Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Candidate demands equal TV time

Jennifer Crockett wants to counter repeatedly aired video of two officials touting a rival for School Board.

By DONNA WINCHESTER
Published September 26, 2006

WHAT THEY SAID:

Comments made Aug. 22 at the Mayor's Top Apple Awards:

"She's been a great School Board member. Mary Brown has been a great School Board member. Did I get that across? Mary Brown has been a great School Board member." - Mayor Rick Baker

* * *

"I will tell you there has been no greater champion for kids, all kids, in the St. Petersburg community, than Mary Brown. ... I'll be a little bolder. They tell me to stay out of politics. I'll stay out of politics, but I'll say, please remember what a friend she's been to the city and to our community and most importantly to our kids when you go to vote. I can't get much more direct than that."

- Pinellas superintendent Clayton Wilcox

The sentiment rang out loud and clear in the City Council chamber that August morning.

"She's been a great School Board member," St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Baker told the group of principals and school staff. "Mary Brown has been a great School Board member. Did I get that across? Mary Brown has been a great School Board member."

The audience, assembled for an awards ceremony honoring schools that performed well on last year's Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, applauded. But when one of Brown's four opponents in the District 7 School Board race watched a video of the event, she burned.

Jennifer S. Crockett grew more incensed when she heard school superintendent Clayton Wilcox picking up Baker's thread, asking the group to remember Brown in the coming School Board election. When Crockett realized the video was being broadcast over and over - 17 times on one station alone - she demanded that the city and the school district cease playing it.

Now, Crockett is asking for equal time.

In a tersely worded memo to TV stations WSPF-Ch. 35 and WPDS-Ch. 14, Crockett said she will be "irreparably harmed" unless she is granted an equal amount of time on each outlet to respond.

"Statements were made to vote for my opponent," she said in an interview Monday. "For me to have equal time is only fair."

Crockett cited in her memo a clause in the U.S. Broadcasting "Equal Time" Regulatory Rule that requires radio and television stations and cable systems that originate their own programming to treat legally qualified political candidates equally when it comes to selling or giving away air time.

The rule - Section 315, Part I, Subchapter III, Chapter 5 of Title 47 - states in essence that when a station sells or gives one minute of time to one candidate, it must sell or give one minute of time, with the same potential audience, to all other candidates for that office.

There are exceptions. Stations that give time to candidates at "on-the-spot" news events, for example, do not have to offer equal time to other candidates for that office.

Pinellas School Board attorney Jim Robinson said he thinks the Aug. 22 awards ceremony fits the description of an "on-the-spot" news event.

"I understand Mrs. Crockett's frustration," Robinson said. "But from a legal perspective, I cannot conclude that we're under an obligation to provide equal access to her."

Chief Assistant St. Petersburg City Attorney Mark Winn said Monday afternoon that his office was unaware of Crockett's request. But "if someone in a public meeting said something, that would not necessarily require us to give someone else equal time," he said.

According to the Federal Communications Commission, the rule is triggered by the amount of time a candidate is shown on camera, not by what is said about the candidate.

During Arnold Schwarzenegger's bid for California governor, for example, TV stations refrained from broadcasting any of his movies out of concern that other candidates would ask for equal time, an FCC spokesman said.

At the awards ceremony, the camera panned back and forth from Baker to Brown and paused briefly on her smiling face. The August ceremony was one of two public events at which Wilcox, the superintendent, showed his support for Brown. He told about 50 people at an Aug. 30 forum sponsored by the African American Voter Research Education Committee that he favored her in the Sept. 5 primary election.

Brown finished first in the primary with 48 percent of the vote. Crockett finished second with 22 percent. The two will face off in the Nov. 7 general election.

Wilcox apologized for his remarks at the forum a week after the primary, acknowledging "it was not the right thing for me to have done - to in essence sponsor or support an individual candidate."

This time, Crockett isn't looking for an apology. She wants the opportunity for a rebuttal, and she thinks federal law is on her side.

"Time was provided to her," she said of Brown. "Whether it's a 30-second commercial or whatever it is, it's only fair that I have the opportunity as well."

[Last modified September 26, 2006, 01:31:52]