Tip of the tam to WHNT in Huntstville, Alabama?

To the left you'll see Robert M. Bass. He supposedly started Oak Hill Capital Partners and they (he and his brothers at least had or have a big chunk of Oak Hill) now supposedly own WHNT up in Huntsville. Scott Horton of Harper's first raised the issue of WHNT perhaps blocking the transmission of the 60 Minutes piece on Don Siegelman. Larisa Alexandrovna is writing on this at Raw Story, HuffPo, and her own At Largely. The story has made it to Daily Kos and FireDogLake and ... Larisa wrote:

WHNT in Huntsville Alabama was purchased by Oak Hill Capital Partners from the New York Times Company early last year. Oak Hill is owned by the Bass brothers, Bush fundraisers at the "Pioneer" level – raising over $100,000 for the Bush-Cheney campaigns in both 2000 and 2004. Lee Bass is perhaps the best known member of the Bass family for his role in George W. Bush’s failed energy venture called Spectrum 7 and later for his bailing out of Harken Energy.

The Oak Hill connection emerged last night on Democratic Underground.

While SourceWatch has the New York Times listed as owning the station it appears The Gray Lady sold the station recently to Oak Hill. This CBS station, whether owned by one or more of the Bass Brothers or his/their interests or not, failed to broadcast the 60 Minutes story on Don Siegelman last night at 6:00 PM claiming "technical difficulties" prevented. And given the fact that most people still get their news from on air broadcasting, perhaps especially true in poor Alabama, it would have been good to have the coverage go out at this hour of the day.

The way WHNT has finally responded to appropriate questions regarding this failure to broadcast seems solid. And yet I want to see this followed up on. If they got caught and then fixed it then not so solid. If they legitimately just had a problem then at least we'll know. Enough smoke is here that is looks like some fire might be about. Finally, I don't know enough about the technology to know if records can be manipulated one way or the other to cover up any monkey business. I hate feeling all conspiratorial and yet after these last few years maybe it can be understood and even expected.

There's I suppose time to get to the truth on WHNT's failure to originally broadcast and yet Don Siegelman remains in prison. The main thing remains getting to the bottom of his prosecution. Setting Don free pending his appeals, plus Congressional hearings and the like, surely seems merited. It's long past time to send him home to his family. John Gunn

UPDATE ~ Evening of March 1, 2008 - It appears Robert M. Bass has been sharing his wealth with plenty of Democrats as well. The NYT reporting indicates his brothers were Bu$h backers but Robert was donating to John Kerry in 2004. Although I wasn't weeping and gnashing teeth about the broadcast failure I wanted to make sure the record was correct.