Monday, February 25, 2008

What country do you live in?

60 Minutes Report On Rove’s Dirty Politics Blocked In Parts Of Alabama Last night, CBS’s 60 Minutes aired its long-awaited report on Alabama’s incarcerated former governor Don Siegelman, featuring allegations that Karl Rove personally told a Republican operative in the state to find evidence that Siegelman was cheating on his wife.

Siegelman, a Democrat, was convicted in 2006 for conspiracy, bribery and fraud. But observers from all sides of the political spectrum are now questioning whether his prosecution “was pursued not because of a crime but because of politics.”

Watch the report:


Though the report aired last night, it was not seen by everyone who may have wished to view it. In several Alabama locations, “the show was blocked - black screen - during the Siegelman segment of 60 Minutes only.” Harper’s Scott Horton, who has investigated the Siegelman prosecution and was interviewed for the segment, reports:

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.

WHNT originally claimed last night that the blocked segment was due to “a techincal(sic) problem with CBS out of New York.” But that claim was contradicted by CBS in New York, who told Horton, 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.”

WHNT now has a different explanation on its website:

NewsChannel 19 lost our program feed from CBS. Upon investigation, WHNT has learned that the CBS receiver that allows us to receive programming from CBS failed. WHNT engineers responded as quickly as possible to restore the feed at 6:12 p.m.

WHNT says it “will re-air the broadcast of that segment.”

7 comments:

Unknown said...

wow that's fucked up

Bello Velo said...

It seems the American Taliban controls Alabama too.
We torture
We censor
We bomb
We silence dissent
We are patriots

I got to go to the mall and buy some garth brooks.

Heil!!

clintpatty said...

Maybe somebody just screwed up? They did make it available on their website, granted that does make it much less available to the population of north Alabama.

Bello Velo said...

"But that claim was contradicted by CBS in New York, who told Horton, 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.”

Bello Velo said...

Now, let me tell you what has been going on. As 60 Minutes was putting its show together, the White House put pressure on CBS -- the parent company -- to kill the show. Over the last few days, as word got out that the 60 Minutes show would air tonight, Karl Rove's associates began planting defamatory stories about journalists working on this story (see example here) and attacking the whistle-blower who came forward, Dana Jill Simpson. If you recall, Ms. Simpson testified, under oath, to Congress about Karl Rove's involvement in politicizing the DOJ. What you may not know, however, is that her house mysteriously caught fire and she was run off the road in the weeks leading up to her testimony.

more here
http://news.yahoo.com/s/huffpost/20080225/cm_huffpost/088218

clintpatty said...

I could not read the article. I have no argument on the last post, but I did not say that CBS screwed up. I meant that maybe someone at WHNT screwed up. That could make a coincidental unintentional problem with WHNT only. I don't know how a WHNT receiver fails if that's what happened. But it's possible that it was just an error. I'm just saying don't dismiss that possibility so quickly.

Bello Velo said...

WHNT is owned by Oak Hill Capital Partners which in turn was founded by Robert M Bass, a personal friend of George W and the Bush family. Such an amazing coincidence, don’t you agree?