By TKwow
Like a lot of observers, my outrage over the politically-motivated prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman was compounded when the Huntsville, Alabama, CBS affiliate WHNT blacked out a "60 Minutes" segment on the case this Sunday. At first it seemed a clear case of censorship. The claim that the "glitch" originated with CBS was disproven, and of course it’s known that the station ownership (Capitol Hill Partners) skews to the right.
So, obviously, the omission of this particular segment seemed to provide yet more evidence that Siegelman can’t get a fair shake in the state of Alabama. Even the news department of a major network station wouldn’t air the truth, right?
But maybe it’s not so simple. Over the years, I’ve e-mailed and called numerous media outlets to protest unfair treatment of various people and causes (remember the ABC mockumentary on 9/11?), and have received at best a form response, if that. However, to my enormous surprise, my e-mail to WHNT received not one, not two, but three responses, from the assistant station manager and two anchors. Their replies were thoughtful and persuasive. More below...
TKwow’s diary
Here is a section of an e-mail I received from WHNT news anchor Elise Morgan:
As you can imagine, we've answered hundreds of emails and calls over the past couple of days. If you've already made up your mind that we did this on purpose, then there's not much more I can say.
But I can assure you we would not heavily promote the 60 Minutes segment on our newscasts the week before if our intention was not to air it. I've never been a part of a news organization that purposely didn't air a program to keep information from getting out. The fact that people think we could do this shows me the intense lack of trust that people have with the media. It makes my heart heavy.
If you're at all interested in the details of what happened, I can tell you. At first we thought the problem was on CBS's end because we'd had some problems with their feed during basketball Saturday night. Even worse, it's the weekend and there's no engineer in the building to fix it. It took 8 minutes to figure out what in the world was going on... skeleton crew and all... and fix it. But the fact that it just so happened to occur during this story that is filled with allegations of a conspiracy, feeds the conspiracy theorists themselves that this is no accident at all. No it doesn't look good. That's why we call it a P.R. nightmare. But I can assure you it was nothing more than a problem with our receiver. That's why other stations across the country could get the program even if we couldn't.
CBS bent over backwards to allow to us re-air the story again on our 10 pm newscast that night and at 6:00 pm the next day, commercial-free, so everyone in our area could see it. The story actually got more attention and air time than if it had aired as scheduled.
We have apologized to anyone and everyone for what happened. If you still don't believe me, there's not much I can say.
I have to say, this and the other responses I’ve gotten bear none of the usual red flags of cover-up or dissimulation. At the very least, I’m convinced that the employees of the station don’t believe anything nefarious took place. Let’s face it: this really could have been an unfortunate coincidence.