Orwellian.

Wow. Remember when there used to be such a thing as the "liberal media"?

Shit, today I'd be grateful for an unbiased media, not controlled by conservative corporations with their noses shoved up the Republican Party's asshole.

Last night, 60 Minutes aired a report on the politically-motivated prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman, exposing the dirty little fingers of Karl Rove in this operation.

However, viewers in North Alabama didn't get to see the Siegelman story on 60 Minutes. Why? Well, coincidentally enough, WHNT-19, the CBS affiliate in Huntsville, just happened to be off the air for 12 of the 13 minutes of the Siegelman story. How convenient.

Hmm. On the screen, in place of the 60 Minutes report, WHNT placed this notice:

We apologize that you missed the first segment of 60 Minutes tonight featuring ‘The Prosecution of Don Siegelman.’ It was a technical problem with CBS out of New York.

Well, nobody understands technical difficulties more than me, so end of story, right? Not so fast. An intrepid blogger named Scott Horton contacted CBS headquarters in New York, who told him this:

There is no delicate way to put this: the WHNT claim is not true. There were no transmission difficulties. The problems were peculiar to Channel 19, which had the signal and had functioning transmitters.” I was told that the decision to blacken screens across Northern Alabama “could only have been an editorial call."

Quickly, WHNT changed their story, saying that the technical problem had been on their end, with one of their satellite receivers, and not at the New York end.

Upon investigation, WHNT has learned that the satellite receiver that allows us to receive programming from CBS failed. The problem was on our end, not the network's.

WHNT rebroadcast the Siegelman segment during their local news last night, and also prominently posted the complete report on their website.

Again, end of story, right?

No, not necessarily. Even if you take WHNT's explanation at face value (which I have trouble) doing, and give them the benefit of the doubt that it was in fact technical difficulties, and give them credit for rebroadcasting the segment on-air and on their website, there's still the troubling matter of this:

Alabama GOP responds to 60 Minutes Report

This press release from the Alabama Republican Party is linked from WHNT's front page. No explanation, no editorial analysis, no context. WHNT is treating the 60 Minutes report as if it is one side of a debate, rather than an unbiased piece of reporting from the station's parent network.

Indeed, one of the main witnesses interviewed in the report was former Arizona Attorney General Grant Woods. Not only is Woods a Republican, he's also co-chair of the McCain for President committee, in addition to being the godfather of one of John McCain's children!!! Not exactly a screaming liberal, and yet he said:

I personally believe that what happened here is that they targeted Don Siegelman because they could not beat him fair and square. This was a Republican state and he was the one Democrat they could never get rid of.

By allowing the Alabama GOP to respond with ridiculous talking points, WHNT legitimizes their argument. There are not necessarily "two sides to every story." Sometimes, there are the facts, and then there is everything else.

But, WHNT is controlled by "Oak Hill Partners" and the Bass family, who are known for giving large amounts of cash to Republican candidates. So none of this should surprise us, really.

The days of being able to trust ANYTHING from the mainstream media are over. They are all whores to their corporate masters, and the editorial decisions are made based on politics and greed.