Hat-tip to reader LC to pointing me to Reuters’ news that Federal Communications Commissioner Michael Copps has asked FCC chairman Kevin Martin to open an inquiry into Huntsville, Alabama, CBS-affiliate WHNT’s blackout during 60 Minutes‘s report on the Siegelman case and Karl Rove nine days ago.
The blackout of the segment in Huntsville prompted an editorial in The New York Times the following week that raised comparisons between the WHNT incident and systematic efforts by a Mississippi TV station to suppress information about the civil rights movement during the 1960s.
“The FCC now needs to find out if something analogous is going on here,” Copps said at a luncheon with media watchdog groups. “Was this an attempt to suppress information on the public airwaves, or was it really just a technical problem?” …
Copps said on Monday the FCC should move quickly to “determine the facts” surrounding the incident.
“If the decision was intentional, who made the decision and why? The FCC needs to get to the bottom of this,” Copps said.
Since the Commission is currently made up of Martin and two other Republicans and Copps and one other Democrat, I’m not holding my breath. But the story has a few interesting bits anyway.
One is the plaint of WHNT news director Denise Vickers in an online posting that she’s been “bombarded” with complaints and accusations that the station had sabotaged the broadcast for political reasons. “But I assure everyone that the notion is patently false,” she wrote. “Who would invite such a public relations nightmare on themselves??” She also said that WHNT requested and received permission from CBS to re-air the segment twice in the following days.
Another is that, though we knew that the Bass family’s Oak Hill Capital Partners owns WHNT, not until now have I read that Oak Hill bought it and eight other stations from The New York Times Co. only last year. I will call it a little harder to imagine this blackout’s having occurred under NYT ownership. Just sayin’.
Did you know that WHNT-TV19 was less than a year ago owned by The NEW YORK TIMES? The company that owns the station now bought it from the NYT’s. Do you not find it ironic that the NYT’s is doing a hit piece on a station it owned less than a year ago? Would they have done this piece on this station if it still owned it? I doubt it very seriously. Also did you know that the general manager of WHNT-TV19, Stan Pylant, is a registered Democrat and he became the station manager less than 3 months ago? These stories about a conspiracy are a bunch of none-sense. This is just another reason to waste tax payer dollars. Do we not have better things to spend our hard earned money on in this country?