows. For
example, as the Time article stated, Larue does believe that he was
set up as a straw man by Sun. In a telephone interview, Larue said
that when Sun came to him for their piece on the fall of the walls of
Jericho, they brought a statement and asked him to read it. He said
it wasn't exactly the statement he would have made, but it was mostly
in accord with his views. He went on to say, "I read this and was
given the opportunity to expound on why I didn't believe it was a
genuine historical happening." However, all of that was cut out, and
all that was left in when the show aired was the original statement
that Sun had brought to him. This was followed, according to Larue, by
Dr. Bryant Wood, who went on to give a lengthy discussion of his
point, which countered Larue's and favored the Biblical interpretation
to which all three of Sun's recent shows have been slanted.
Farrell Till, editor of The Skeptical Review, feels the same way
about his own appearance on "Ancient Secrets of the Bible, Part II."
Sun came to Till with a script, the same way they came to Larue. Till
was told he could change it, and he did so, with the understanding
that his changes would remain in the show. Instead, his time was cut
down to very little, mostly representing that which had been
originally scripted, and he was dropped altogether from one scene,
replaced by Carol Dickinson, a professor of psychology who simply read
the script.
In the interview before Jammal's FFRF speech, Sun's Balsiger
discussed the interviews. "Being entertainment, it's a scripted
show," he said. "But when it comes to the experts, they have the
liberty and the rights to [put] what they're saying any way they want,
the only requirements being that they cannot be excessive on time,
make [their] point fairly quickly, and [they] can't go off on a
tangent where [they're] going to get five minutes, because it doesn't
happen. Most of our experts always changed something in the script."
He said they try to base the script on what they think the expert will
say, based on research that they've done, but they don't hold them to
it.
In the case of Farrell Till, Balsiger said, "he had three scenes
and wrote a better argument for all three scenes and that's the way we
shot it." But, he said, "even though we shoot an interviewee doesn't
guarantee it's going to get in the show, it doesn't guarantee that
their piece may not be shortened, it doesn't guarantee that it won't
be edited in some way."
Why is the editing necessary? Again according to Balsiger, "the
show was over 2 hours too long." Continuing:
We haven't done a show yet that hasn't been at least an
hour [too] long. What happens is that we attempt to
keep as many interviewees in as possible, [so] we have
to shorten their pieces. Maybe they were speaking for
a minute, they get shortened to 30 seconds. A sentence
or two is cut off the end or somewhere, not to change
their point of view or anything, but to let them make
the longest point they are making in a shorter period
of time. I'm not sure exactly what happened in
[Till's] case. It may not have been the duration of
what the interview was. We also have some other
requirements that we attempt to meet in each show:
What is our ratio of women in each show? Also, does a
person make more than two appearances? He could have
been dropped on his third appearance because he already
had two appearances and another factor may have been
that ... we were way down on our females. There's a lot
of factors that go into these shows, and to the viewer
it looks like we're rigging something.
Indeed it does. For example, if they only allow a person in
twice, why shoot three scenes with him and not tell him beforehand
that one would probably be cut? If they base the script on their
research of a particular person's views, why did the psychology
professor who replaced Till read the exact remarks that Sun presented
Till? Did their research indicate that she had the exact same views
as he, and would express them in exactly the same way? Why were both
scenes with Till and Larue cut down such that essentially only the
original statements, scripted by Sun, were left, even though Balsiger
admitted that Till came up with better arguments? Why doesn't Sun ask
the interviewees ahead of time which of their arguments should be cut
first, if necessary? Balsiger said that they have never done a show
that hasn't been too long, so shouldn't they think about editing ahead
of time? Why give the interviewees the impression that most or all of
what they say will be in the show when it simply doesn't happen? Sun
needs to answer all of these questions about their procedures if they
expect viewers to stop wondering if they are "rigging something."
Jammal has never been to Mt. Ararat. He was coached by Larue on
what to say to help back up his story, and aided by a copy of his
original interview with ICR given to him by that organization. Larue
said, "Jammal's part was designed to expose the hoax that Sun
International was pulling on the people. We felt that the whole CBS
program was a hoax." He went on to say, "It talks about the discovery
of Noah's Ark. That's a lie. They never discovered Noah's Ark." He
said that calling it "The Search For Noah's Ark" or something similar
would have been much more honest. Larue was very blunt in describing
his views. "There was no discovery. The title is a lie. The idea
that it was a documentary is a lie. The third lie is that they are
now explaining it as entertainment only. That was never given clearly
in the text."
