Broadcasting & Cable
Federal Communications Commission member Michael Copps formally asked FCC chairman Kevin Martin to investigate a "technical difficulty" at WHNT-TV Huntsville, Ala., that prevented some Alabama viewers from seeing a Feb. 24 60 Minutes story about an alleged campaign by Karl Rove, former aide to President George W. Bush, against Don Siegelman, former Democrat governor of Alabama, who was eventually jailed for corruption.
Michael Copps
Copps was reacting to a Feb. 27 editorial in The New York Times that questioned whether the move was instead political censorship, invoking a 1955 story about WLBT-TV Jackson, Miss., refusing to run a news report about desegregation, saying that it had had cable trouble.
At a National Press Club forum on local TV and public-interest requirements, Copps said, "The FCC needs to find out if something analogous is going on here. Was this an attempt to suppress information on the public airwaves, or was there really a technical problem?"
He added that if it turned out to be intentional, the agency would need to determine "who made the decision and why. ...................
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