The Tompkins County Green Party and leaders in the Local Working Families Party endorsed a joint statement yesterday supporting public access television, pledging to oppose any city council members who vote for a franchise agreement that curtails public access.
Statement on Public Access (1/23/03) The vote that Common Council members will cast on the cable franchise with Time Warner Cable at its meeting on Wednesday, January 29, 2003, will determine the availability of public access for the next ten years. This critical vote will show the character of elected officials and the degree that they are devoted to the public interest.
The proposed franchise agreement will reduce the number of access channels (including the government and educational channels) from five to three. The present continuous use of Channel 76 for foreign language news programs (SCOLA) will be eliminated, as well as Channel 78, a second public access channel, which now regularly carries the alternative news program Democracy Now with Amy Goodman.
As attested by the many speakers at the public hearing on January 15, representing the colleges, public schools and a broad section of the Ithaca community, the new franchise provides inadequate public access to the television medium controlled by a cable monopoly. As rates increase, service will decrease.
Democracy depends on the availability of information and news from all sides in an open forum. That is what public access provides, and the removal of two channels is a serious blow to people's access to alternative viewpoints. This issue links our local interest in community access to larger global issues: we need the information on worldwide events that only alternative public access television provides.
We intend to actively oppose any council member who votes for this franchise agreement, in it's present form, in any future elections for public office.
-- Tompkins County Green Party, County Committee
Resolved, 1/22/03
Benjamin Nichols
Margaret Goldsmith
-- Tompkins County members of the Working Families Party (WFP) State
Committe
Contact:
Benajamin Nichols 387-4460 bn15@cornell.edu
Kenny Ritter 277-6300 theluminarynews@yahoo.com
Paul Houle 539-7490 paul@tcgreens.org
