I wonder how much Karl Rove will be directing those in Fox News to smear this story.

Or perhaps there will be an eerie, deafening silence. Here's to hoping that justice will be served.

By the way, Siegelman's attorney Doug Jones knows how federal prosecutions are supposed to be run. CBS doesn't mention it, but he's a former federal prosecutor, and spent 4 years as the United States Attorney for Alabama's northern district.

http://www.whatleydrake.com/Bio/GJones.asp

I've seen nothing on the news about this blackout in Alabama. Makes you wonder; where are all the "journalists?"

Maybe the advertisers should complain?

'We wuz robbed!'

Hey, maybe 60 Minutes should do an investigation of the Alabama Blackout and broadcast it in a future segment.

Dear conspiracy doodlebugs: You don't suppress a story by blacking it out on one station! The effect of the blackout has been to draw more, not less, attention to the story.

I would have liked to have heard mention of the sentence and the procedure they used to include time for crimes Siegleman was aquitted of. Also while I'm glad it was on CBS because of its audience size, I'm more grateful that Muckraker exists!!

If these allegations are true, Rove could be in danger of another ponderous letter from Senators Leahy and Specter and perhaps even some public posturing by the alleged Democratic leadership.

FALSIFIED RECORDS...

The TV station is required by the FCC to keep on air logs. Those logs will have to be falsified to explain the stations censorship. The records may be publicly viewable.

Here is the FCC regulations -------------------------

B. STATION LOGS/RECORDS:

STATION LOGS include entries pertaining to equipment status, equipment calibration, the Emergency Alert
System (EAS) and, when applicable, the recording of tower light outages. STATION RECORDS include, but are
not limited to chief operator designations and equipment performance measurements.

The station logs and records are to be kept in an orderly and legible manner, in suitable form and with sufficient
detail. Station logs and records are to be retained for a period of two years, unless specified otherwise, and
they shall be made available for inspection or duplication at the request of the FCC or its representatives.
Required logs and records are to be readily available for inspection. [See 73.1225, 73.1226, 73.1590, 73.1800,
73.1820 and 73.1840]

--------------------------
The regulations that the TV station is under is in part to be found here:

http://www.fcc.gov/eb/bc-chklsts/EB18TV0906.pdf

THESE ON AIR RECORDS WILL HAVE TO BE FALSIFIED... what did the FCC do, are they looking into it (I doubt it) WHY NOT?

Peterprinciple:

nope, that's only third-world dictatorships. There are some democracies among third-world countries. I suppose it's a good sign that such blatant manipulation of broadcatst channels is usually a sign of a tinpot dictatorship on the way out...

Maybe the advertisers should complain?

'We wuz robbed!'

Come on. The advertizers should REJOICE! They sponsored this censorship action.

Still, I'd be curious to find out who they were, just so I can boycott them.

So what happens now?

Sticking with a statement from Siegelman's attorney ... that crimes, not people, should be prosecuted, who looks into this political crime further? Assuming the DOJ is by now hopelessly politicized, are we at a familiar dead-end? Could Presidents Obama or Clinton take action once the Bushies go home? Or is it all just more sound and fury signifying nothing?

Boycott the station's advertisers...

electricphoto:

A little informed reality check: if WHNT's transmitter was putting out a carrier signal, and the engineering log reflected that, they're home free.

If the program log (a different document) reads that they were carrying the program "60 Minutes" from the CBS Television Network, any dead air in the middle of a contiguous one hour program does not qualify as a different program from the one that was supposed to be airing. To my knowledge, there is no requirement to log dead air, and never has been.

This is a dead end. Forget it.

The good news is that there are, in 2008, enough bloggers like Larisa at Raw Story, so that not only does an alarming travesty like this not get swept under the rug anymore, but the attempt to suppress it become the overarching story that dwarfs the original, and turns new viewers onto the scandal.

Larisa is on RIGHT NOW, on the "Thom Hartmann Show" on Air America... see ya!

I could join in the ranting about this communication failure, but instead I decided to make the effort to do a bit of research. If this station lost these 9 minutes for a reason other than equipment failure, they should be able to provide a reason. Otherwise, tthis just might be an actual incident of equipment failure; they do happen, especially in the current environment where maximizing profits means getting rid of your most experienced technical staff. So let's start with the most obvious line of approach: who at the station would benefit from this act? We might be able to hazard a guess if we knew who owned the station.

First roadblock: looking at the WNHT-TV website, there is no obvious statement about who owns this station; the logo at the bottom of the page to "World Now" is not to the company that owns WHNT, but to the company that runs the website. Although, in an obvious effort to provide a "balanced story", there is a link to the GOP of Alabama's response to the CBS story on the page apologizing for the lost feed. (You just need to scroll all of the way to the bottom of the article to see that this response is a paid advertisement.) I find this odd in this day where all corporations are very concerned about brand consciousness: why wouldn't a corporation want to admit that they own a given television station?

