Station blacks out Siegelman report

Just a few days ago I mentioned the fact that a TV station in my area blacked out part of a newsmagazine's report on embattled Arizona Gov. Evan Mecham 20 years ago. Something similar happened just today in at least one market.

'60 Minutes' aired a story about involvement by Karl Rove and Bush's Justice Department in the bribery prosecution of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, a Democrat. (He's the man pictured here.) The long and short of it is that the probe of Siegelman was politically motivated. According to the report, even a Republican former Attorney General of Arizona is suspicious of the prosecution, as are some other Republican and Democratic officials.

But the story wasn't aired in Huntsville, Alabama. WHNT-TV, Huntsville's CBS affiliate, showed a blank screen for 12 minutes. After complaints from viewers, WHNT blamed it on "technical difficulties", saying their network feed was "lost." Um. Yeah. Sure.

It turns out WHNT is owned by a company headed by a close friend of Bush. Oops! Busted! Now we know why WHNT has such Pravda-like ways.

Back in the '60s, a TV station got its licensed revoked by the FCC because it cut out stories about the civil rights movement from the network news. The FCC can and should come down hard on WHNT for doing basically the same thing to the Siegelman story.

(Source: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/02/21/60minutes/main3859830.shtml;
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2918171;
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2918410)