In fact, the host of the Noah's Ark show, Darren McGavin, stated at
the beginning that this was a "non-religious, scientific
investigation." The average viewer would probably think of it,
therefore, as a documentary, not an entertainment show. But Balsiger
said all of Sun's shows are contracted under the entertainment
division; they are not news, nor documentary. He calls them reality
TV shows and says they are "actually not allowed to create news. I
personally have gotten in trouble over this issue in the past. Being
a researcher, it is my inclination to check this or check that, but on
an entertainment type show, we are not mandated, and matter of fact we
[cannot] make news or create news. On an entertainment show, we are
actually forbidden from doing that and instructed not to do that. I
did it on another occasion and when it was discovered that I had
tested an artifact, [which] proved what the interviewee was trying to
make, it ended up getting not used, period."
When asked about the narrator calling it a "scientific
investigation," Balsiger said it "may be splitting hairs on something
that was said by the host, but it should have been pretty clear that
our show was an entertainment." Asked how this should have been
clear, he indicated that it should have been obvious from the context.
He said that news shows and documentaries are produced by the network
news side of the network, while this was not. He added, "We've only
done entertainment shows over the years. Reality TV shows are
entertainment. Always have been, always will be." Balsiger said that
he considers shows such as "Unsolved Mysteries" to also be reality TV
shows. However, "Unsolved Mysteries" makes a point of telling the
audience before every airing of an episode that it is not a news
broadcast. When this was pointed out to Balsiger in a more recent
interview, he said that, in hindsight, it would have been a good idea
to have such a disclaimer, but nobody at CBS or Sun thought of it. If
he had it to do over again, he said he would add a disclaimer to every
show of this type.
Before Jammal's speech to the FFRF, Balsiger said CBS planned to
air more "reality TV" from Sun. Even though the AP story said that
CBS claimed they had no other Sun programs scheduled, Balsiger said
that they had a show, "Ancient Mysteries of the World," planned to air
on CBS in November, and one on UFOs that was supposed to air in
December. He said there were others under development with CBS. Why
didn't CBS mention these in the AP story? Well, it seems that the
answer may be that CBS was, in fact, wising up. A letter from
Balsiger, dated November 12, 1993 (addressed: To Whom It May Concern),
said that CBS has cancelled all of the Sun shows in production. In
addition, the letter states that Balsiger believes a weekly show on
UFOs which Sun had planned for cable may be canceled due to the bad
publicity. In the recent interview, Balsiger said that Sun has laid
off much of its staff, including himself, as a result of the expos,
and he does not expect to work for them again. He added that it is
very unlikely that Sun will do any projects for network TV for at
least two to three years, due to the "tremendous damage" caused by the
bad publicity, and that he will probably be restricted in the kind of
work that he can do. He said it is probable that he will only be able
to work with non-network broadcast, such as feature films, and that he
has a possible offer to work on a project for the public school
market.
Have Sun and Balsiger learned anything from the hoax? Balsiger
said that Sun's research practices did "tighten up" some after the
hoax was initially revealed. "Extra measures," such as checking the
credibility of their interviewees with third parties, and looking at
previous publications by those interviewees, were used in the program
they were preparing for CBS at the time. However, he said they still
would not test "artifacts," and the extra measures got to the point
that it "wasn't worth doing these kinds of shows any more." With the
possibility of working on a project for the public schools, what kind
of research will he be doing now, since he seems exasperated by even
those few measures instituted by Sun in the wake of the Ark fiasco?
Even with the cancellations and layoffs, it seems that there are
a number of unanswered questions regarding Sun and CBS. L.A. Times
TV critic Howard Rosenberg called for an explanation from CBS (July 7,
1993), but has gotten none. He called their stance an "incredible
double standard regarding truth in news and entertainment
programming." Perhaps the cancellation of future Sun productions is
CBS's unspoken response.
So where are the answers? Jammal has admitted to having made up
the story; will Sun and CBS retract the story publicly and admit that
they need overhaul their research procedures? Or are the few steps
taken by Sun the extent of such an overhaul, while they continue to
say that, as "entertainment," they don't need to do any research?
The line between news and entertainment is getting dangerously
blurred. When a narrator calls a show a "scientific investigation"
but the viewer is expected to somehow realize that it is just
"entertainment," that line has been removed altogether.