NBC Perpetuating Ira Einhorn's Lies About Earth Day

May 4, 1999

John Katzman, Producer
NBC "Unicorn" Miniseries
800 Stewart Street - Second Floor
Santa Monica, CA 90404

Subject: NBC "Unicorn" Miniseries, which Knowingly Perpetuates Lie
That Accused Murderer, Ira Einhorn, Was Founder of Earth Day

Dear Mr. Katzman:

To our amazement, we learned a few days ago that NBC was running promotional spots about the Ira Einhorn "Unicorn" miniseriers which you produced and which is apparently going to be aired on May 8th or 9th which perpetuate the fiction that Einhorn was the "founder" or "organizer" of the first Earth Day. You know better.

How can you allow these blatantly false promos, and purposely misleading segments of the miniseries, to be aired when you have seen extensive documentation which repudiates the Einhorn Earth Day myth? Have you simply decided to ignore all of the information that members of the Earth Week Committee have provided you?

The following is a partial list of materials which we have given you which contradict this fiction:

(1) Six months ago, after we heard that you were working on a miniseries, we sent you a letter from nine members of the original Earth Week Committee of Philadelphia -- who actually did organize the first Earth Day there -- which repudiates the false assertion that Einhorn was an organizer or founder of Earth Day. This can also be found on the internet. To see it, click here.

(2) You also saw the shorter version of that letter that was featured on the editorial page of the Philadelphia Inquirer last fall. (An internet copy can be found here.)

(3) We sent you the memo to the press about Einhorn and Earth Day from Meg Wakeman, the sister of Holly Maddux, the woman Einhorn is accused of having murdered. (An internet copy is here.)

(4) We sent you a copy of the lengthy and detailed letter that we sent in 1997 toTime magazine and Stephen Levy of Newsweek on this subject. For an internet copy click here.

(5) You have seen the short version of that letter which Time Magazine published. The internet copy is here, and finally,

(6) Perhaps most surprisingly, you seem to have completely ignored the videotape that we sent you, which was referenced in the November 28, 1999 letter to you (internet copy here). The videotape was a copy of the one hour Cronkite CBS News Special Report on Earth Day that aired on April 22, 1970. This documentary was developed by CBS producer Bernard Birnbaum and a dozen CBS correspondents and research staff over a several month period thirty years ago. It makes no mention of Einhorn, but it includes extensive coverage of Earth Day in Philadelphia and across the U.S. You also received a copy of a cover memo transmitting this videotape to you and Sophia Faskianos of NBC Dateline (you can see an internet copy here ).

That you and NBC would continue to perpetuate this myth in spite of having received so much evidence that repudiates it suggests that you are doing so simply because the story has more "sizzle" if Einhorn is presented as a fallen 60’s idealist instead of as the con-man and imposter he has always been. Your "miniseries," thinly masked as a "fictionalized account", reflects badly on the NBC network itself and even on the NBC news organization because the Einhorn miniseries cannot help but resonate with the ongoing Einhorn news story that continues to unfold on the evening news and Dateline while Einhorn's lawyers attempt to appeal his extradition to Philadelphia to be tried for the Holly Maddux murder. Your story demeans former U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson, the man who was the actual founder of Earth Day. It demeans all of those who organized the first Earth Day in Philadelphia in 1970. And it demeans and will surely dishearten the hundreds of thousands of ordinary people who continue to celebrate Earth Day across the country, many of whom are too young to have known what really happened thirty years ago and will almost certainly believe the myth you are perpetuating . . . simply because they saw it on television.

Very truly yours,

Earth Week Committee of Phildelphia

Edward W. Furia / Austan Librach
1970 Executive Director / 1970 Chairman

cc:

Hon. Gaylord Nelson
Stephen Brill, Brill’s Content
Tom Brokaw, NBC News
Sophia Faskianos, NBC Dateline
Bernard Birnbaum, CBS Special Reports
Meg Wakeman
NBC Miniseries Division, Burbank CA:
Debbie Teicher, Jeffrey Jamieson, Anne Rohinsky, Barry Cherin

For more information contact Ed Furia in Seattle, Wa. at 425 688 1216 or Austan Librach in Austin, Tx at 512 451 7171
E-mail to edfdad@aol.com
or austanl@aol.com