West side public access
A reader has emailed us a page with information and a petition you can sign (if you’re so inclined) about public access tv for towns on the west side. The link is here. And here’s a brief summary of the issue:
Have you ever watched Public Access Television and caught the latest Town Board meeting? Perhaps it was your child’s school play, or a graduation ceremony you shared with family and friends.
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Each month on your Time-Warner cable bill, you are charged a “franchise fee†given to your local leaders for the operations of Public Access Cable. For nearly 2 years, the elected officials from the Towns of Greece, Gates, Chili, Parma, and Hilton have attempted to place the Public Access Television in the Greece Central School District, SUNY Brockport, and other parties to remove the open access the public has enjoyed for many years through Educable.The aim is to take the public out of public access and make your public forum an adjunct to official business. This proposal had many difficulties and little support in the community. Questions raised about censorship and control of the public forum and the access of citizens to their access facilities, as well as questions of the appropriate use of school district funds meant for curriculum. Further, the construction of the television studio at Olympia was planned and carried out in stealth, without the approval of the school board or the public.
I’m not very up on this issue, but I’ve heard a lot of people talking about it. If you know more, feel free to provide some context in the comments.
If you want to know exactly what can happen once politicians take control of public access, you just have to look to what’s going on with our neighbors a bit further west in Niagara County.
Check out this story in the Buffalo News about allegations that George Maziarz and the Republican-led Niagara County Leg shut down a public access call-in show because the host was critical of various Republican leaders. The show was on the air for 10 years prior to having the plug pulled by the local Republicans in Lockport and Nia Cty.
Thanks for the info!
To be technically correct, I should point out that the allegations were “someone in Marziarz’ office” was involved, not Maziarz himself. Maziarz denied involvement, of course.
Gee, Exile, I wonder who your “reader” could be? Surely not Brian Caterino, the man who runs Educable.
You are usually big on having your commentors provide some sort of evidence for their allegations. Too bad you haven’t made such a call here. Mr. Caterino has made the baseless and unsubstantiated claim that these Towns are trying to limit public access numerous times. Can he (or your petition wielding “reader”, if they are not one in the same) provide any evidence that any of the Towns named therein have taken any step to limit public access?
The answer is no, because those Towns have not done so. Public access is governed by FCC and State Cable Commission regulations. It does not matter who has the contract to air the broadcasts; the rules governing access remain the same.
Mr DiCaro: Did you actually follow the Buffalo News link? This kind of censorship for political reasons has already happened in Niagara County.
The specific quote in the Buffalo News is:
“…the cable commission was told by the state Public Service Commission it could “legally exercise editorial control†over the content on the government access channel.”
Burb:
I did read the story you linked. The fact that the local cable commission had the right to exercise “editorial control” means that the “power” to “restrict access” already exists in some cases. I am not suggesting it should exist or that the action by the cable commission in that case was justified.
That story reinforces the fact that rules and regulations regarding access already do exist. They are established by the FCC and the NY Cable Commission. The local provider cannot arbitrarily decide who will or will not have access. Those decisions must be made pursuant to the regulations which exist.
Further, I believe that there are both public access and government access channels. The rules may be different for each. I don’t really know, since I am not an expert on cable access matters.
My basic point is that the alleged attempt by Westside towns to limit public access is a fiction created by the operator of Educable. He has a vested interest in maintaining Educable as the access provider. His claims should be viewed with that in mind.
Full disclosure: I am the Town Attorney for the Town of Gates. I, therefore, also have a bias regarding this matter. My views should be considered in that light.
Thanks for your input as well.
Hi Mr. Di Caro and friends of public access
I did send the item in to RT since I have not an administrator and have no posting privileges on this site. I never made any attempt to hide my intentions — unlike the town and the school district whose plans to seize control of public access were described in the media as a stealth takeover. It appears to me that the towns are doing their best to do things under cover of darkness without any public discussion or input.
The post’s reference to a reader omitting my name was not at my behest. Though I participated in the petition plan I am not the author or the sole initiator of the petition. We have at least several hundred signatures on an earlier petition concerning the school district as well.
I’d urge readers to ask questions and learn more about the threats to public access on the Westside.
First I need to correct Mr. Di Caro who is not being very careful with his words.
