Memo To The Alabama Educational Television Commission

by: mooncat

Tue Jul 31, 2012 at 11:45:00 AM CDT

Dear AETC:

If y'all hadn't fired two competent and respected professionals for questionable reasons, you wouldn't need to be hiring legal counsel.

And if you hadn't ticked off both the people who raise money for Alabama Public TV and your loyal donors with those firings and talk of airing rightwing, revisionist, pseudo-history programming, you'd have more $$$ to pay your legal expenses.

You've behaved like the irresponsible neighborhood tomcat, treating APT like your own private sandbox. Don't expect the public to thank you for the mess you made and don't come begging to us for money to hire good lawyers.

mooncat :: Memo To The Alabama Educational Television Commission

Tags: Alabama Public Television, APT, AETC, (All Tags)

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Memo To The Alabama Educational Television Commission | 2 comments

Have you seen the report from the CPB ombudsman? (4.00 / 3)

It's scathing.

The demand by some political appointees of the Alabama Educational Television Commission that APT staff broadcast tapes by David Barton's WallBuilders group was improper, unethical, and outrageous.
Commissioners or boards of directors should not be getting directly involved in programmatic decision-making. Nor should they be threatening editorial employees with their jobs if they do not follow such improper orders. The recent code of editorial integrity that has been developed by local public media throughout the country clearly says such tampering is improper.
The commissioners who voted to fire Mr. Pizzato and Ms. Howland and agreed to speak about it simply said that they wanted the station to go in a new direction. But the fact that they made such a decision in private without any public discussion or notice is exactly the type of lack of transparency that is troubling in a situation like this one. If it wasn't about the WallBuilders tapes or the diversity statement then the Commission needs to spell out exactly what these two executives did wrong.
Without such disclosure, all the available evidence suggests that it was the refusal to broadcast the WallBuilders tapes or to change the mission statement that ended the careers of two highly respected public broadcasting executives.
And if that is the case, then the commissioners of APT who fired those two need to understand that what they did violated several precepts of public broadcasting.
Even a cursory examination of WallBuilders indicates that this organization is more interested in proselytizing than in educating or informing.

"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness." - John Kenneth Galbraith

by: countrycat @ Wed Aug 01, 2012 at 00:09:38 AM UTC

Who picks the members of the AETC? (4.00 / 1)

Several folks have asked this on our Facebook page. The governor appoints the members of the Alabama Educational Television Commission and they serve staggered terms.

Most of the members of the current AETC were appointed by Bob Riley (R) so is it any surprise they're trashing public broadcasting in Alabama? So far, Bentley has only appointed one member of the AETC.

Work harder and work smarter!

by: mooncat @ Wed Aug 01, 2012 at 12:31:24 PM UTC