Here's the 60 Minutes segment you may not have seen last night, since it ran opposite the Oscars. (Thanks to Brad Friedman.)
Alas, folks in Alabama couldn't see this report even if they had their teevees (or Tivos) tuned to CBS. Why? Because the station suddenly experienced "technical difficulties" -- for that segment alone.
Larisa has been covering this astounding turn of events:
Some of the Alabama blackouts are reported to have happened on Channel 19, which is owned by Oak Hill Capital Partners, owned by the Bass family of Texas. The others appeared to have happened on one Comcast channel.
Could this Bass family be the same family involved in George W. Bush's Harken energy scandal?Here's what Scott Horton of Harpers has to say about the blackout:
The station ran a trailer stating “We apologize that you missed the first segment of 60 Minutes tonight featuring ‘The Prosecution of Don Siegelman.’ It was a techincal problem with CBS out of New York.” I contacted CBS News in New York and was told 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, which had the signal and had functioning transmitters.” I was told that the decision to blacken screens across Northern Alabama “could only have been an editorial call.” Channel 19 is owned by Oak Hill Capital Partners, who can be contacted through Rhonda Barnat, 212-371-5999 or rb@abmac.com. Oak Hill Partners represents interests of the Bass family, which contribute heavily to the Republican Party.Contact dear Rhonda, by all means. Better still: Contact the new FCC, once a Democrat takes the reins. Someone should lose a broadcast license over this transparent stunt.
5 comments:
Joe--it is taking much longer to load the 2 video embedded media when clicking on http://cannonfire.blogspot.com so this slows down loading your blog.
I am surprised that CBS even decided to broadcast the Siegelman piece at all since just a few weeks ago they had withdrawn airing this segment.
Also, no mention was made of the election fraud charges in which Siegelman's GOP rival, Bob Riley, won the 2002 Alabama Governor race when over 6,000 votes were switched from Siegelman to Riley in Baldwin County in the middle of the night. Siegelman's request for a recount was denied. http://www.votersunite.org/article.asp?id=7179
thanks for fixing problem with taking along time to load the blogsite because of the 2 embedded video clips. your site is now loading much faster.
also please note that Sandra Day O'Connor is finally advocating getting money and politics out of judges who get elected/appointed on the front cover of yesterday's Sunday Parade magazine:
http://www.parade.com/articles/editions/2008/edition_02-24-2008/Courts_O_Connor
But of course she doesn't mention the worst mistake of her life, voting along with Scalia to stop the counting of Florida's ballots regarding Bush v Gore in 2000.
It does seem that a coup has taken place with Scalia's appointment of Bush, and this country seems to be in freefall mode ever since he took office. Bush should be regarded as he great dismantler, under his wing companies and a great country get run into the ground.
The blackout has legs, and the blogosphere got the credit:
nytimes.com "Media Blackout Update: Pakistan and Alabama?"
By MIKE NIZZA
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/25/media-blackout-update-pakistan-and-alabama
Anyone seen thetruthaboutdon.com? It is an anti-Siegelman site. I tried to found out who is behind it by checking the domain information but it is registered by a company called "Domains by Proxy". As you can guess, they register domains for people who don't want to be known.
Yes it is the same family- Bass that is.........
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Bass
The promise of hitting it big in the oil-rich gulf was certainly critical for Harken. News of the Bahrain deal kept investors buying stock and lenders making loans. Still, Harken had nowhere near the capital required for such a large offshore operation halfway around the world. This required real money. But not to worry: The billionaire Bass brothers stepped up to the plate and said they'd be happy to underwrite the cost of the drilling in return for a piece of the action. (Robert Bass is a member of President Bush's Team 100; he and other Bass family members have contributed $226,000 to George, Sr.'s, cause since 1988.)
http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/1992/09/bushboys.html
kc
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