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censorship?
Here's a new twist. I suppose you all saw the CBS evening news segment on the DARE program last night. Here in Friday Harbor, many of us were watching it in our respective houses. About 30 seconds into the report, the screen goes blank, the sound dies. Two minutes later, the picture and sound return, in time to see the CBS logo and the commercials, and then all is normal. We get CBS from Tacoma, on cable. Tacoma says they ran the broadcast without cuts. The local cable company station manager had many possible excuses, including sunspots, statospheric interference, etc. When I asked him if they had the ability to selectively cut a show like that, he said no. When I told him I talked to the main company offices in Colorado and they told me that each local company did indeed have that ability, he admitted that yes, that was possible, but only two people had the keys and the know how to do that. He then readily offered alibis for the time in question. Later I returned with a copy of the show as it broadcast across Friday Harbor, he said it looked like someone had pulled the plug. He seemed surprised. But he didn't feel obligated to investigate the equipment that had apparently been tampered with. Nor did he feel obliged to notify the sheriff, not that that would bear much fruit anyway. So we have a situation where, less than two weeks after the school board meeting on DARE, and in the middle of a hot public debate, someone pulls the plug on what was apparently a critical, credible report. With all parties denying responsiblity, it doesn't look promising that we'll find out who was behind this act of censorship. And it's tricky to publicize without sounding paranoid. We'll probably get a copy of the censored report (by the way, was it good?) and show it along with the blacked out version at an event in the near future... Anyway, that's the news here. You haven't heard any similar reports from anywhere else, have you? More later -- Andrew
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