Actually Mr. Di Caro according to documents from the towns of Gates, Greece, Chili and Ogden the law is being openly violated. Each of these towns has not been in compliance with the regulations regarding PEG channels that you cite for over a year. They claim to have no operator of public access services. I am not talking about minor violations here. So if the towns can’t be bothered to even live by the rules what makes us think they will do so if they have complete control? Nor does it follow that one can’t exert influence and shaping of actions to limit public participation with the rules. As anyone who cares to think about it knows, the ability to set the agenda and have the power of initiative can often be used for political purposes to limit an opponent or group within any set of existing rules.
We noted that censorship would be an issue in any government or school district takeover. The Greece School district has in the past and just recently did censor video. That’s an established fact. As well there are many examples of government interference in access programming throughout the country including the one just cited in Buffalo. There are good grounds then for skepticism.
Have any officials from the towns of Greece Gates Chili or Ogden, ever expressed an opinion about the legitimate scope of public access to us or questioned the scope of access programs? What do you think?
So here‘s few things to think about:
The media of communication are public property. They belong to the public not to commercial interests or to governments. For example commercial broadcasters don’t own a frequency, they are granted a license (as a trustee so to speak) which at least in principle is granted on the basic of service to the public interest. Public access is your electronic public space, the embodiment of that public ownership on the cable spectrum. It is the non-commercial space where any citizen can put on programming. The public interest mandates are not merely negative obligations they imply a positive obligation to the public interest
We need to think carefully about that public element of the media of communications and how to protect that public interest. I think that public element of access operations is under threat. You can look at our editorial keeping the Public in Public access, in the D and C last year.
THE basic issue is that for the last few years (actually going back to 2004) the Towns of Greece and Gates (along with other towns) and the Greece Central School district have attempted to take over public access and we think intended shut down the non-profit corporation that has run public access here for over close to 25 years. Educable Communications our non-profit corporation has always operated on the philosophy that public access has to be independent of local government officials (including the School district). Along with most in the public access community we believe it is the best way to carry out the public interest mandates of access.
Problems began when the Greece central school district built without public knowledge or discussion a TV studio with funds granted for Capital Improvement Projects. He project was completed in 2004 We believe the studio was built not with education in mind but with the aim of taking over public access and taking it out of the hands of the community. As many of you read in the paper the Greece central school district has been severely criticized for the way it handled this CIP wasting large sums of taxpayer money. Form the start we have contended this was an inappropriate way and possibly illegal way to run access, I believe the audit report proves our point. In the end the school district board and the superintendent did too. They voted 9 to 0 to reject any form of school district involvement in PEG operations
We have argued that putting access into the hands of the local towns or the school district would lead to interference in programming, and to a loss of vital services. We raised important questions about control over the channels. How much say would the public really have? The school district plans were largely concerned with the visibility of their own school district only and gave short shrift to the public element of access – to programs for local citizens. This seems a very reasonable inference given the history of the school district in its obsessive concern for public retains. We argued this plan would lead to a serious de-emphasis of the public element of PEG operations.
Throughout this dispute the towns have attempted to defend themselves with a purely formal argument. We argue that the question is one of substance as well as form. Let’s suspend for just a second questions of whether they would actually obey the law. Even if the towns were to run PEG operations according to the minimum legal standards that would a very significant diminution of existing access services. There would be little to encourage citizens to participate and much of what they do would be lost.
These minimum proposal are at the heart of what‘s gone down after the school district rebuffed the towns attempts to use their facilities. All that is left of access. is a place to playback video not even in close proximity to most of the population. We provide much much more than this minimal service.â€â€Âeven at the very paltry level of funding the towns have provided in the past.
WE wonder out loud why the towns of Gates Greece and others haven’t approached us after the rejection by the schools. We don’t think it is based on concerns the communities public access service but the kind of concerns raised in the maziarz article.
For the record, we never identify readers by name when they send things in, unless they ask to be identified. This is standard blog protocol as far as I can tell (it’s what TalkingPointsMemo, the blog I respect the most, does).
This debate John and Brian are having is very illuminating. I do not know that much about the public access debate but readers and commenters refer to it frequently, which is what led us to do a post on the subject.
From my perspective, I am disturbed by the amount of secrecy from government at the town and county level.