Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, September 3, 1995 TAG: 9509050004
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DAN CASEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Last fall, when the Rev. Jerry Falwell began selling the "Clinton Chronicles" from his pulpit, David Garst had an inspiration.
Why not air the controversial documentary on the Cox Cable system's public access station? the semiretired chiropractor from Roanoke County wondered.
Garst and Gretchen Shine, general manager of Cox Cable Roanoke, offer quite different accounts of how willingly the company responded to his request.
In any event, Cox eventually aired the "Clinton Chronicles" last October. The innuendo-filled "documentary" attempts to link President Clinton and some Arkansas cronies to a smorgasbord of crimes ranging from drug smuggling and money laundering to murder.
The outcome was a flurry of complaints from viewers in Roanoke, Roanoke County and Vinton. Because the channel has gone largely unused for years, they weren't used to seeing controversial programming on it.
As a result of the reaction to the "Clinton Chronicles" and some suggestions by the three governments' appointed panel that oversees cable television, Shine proposed guidelines for programming that could be aired on the channel.
But that opened a Pandora's box of questions the panel still is trying to close.
Members of the Roanoke Valley Cable Television Committee have been wrestling with the issue at least since last October, suggesting changes in the wording of the guidelines, according to minutes of the group's meetings and interviews with members.
Then, last month, a final draft was presented to the committee.
This time, however, members decided not to give any stamp of approval or take any action on the rules whatsoever.
The reason?
Roanoke City Attorney Wilburn Dibling advised the quasi-governmental panel that courts have recognized public access channels as a forum for the public to exercise free speech, which is guaranteed by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Any action by a government body spelling out what is and what is not allowed on public access, Dibling added, could be construed as government limits on free speech. That could land the city, county and town in court.
And he noted that legal precedents on the subject suggest that Cox Cable, as a private corporation, "has much more latitude" in limiting programming on the access channel than any government does.
\ The issues go beyond nudity or four-letter words.
Nobody in the Roanoke Valley has ever produced a show in the public access studio Cox Cable maintains - which is stocked with $100,000 worth of equipment. But elsewhere, public access programming is growing at an incredible rate.
The trend has prompted commercial television spoofs such as Saturday Night Live's "Wayne's World," which later was made into a hit movie.
Most public access programs are religious in nature, or air relatively benign discussions of consumer finance, sports, local music scenes or travel. But others touch on far more controversial topics, such as abortion, gay rights, citizen militias and white separatism.
A public access station in Minneapolis airs a program on lesbian issues called "Dyke TV." Blacksburg's public access channel at one time was airing "American Atheist Forum." And Austin, Texas, is airing shows titled "Spigots for Bigots" and "Feminist Forum: Abortion for Survival."
It is shows like these that have left the Roanoke Valley Cable Television Committee fretting out loud over the potential uses of Cox's public access channel - which is separate from Channel 3, another access channel for government and educational use only.
According to minutes of its meeting last October, committee member Al Beckley of Roanoke said he thought the committee should take no action encouraging the use of public access.
This spring, Beckley, a retired Roanoke city government employee, asked Dibling to see if the committee could amend the franchise agreement with Cox to do away with the channel altogether. The attorney later advised that it would be a bad move, because even that could be seen as infringing on free speech.
Michelle Bono, the city's public information officer and a member of the committee, said the panel's intent was to avoid "hate programming," shows with abusive language aimed at racial or ethnic groups.
"There have been some concerns voiced by citizens that they don't want to see real objectionable programming on the access channel," she said. "We don't want things horribly objectionable to be aired on our access channel. It's not like Home Box Office, where you choose to have access."
But it's talk like this that worries Garst. Who is to decide what is objectionable? he wonders. He says Cox at first told him "they wouldn't feel proper in airing" the "Clinton Chronicles," and relented only after he threatened a lawsuit.
Shine, however, says the company never refused to air the program, and required only that an 800 number advertising sales of the tape be edited out because commercial programming is banned from the channel.
The initial guidelines proposed by Shine conceivably would have prohibited much more than obscenity, and indeed, could have been construed to bar the "Clinton Chronicles."
At one point, the guidelines contained language, since deleted, barring shows on "controversial or sensitive topics such as abortion, etc.," if the producers didn't make equal time available to opposing viewpoints.
That section has been watered down to read "controversial or sensitive topics of a political nature." Shine says it now affects only shows on which political candidates appear.
Another section in the initial guidelines that also has been deleted would have required that shows be of "general interest to the public." But who decides that? Garst asked.
And a third section, which was deleted after The Roanoke Times began asking questions about the guidelines, would have prohibited shows that were not locally produced.
Garst says he believes that was aimed at him and the "Clinton Chronicles," which were made in California. Shine says it's not true, that that particular section was an oversight that she never intended to enforce.
Language that remains in the document, however, still allows Cox to refuse the use of public access equipment or to air completed shows "if in the Company's opinion a group or individual is not deemed responsible or the submitted material is of an obscene or indecent nature."
Shine says the issue of who is and who is not "responsible" hasn't come up before and will be decided on a case-by-case basis.
Aside from "obscene or indecent," which the cable company's attorney still is trying to define, Garst says language opens the door to prohibiting almost anything.
"This is public access," he says. "This is one of the last bastions of free speech whereby the public can have direct access to the airwaves without information being filtered or homogenized or edited by a supreme power."
Garst is making plans to air the "Clinton Chronicles II" this fall. Shine says he is welcome to do so, provided it conforms to guidelines for length and that any commercialism is edited out.
Meanwhile, the Cox studio is there. Although a handful of people have taken training in the use of the video equipment, nobody has used it to produce a show that has aired on Channel 9.
And Shine will bring back yet another revised draft of the guidelines to the committee Wednesday afternoon.
Stay tuned.
by CNB