Media vultures swarm bogus 60M "censorship" story

This past Sunday, CBS' 60 Minutes ran a controversial story about Karl Rove's possible involvement in the conviction of an Alabama governor. But in large parts of Alabama, the program was replaced by dead air.

Instead of doing any original reporting or investigation, this blog post from the Machinist simply regurgitates the sentiment of Harpers' Scott Horton, who says in his story:

"In a stunning move of censorship, the transmission was blocked across the northern third of Alabama by CBS affiliate WHNT,..."

A stunning move of censorship? How so, Mr. Horton? Where's the evidence?

From what I can tell, Horton merely watched the offending program before concluding that our government was pulling the strings.

The New York Times article on the incident, on the other hand, actually looks into the issue, and finds a chief executive of the station who claims it was just a technical problem.

A typical, dubious response, perhaps, but there's more.

They also note that the station has aired the report several times since Sunday, as well as making it available on their website. They've also placed a scrolling ticker at the bottom of other programs indicating how viewers can see the report - if the station doesn't want people seeing this story, they're doing one hell of a terrible job at it.

I'm reminded of the shutdown of the Wikileaks domain name not long ago - the site was clearly violating numerous laws, but because it was a vaguely anti-government website being shut down by the judiciary, it looked a bit like censorship.

But instead of finding out if those claims of censorship had any merit, bloggers and others with axes to grind decided to go ahead and claim that our government was censoring dissent, abolishing our liberties, and once again marching toward fascism.

Don't overreact, do your research, and leave your conspiracy theories at home.