Monday, February 25, 2008

Alabama Station Blacks Out 60 Minutes Broadcast


Viewers in Alabama attempting to watch the 60 Minutes story on their former Democratic governor being falsely railroaded into jail by the Republican Party saw a blank screen for ten minutes. The conservative owned station blamed "technical difficulties."

In the 60's, several Southern stations lost their licenses for refusing to show national news programming covering the civil rights movement. The FCC should look into this incident.

CBS Video of the segment - an excellent story.

Scott Horton at Harper's Magazine has much more.
I am now hearing from readers all across Northern Alabama—from Decatur to Huntsville and considerably on down—that a mysterious “service interruption” blocked the broadcast of only the Siegelman segment of 60 Minutes this evening. 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.”


For more on the background of this story see Raw Story - One, Two, Three.

Larisa Alexandrov reports on the White House pressure to kill the story of Karl Rove's political prisoner.

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3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yes channel 19 in north Alabama blacked it out.

I think that Jill Simpson is a very brave and a very smart attorney. In my dealings with her I have noticed that she records everything. Like most attorneys in Alabama she has recorders on all her telephones. However, she frequently wears a microphone hidden in a button or in a lapel pin. She also has a miniature microphone built into her purse and case satchel. She has won many cases outside the court room because of private conversations that she has managed to record and pictures that she has taken. She has a few nice cameras and access to a telescoping camera lens as long as my arm.

If you’ll notice Mike Hubbert is performing a he said she said news release with the Associated Press. There is a reason that these outlaws are not doing their own interviews; they can’t be held accountable for the lies that Hubbert tells unless he was given written permission to speak in their behalf.

Let me finish with this, Attorney Simpson is smart. She has made copies of her tapes and pictures which are put away in safe places. I wouldn’t advise any outlaws to search her home or office unless they want their pictures on her surveillance tapes.

Anonymous said...

"60 Minutes Done A Great Job"

I think that 60 Minutes done a fantastic job. There’s a coverup from the Heart-of-Dixie all the way to Washington via Texas. I’m thankful that they were brave enough to stand up to all the corrupt people that are involved.

The Bush’s elete group of corrupt GOP’ers are scared to death that Don Siegelman may be on the streets before the election. Especially with Slick Bob combing his hair and spraying his mouth and under arms every Five minutes hoping that John McCain will name him as his running mate.

Anonymous said...

"60 Minutes Done A Great Job"

The Bush’s elete group of corrupt GOP’ers are scared to death that Don Siegelman may be on the streets before the election. Especially with Slick Bob so nervous that he is combing his hair and spraying his mouth and under arms every Five minutes for two reasons: He's hoping that the next president will be John McCain a republican and that he will asked to be his running mate. If a Democrat wins as the next president 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.