Alabama CBS affiliate censors 60 minutes
In what is nothing more than bald-face censorship, CBS affiliate WHNT-TV, Channel 19, Huntsville, AL, censored an entire segment pertaining to former Alabama governor Don Siegelman. The segment, broadcast this past Sunday, February 24, was effectively blacked out for the bulk of the northern half of the state.
Throughout the time that the segment was airing across the United States, WHNT broadcast a black screen with the following message:
We apologize that you missed the first segment of 60 Minutes tonight featuring ‘The Prosecution of Don Siegelman.’ It was a technical problem with CBS out of New York.
When asked for clarification by Harper’s blogger Scott Horton, CBS had this to say:
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.
Why can’t we always get that level of candor out of major corporate entities? Kudos to CBS for producing the piece and then not being afraid to squash an insolent affiliate.
I was curious enough about this to see what the fallout has been. Apparently, WHNT has since re-aired the piece on Siegelman twice and blames the blackout on a piece of their own malfunctioning equipment.
The station’s news director wrote a big piece about it on her own blog:
Conspiracy or technical failure? You Decide!
[Reply]