Siegelman blackout
Feb 25th, 2008 at 10:46 am by Dr. S
Note: Updated to include embedded video.
[Crossposted at Redsoxville.]
It appears that 60 Minutes’ highly anticipated story on the persecution prosecution of Don Siegelman, the former Democratic governor of Alabama, continues to be highly anticipated in many parts of Alabama because local broadcasters there blocked the story, airing nothing but a black screen during the segment.
People from Northern Alabama and Mobile - very southeast - are letting me know that the show was blocked - black screen - during the Siegelman segment of 60 Minutes ONLY.
WHNT, channel 19, the CBS affiliate in Huntsville, claims it was a problem with a receiver. Seems rather convenient that it failed during an story that examined White House ties to the prosecution of a former Democratic governor of a red state, and that the problem was fixed in time for the rest of “60 Minutes” to air, huh? WHNT said it was going to air the segment during the 10 p.m. news broadcast and included a link on its site where people can watch the segment. Fine, but let’s not pretend that airing the segment after 10 p.m. on Sunday night and setting up an obstacle like making people go online to the WHNT Web site and find and click through a link means the same number of people will see the segment as would have if the station had simply aired the segment shortly after 7 p.m.
All this certainly lends credence to Karl Rove’s off-camera denials made through his attorney in the story, huh?
Another problem with the bad receiver explanation is that CBS says it isn’t true.
The broadcaster is Channel 19 WHNT, which serves Northern Alabama and Southern Tennessee. This station was noteworthy for its hostility to Siegelman and support for his Republican adversary. The station ran a trailer stating “We apologize that you missed the first segment of 60 Minutes tonight featuring ‘The Prosecution of Don Siegelman.’ It was a techincal problem with CBS out of New York.” I contacted CBS News in New York and was told that “there is no delicate way to put this: the WHNT claim is not true. There were no transmission difficulties. The problems were peculiar to Channel 19, which had the signal and had functioning transmitters.” I was told that the decision to blacken screens across Northern Alabama “could only have been an editorial call.” Channel 19 is owned by Oak Hill Capital Partners, who can be contacted through Rhonda Barnat, 212-371-5999 or rb@abmac.com. Oak Hill Partners represents interests of the Bass family, which contribute heavily to the Republican Party.
Lest you think this is an isolated incident, search Google News for mention of the Siegelman story not airing in Alabama during the “60 Minutes” broadcast. No MSM outlets have anything on it. All the hits are blogs. And people wonder why blogs are gaining in popularity and “mainstream” news outlets are losing. It just might have something to do with MSM outlets being beholden to their corporate ownership and other deep pockets.
Fortunately, I am not beholden to the Bass family. Those of you who were held hostage by these fascists can view the segment above. There’s something to be said for independence.
fas·cism (f_sh’_z’_m) n. A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism.
Just a reminder.
UPDATE: I guess American-style democracy has reached Pakistan after all.
Fascism is an extreme right-wing ideology which embraces nationalism as the transcendent value of society. The rise of Fascism relies upon the manipulation of populist sentiment in times of national crisis. Based on fundamentalist revolutionary ideas, Fascism defines itself through intense xenophobia, militarism, and supremacist ideals. Although secular in nature, Fascism’s emphasis on mythic beliefs such as divine mandates, racial imperatives, and violent struggle places highly concentrated power in the hands of a self-selected elite from whom all authority flows to lesser elites, such as law enforcement, intellectuals, and the media.
Fascism would be more accurately named Corporatism, for it is th wedding of The Corporation and The State.
Il Duce Benito Mussolini
“60 Minutes Done A Great Job”
Bush’s elete group of corrupt GOP’ers are scared to death that Don Siegelman may be on the streets before the election. Slick Bob so nervous that he is combing his hair and spraying his mouth and under arms every Five minutes hoping that John McCain will name him as his running mate. If the new president is a Democrat he/she will probally appoint new U.S. Attorneys in Alabama. Riley along with most of the top GOP operatives could get Federal charges filed against them for taking millions of dollars from Michael Scanlon and Jack Abramoff. The money was used to defeat Siegelman’s Education Lottery and to run Riley’s election campaigns
Thank God for media deregulation.
I’m becoming more convinced each day that corporate media are the true terrorists. I am at the point of complete hatred for these obvious propagandists because of their complicity in the destruction of American democracy.
I am an employee at WHNT. We are trying our best to dispell any misconception that there may be about Sunday night’s problems with60 Minutes. Here is a statement that our Station Manager/News Director sent to someone who e-mailed us about this very subject. I hope this clears everything up.
Sunday night at the worst possible moment, we had a technical failure of a piece of equipment that allows us to receive feeds from CBS. It happened just as the 60 Minutes segment on former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman was about to air. The result was that the 60 Minutes segment did not air initially. We joined it in progress with about 5 minutes remaining.
Initially, we thought the problem was on CBS’ end. That was a logical assumption on our part as we had problems just 24 hours prior during a CBS televised basketball game. Upon further investigation, WHNT learned that the problem was on our end at the station. WHNT engineers responded as quickly as possible to
diagnose the problem and were able to restore the feed, as I said, with a few minutes left in the Siegelman segment.
As you might imagine with a story of such intense local interest, our phone lines and emails were bombarded with complaints and rightly so. That’s why we requested and were granted permission from CBS to re-air the segment in its entirety on Sunday night during our late news, NewsChannel 19 at 10pm. We also directed
viewers to the link on WHNT.com where they could view the entire segment on streaming video.
Still, many people indicated to us that they missed it at 10pm because they did not get word that it would re-air. So, once again we asked and were granted permission from CBS to again re-air the “Prosecution of Don Siegelman” segment. It did indeed air again Monday on NewsChannel 19 at 6pm. CBS bent over backwards to help us through this very regrettable situation.
We have received hundreds of emails and phone calls from viewers who accused us of purposely sabotaging the broadcast for political reasons. I can understand how people might think that was the case. But, I assure everyone that it is patently false. If we were conspiring to blackout this story from the public, we wouldn’t
have promoted it heavily in our newscasts in the days preceding.
We apologize to everyone for the interruption. I assure you there was no intent whatsoever to keep anyone from seeing the broadcast.
Maxie, how about airing it during the next 60 Minutes broadcast, at the normal Sunday evening time?
Twice.
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?