'Idol' Has Seen Enough of Haley

PBS will add interviews with Hispanic and Native American veterans of World War II during breaks or at the end of each hour of Ken Burns's 14 1/2 -hour documentary on the war, after Hispanic organizations complained that the documentary ignored their community's contributions.

Burns has agreed to hire a Latino producer to work on the additional material in time for the scheduled September debut of "The War."

Burns says the documentary was never intended as a comprehensive look at WWII. It does not include interviews with historians or academics. Instead, it zooms in on the wartime stories of people in four communities: Sacramento; Luverne, Minn.; Waterbury, Conn.; and Mobile, Ala.

"We made a pact with ourselves not to seek one group or type of race or ethnicity, and to focus on the experiences or the battles," Burns told The TV Column about the process of looking for veterans to interview on film.

More than 500 people were interviewed, of whom about 40 were filmed, five or six of whom are featured prominently in the project and the rest appearing to a lesser degree.

Burns says each episode starts with a title card that says, "The Second World War was fought in thousands of places, too many for any one accounting. 'The War' is simply an exploration of a handful of stories told by individuals in just four American towns."

Even so, when Hispanic groups learned several months ago that Burns had not interviewed Latino veterans for the project, they began complaining to PBS and demanding that the film be changed.

"Their initial line on this was that his stories were guided by the four geographic places . . . and he just threaded stories around them," Janet Murguia, president and CEO of the National Council of La Raza, told The TV Column. "And as a result, no Latinos or Hispanics were included, or Native Americans. And yet there were several stories with African Americans and Asian American veterans."

Murguia said at least 500,000 Hispanic soldiers fought in World War II -- "a disproportionate representation" -- adding, "We also had a disproportionate number of congressional Medal of Honor recipients to number of soldiers in service."

Yesterday, Hispanic groups heralded PBS's decision as a major win. Alex Nogales, president of the National Hispanic Media Coalition, said: "This was something the entire Latino community could get behind. It's noncontroversial -- another example of us being completely ignored."

Burns, Nogales said, "comes from the East Coast. His experience is not one with Latinos -- it is of the white/black experience. . . . That's been the problem with PBS as a whole. They don't think of it."

Instead of making Burns redo his film, PBS has agreed to create the additional material that focuses on stories of Latino and Native American veterans of the war.