From: Wade Smith (wade_smith@harvard.edu)
Date: Mon 16 Dec 2002 - 16:00:33 GMT
All politics is local....
*****
Quarrel over cable public access aired
By Sarah Schweitzer, Globe Staff, 12/16/2002
LEE - In the annals of public access television programming, the
video showcasing antiabortionists and the one denouncing war
with Iraq hardly qualified as risque.
Strident they were. Plucked from different ends of the political
spectrum, to be sure. All of which might have been just fine for
the Western Massachusetts public access Channel 11, save one
thing: The videos were out-of-town productions.
''We should be talking to Joe or Bob about what's happening on
Main Street, not the news as it appears to people in New York,''
said Malcolm Chisholm, chairman of the local cable commission
and Woodstock-attendee turned patent attorney.
In this eclectic working-class homebase of CTSB-TV, which sends
its shows to cable subscribers in Lee and four tourist-prone
towns, the question of public access television's appropriate
role in the community has fueled a brouhaha.
As things tend to go in small towns, this one has the emotional
markings of an internecine spat. The executive director was not
just fired two weeks ago, but locked out of the station. Her two
staff members quit in protest and the station has since operated
with scattershot programming and a skeletal staff.
But at root, people here say, the dispute reflects an
increasingly pivotal question for the country's 1,500 cable
access stations: Should the channels be the domain of homespun
productions, like footage of selectmen's meetings and talk shows
starring area residents, or platforms for residents who want to
offer their views using videos produced by groups such as the
American Friends Service Committee, the Philadelphia-based
Quaker organization, or the Heritage Foundation, a conservative
policy institute located in Washington D.C.?
''Over the last few years, importing programming has been a neat
little discovery,'' said Jeff Hansell, chairman of the Northeast
Region Alliance for Community Media. ''What people have found is
that they can bring in a program produced by a national office
to make a point that they might not have the resources to
produce themselves.''
The issue is particularly important in communities such as Lee
and the satellite CTSB-TV towns of Great Barrington, Lenox,
Stockbridge, and Sheffield, where major television networks
relay little community news and public access. Townspeople often
look to the cable station as a critical conduit for information
about local doings, with public access provided as part of the
cable company's franchise pact.
As such, David Lane, chairman of the CTSB-TV board of directors,
said the preference of the board is for locally produced
programming that can't be seen elsewhere.
''That's the goal of the cable access, the very tenets,'' said
Lane, a retired mechanic who works part time at the popular Red
Lion Inn in Stockbridge.
But ensuring the primacy of local shows over out-of-town ones is
not easy. The US Supreme Court has ruled that public access
channels are the equivalent of public parks, where any town
crier may make his beliefs known by climbing atop a soapbox, or,
in the case of public access channels, by proffering a videotape.
Not every video necessarily is made part of the programming. The
Federal Communications Commission does not regulate public
access channels. The stations can't turn away submissions, but
obscenity laws apply.
Space demands can bump some programming. In New York City, for
example, there are so many requests submitted to the public
access channels that a lottery is held to determine which ones
are shown, though attempts are made to use all.
Too many submissions is not an issue in Lee. The cable access
channel is relatively small, transmitted into 8,000 homes, which
makes for an estimated 20,000 viewers. Most of its programming
traditionally has been selectmen and school board meetings.
There are some locally produced shows, including ''Suddenly
Seniors!'' and ''Getting to Know You.''
But a good chunk of the programming has been used for bulletin
boards, screenfuls of information about local happenings.
When Elizabeth Parker, a Mount Holyoke graduate, left a Vermont
public access channel to become executive director of CTSB-TV in
July 2001, she sought to plug holes in programming, in part with
imported shows.
While she said she created some local programming, such as
filming a local youth choir and Great Barrington Fire Safety
Week, she also encouraged the public to submit videos dealing
with issues of importance to them.
''There are a lot of outlets looking for a voice,'' Parker said.
''If people want school lunch menus, fine. We encouraged that.
But there are other interests as well, and this offers a place
for people to open up.''
Imported submissions increased, she said, particularly after the
Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks sparked the formation of a
group called Community Conversations, which tapped into a vein
of programming they felt expressed their views.
Katherine McCabe was among those who submitted tapes (hers from
the American Friends Service Committee), such as one titled
''The Unheard Voices of Iraqi Women'' and another showing an
address made by Noam Chomsky, the MIT linguistics professor and
archcritic of American US foreign policy.
''I'm really concerned about what's happening with the media and
how it's so filtered,'' McCabe said. ''Public access seemed like
one avenue for getting the message out.''
The programs have not been well-received by some viewers. Parker
said she received nearly a dozen anonymous calls saying that the
shows dealing with Iraq were offensive and anti-American.
The conflict, Parker said, escalated until she was fired two
weeks ago in a dramatic fashion, ordered out of the station and
told not to come back. She has hired an attorney and is
considering suing the board for creating a hostile work
environment.
Board members say Parker was fired for not doing her job. They
say she failed to properly record selectmen's meetings, with
some meetings taped without audio, and shown nonetheless,
several times.
Parker said it was the board's conservative leanings that help
explain her ouster, with members uncomfortable with her ideas.
This is not a politically conservative area. It votes heavily
Democratic; sending state Representative Christopher Hodgkins, a
self-described liberal, to the State House from 1983 until his
retirement this year. Union workers with strong prolabor bents
are numerous, as are socially liberal upper-crust sorts, many
transplanted from New York.
But it is a rooted New England sort of place that is not opposed
to change, so long as it's delivered slowly, as one local person
described it.
At Joe's Diner, famed setting for Norman Rockwell's Saturday
Evening Post illustration of a police officer and would-be
runaway boy eyeing each other as they sit on diner stools, a few
regulars agreed this past week that selectmen meetings were
about as far-reaching as CTSB needs to be.
''We get enough news on CNN - we get tramped to death with
news,'' said Richard Burns, a carpenter who tuned into the
station the previous evening for a selectmen's vote on
condominium development. ''Why not keep public access for the
local news?''
Paul Collins, a former chief probation officer, said, ''We don't
need someone to get a personal forum for their extremes.''
''Right,'' Burns said. ''If they had something on about Iraq, I
probably wouldn't watch it.''
Sarah Schweitzer can be reached at schweitzer@globe.com.
This story ran on page B1 of the Boston Globe on 12/16/2002.
© Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company.
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