KQED blacked out portions of the 22 May 2009 broadcast of the Bill Moyers program focusing on Health Care. In particular, the lead-in was blacked out, and a section of the broadcast discussing Obama administration failures and what the public can do about the issues was also blacked out. Some one or more people at KQED conspired to effect this "blackout" to suppress information to the public. Bay Area viewers who would like to see what they missed can go to
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/05222009/watch2.html to see the entire show uncensored.
If you are a KQED subscriber, you should remind them that they don't need your money if you're not going to get from them what you paid for. You didn't elect to have your programs censored and they're
not entitled to do so. If they continue to behave in such a way they should LOSE THEIR FCC LICENSE TO BROADCAST.
Update: KQED claims they are "not to blame - it's our equipment" but have not answered the rebuttal of the equipment claim or the allegation that third-parties are therefore doing the tampering. If I have my guess, this "phenomenon" probably affects other PBS outlets as well. Please send specific reports of blackouts you have observed (as much information as possible - what show, what station, what day/time) to
support at transpacific.net
I will be setting up a blog or wiki to take viewer comments and revise this message when that site is available.
We, the undersigned, demand an immediate end to the CENSORSHIP of the programs KQED airs in the SF Bay Area. We demand to know who has authorized such censorship in the past; and specifically, who authorized the censorship of the recent Moyers segment on Health Care (22 May 2009), by blacking out information as to the failure of the Obama administration to correctly deal with the issues and what action people can take to force the government to attend to the public's demands.
We demand an ACKNOWLEDGEMENT that KQED has censored programs in the past and we demand an APOLOGY to the public for KQED's having done so. We demand to know the IDENTITIES of all those at KQED who participated in the censorship and we demand the TERMINATION of their employment; and we demand a PROMISE from KQED that no such censorship shall ever occur again.
Finally, we demand that the censored segment be RE-AIRED in its entirety with NO censorship, with a short preface explaining that the prior airing HAD BEEN CENSORED.
