Siegelman Censorhsip Update

Via Talking Points Memo, "FCC Commissioner Wants Probe of Siegelman 60 Minutes Blackout." Rueters reports:

FCC Commissioner Michael Copps said he had asked the chairman of the FCC to open an inquiry into the Feb. 24 incident at WHNT, a CBS affiliate in Huntsville, Alabama, in which civil rights footage from the 1960s was blacked out.

"The FCC now needs to find out if something analogous is going on here," Copps said at a luncheon with media watchdog groups. "Was this an attempt to suppress information on the public airwaves, or was it really just a technical problem?"

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

Via Sivacracy -- an Alabama television station censors a CBS broadcast implicating former Deputy Chief of Staff and current White House strategist Karl Rove in the controversial conviction of former Democratic Governor Don Siegelman in federal court. Here's the censored segment:

Sorry for the poor quality, but I refuse to embed the CBS linked video because CBS forces commercials into the video. If you've like to view the CBS linked video, go here.

What does this mean for our democracy if local television stations are allowed to censor public news broadcasts in this manner?