NOTE TO EDITOR – Only two days after CNN’s Moneyline Newshour broadcast a story on the growing Microsoft Encarta-Armenian Genocide controversy, the nationally syndicated “Democracy Now” radio show today devoted a half-hour to the Turkish government’s failed attempts to pressure the software giant to revise sections of their popular Encarta on-line encyclopedia to deny the Armenian Genocide.

The Democracy Now segment, co-hosted by Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez, featured interviews with: Gary Alt, Editor in Chief of Encarta; Ronald Suny, Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago; and Peter Balakian, author of the memoir Black Dog of Fate and Professor of the Humanities at Colgate University in New York.

To listen to the August 23rd program on the internet, go to www.democracynow.org. The main page includes a summary of the Microsoft-Armenian Genocide controversy and provides a link to hear the segment on RealAudio. The program’s summary reads as follows:

MICROSOFT ATTEMPTS TO WRITE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE OUT OF HISTORY BOOKS

The Microsoft Corporation is under fire because its Encarta encyclopedia calls the death of at least 600,000 Armenians during the last days of the Ottoman Empire the first genocide of the 20th Century. After the Turkish government objected, Microsoft reportedly told some of its authors to consider the so-called other side of the story.

The August 24th program will include a continuing discussion of the Armenian case and the Pontian and Assyrian genocides. Guests will include Ronald Suny and Peter Balakian, and Thea Halo, author of “Not Even My Name” – a powerful account of a young Greek girl’s true story of genocide and survival.

To listen to the August 24th program, please refer to http://www.democracynow.org/stations.html for a full listing of broadcast stations and times in your area. A partial listing is provided below. The program will likely be archived on the http://www.democracynow.org site for internet listeners.

The Encarta story, which was first broken in the August 18th Chronicle of Higher Education, was
subsequently covered in the August 21st edition of CNN’s Moneyline Newshour. The ANCA, which learned of the issue through an advance copy of the Chronicle, circulated an action alert on August 15th calling on individuals and organizations to thank the Chronicle for breaking this story and encouraging Encarta to resist pressure to compromise its academic integrity under political or financial pressure.

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