So I turn to an obvious source for information: Wikipedia. I'll admit that I've been a contributor to Wikipedia for over five years now, but this simply means that I know that the quality of its articles can range from the excellent to the problematic (attack pieces and articles dominated by corporate puffery) to the plain useless (e.g., single-sentence stubs which tell you nothing that you couldn't already guess about the subject). However, in this case, it provides the information I am looking for: WNHT-TV is owned by a company known as "Local TV". Never heard of them; maybe "Local TV" simply means that it is owned by somone living in Huntsville, so I click on the link in the infobox. This leads me to another useful article: Local TV is actually a privately-owned corporation that owns a chain of television stations in second-tier markets. (They seem to be too small to have attracted any attention; are they know to anyone else here?) Even more interesting, Local TV is awaiting FCC approval to buy 7 FOX affiliates owned by FOX broadcasting.

So would the Bush administration be so stupidly heavy-handed to "encourage" their contacts at Local TV to suppress this story? Or was this something that the people at Local TV simply assumed would help their request pass through the process with the least number of roadbumps?

Geoff

I read the article linked to by phrith and I did not find it convincing in the least. The writer mostly just attacks by insinuation and through ad hominim.

His main points are the following:

* Harper's columnist Scott Horton is a liar and a conspiracy theorist.
* Republican operative Jill Simpson is a liar and a nut and everyone should know this because, well, she just is.
* Siegelman is a dirty politician and everyone knows this.
* Judge Mark Fuller is a fine upstanding guy and so are the prosecutors who brought the case.

Really, that's pretty much all he has and it takes him pages and pages to say it. He throws some dirt at Simpson and it's possible that she's not a reliable character, but he completely fails to address any of the really major issues that have people upset about this case:

* Is it really bribery for a rich guy to make a large, legal donation to a cause a politician supports and then have the politician appoint the rich guy to some unpaid position on a government board that he's been serving on for years already?
* If this really is bribery, why has no one else ever been prosecuted for such a thing? How many politicians are guilty of this same action?
* The US Attorney originally overseeing the case is married to an adviser to the Republican governor's campaign. Why did it take her 8 months to recuse herself?
* Judge Fuller is a longtime political enemy of Siegleman. Why did he not recuse himself?
* Why did prosecutors not turn over the notes their top witness took while he "perfected" his testimony?
* The original case against Siegleman, brought in the middle of an election campaign was literally laughed out of court. Is this not evidence that prosecutors were prosecuting a person, not a crime?

The article in the Montgomery Independent addresses none of these issues. If this is the best the other side of this case can do then something definitely went seriously wrong.

It is possible that Siegleman is a crook. I have no knowledge one way or another. It's also possible that this prosecution was brought in the utmost good faith. However, it has the stink of bad faith all over it and needs to be thoroughly investigated. The Justice Department has no credibility under this administration and they are, predictably, stonewalling on this.

WHNT-TV has just reported in their 5:00 news that it was an equipment failure and that by the time it was repaired, most, but not all, of the Siegelman episode was over. They are running the entire 9 minute segment on their 6:00 news today. They also pointed out that they had promoted the story heavily beforehand, so it would make no sense that they then blacked it out deliberately.

I just became acquainted with the Siegelman story. This is a job for .. TPM!

Really, though, this is ghastly, I wonder if TPM can help. Sounds like most of the dirtbags are out of reach down in Alabama.

I just can't believe the depravity the GOP has sunk to, and how self-righteous they remain.

Have spent the last hour or so trying to read everything but can't seem to get a handle on a couple of things:

#1 - Did this whole case turn on the guy with the bad memory? Was there anything else?

#2 - How can you deny bond based on probable appeal if the transcript that you would base the appeal on has not been released?

CBS and the other networks are very protective of their signals, and they have redundancy built in. I would assume (silly me) that any CBS affiliate station would be required by CBS to have that redundancy in place to ensure the consistency of the CBS broadcast signal. 60 Minutes is a huge revenue generator, and would fall under the "must broadcast" rules set down by the network.

Have you ever noticed on a network station when a glitch happens and suddenly the same signal comes up, but doesn't look the same or as good as the main feed, and then shortly after that (when the problem is sorted out) the better looking signal comes back? Well, that's the redundancy automatically kicking in.

Equipment issues? In the run-up to all local broadcast over-the-air signals having to be digital, most stations have already upgraded their control rooms, studios and other technical facilities to new equipment. If they didn't plan for and install redundancy for their Network broadcast signal, than it was plain old negligence.

But... it wasn't. Ask the board operator on duty at the time. They're probably a member of the IBEW and union would take up his/her cause if the station threatened to fire them for telling the truth. Oh yeah, right-wing owners... they cover all the bases.