Inför förhandsvisningen av dokumentärfilmen Bananas!* i riksdagen i slutet på förra veckan skickade fruktjätten [[Dole]] ett brev ställt till de båda riksdagsledmöterna [[Mats Johansson]] och [[Luciano Astudillo]], som var de som bjudit in [[Fredrik Gertten]] att visa sin film. Makthavare.se publicerar här i sin helhet brevet som syftade till att stoppa visningen.
Bananas!* is a False, Defamatory And Irresponsible Film
Dole is a strong beliver in freedom of speech, but the filmmakers acted irresponsibly when they released a knowingly fase film. Under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, the free speech rights entail a duty to act responsibly and avoid making knowingly false statements. As the great scholar Alexander Bickel once said, the First Amendement requires those who invoke it to exercise ”self-discipline and self-restraint” to avoid disseminating false information. But the Bananas!* filmmakers abdicated any sense of responsibility, self-restraint, or self-discipline when they released this film despite knowing its entire premise has been ruled to be a fraud on Dole and California’s courts. As the United States Supreme Court has ruled, ”[T]here is no constitutional value in false statement of fact.”
From start to finish, Bananas!* knowingly promotes a false story that was adjucated a fraud on Dole and on Californias courts before the film was ever screened. Before screening the film, they knew that the film is filled with factual falsehoods. They knew that a higly respected California judge – the very same judge who had presided over the Tellez trial that is the centerpiece of Bananas!* – had ruled that the Tellez trial was part of a ”heinous” conspirazy orchestrated by the film’s ”star,” attoerney Juan Dominquez, to defraud Dole and the U.S.s courts. They knew that the judge had found that this pervasive fraud had ”contaminated each and every one of the [Tellez] plaintiffs” and that Tellez ”was built on somebodys’s imagination, a case that was put togheter with smoke an dmirrors.” They knew that the judge had ”apologize[d] to all the jurors who had to sit through that case and make decision based on nothing but the imagination of somebody, dreamed up in a back room of some law office in [Nicaragua].”
The Bananas!* filmmakers left Dole no choice but to bring a lawsuti to protect the reputation of the company and its 75,000 employees. The filmmaker admittedly never even contacted Dole before completing the film. But when Dole learned of the film, it repeatedly brought this fraud – and much, much more – to the filmmakers attention. Sensitive to free speech and artistic expression concerns, Dole implored them not to screen the film without making substantial changes to take account of the judge’s ruling and detailed findings and other facts showing the truth. But the filmmakers ignored the truth and screened this blatantly false film anyway. This is a textbook case of ”actual malice” – knowingly false and reckless speech that is not protected by the First Amendement.
Objecitve observers have recognized the film’s deep flaws. The Editor of the Los Angeles Business Journal has unequivocally stated that ”The right thing would have been to pull back the movie…. But since Gertten has chose not to do the right thing, I’m left to conclude that he is an irresponsible filmmaker who’s presented us with a skewed movie based on his own biases. And a hypocrite too.” A film critic observed, ”[t]his film in its current form is too compromised for any kind of thetrical and TV distribution.” (Hollywood Reporter) The American University’s Center for Social Media issued a recent report chronicling intensified concenrs about unethical conduct in documentary filmmaking and has identified Bananas!* as an example of a film that has ”recently raised ethics questions.” And the Los Angeles Film Festival declared, ”there seems to be little question that the version of reality that the film portrays does not match the reality that emerged in the courtroom.”
Gertten is no defender of free speech. In fact, he has now filed a baseless counterclaim against Dole for exercising its free speech right to criticize the false movie.
Fotnot: Med brevet följde ett kort introduktionsbrev undertecknat av [[Michael Carter]], Executive Vice President på Dole.
