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Letter to the editor

If you boo too acidly, we will cut off your TV

By HOWARD TROXLER, Times Columnist
Published October 4, 2007

Hillsborough County has decided to shut down its public-access cable TV channel.

In response, the group that operates that channel, Speak Up Tampa Bay Inc., is suing the county in federal court.

If that were the total description of the fight, then I'd say that the county deserved to win.

After all, nobody has any "right" to force the government - meaning the taxpayers - to provide them with their own TV channel.

But the case is about more than that.

As Speak Up's lawsuit points out, the public access channel often has been a venue for citizen criticism of the county government.

The lawsuit cites various examples, including:

- Joe Redner, the longtime show host and frequent candidate for public office, vigorously denouncing county commissioners as idiots, liars and thieves.

- Shows criticizing the Tampa Sports Authority and the use of tax dollars to support professional sports (along with some colorful criticism of cheerleaders, too).

- Shows expressing opposition to the $40-million sports park backed by Commissioner Jim Norman (which the commission finally, mercifully killed Wednesday).

Reacting to this kind of criticism, the lawsuit says, county officials made comments about their desire to terminate the channel.

Commissioner Brian Blair, for example, cited the content of public-access TV in campaigns, calling public access a forum for smut and racism, and declaring that he wanted to cut its funding.

At this point, the lawsuit is starting to get interesting.

This is getting closer to what the government cannot do - it cannot allow or disallow speech by the citizens based on whether it likes what those citizens have to say.

Aware of that, the government's lawyers began to advise the elected officials to clam up about their true motive, and to find a "content-neutral" pretext for killing public access.

The current budget cuts being made by most Florida governments provided just such a pretext.

The lawsuit alleges that Hillsborough's action is unconstitutional because the county is keeping open a second TV channel -where it likes the content better.

We're talking, of course, about the Hillsborough government's own access TV channel.

Most government TV stations these days don't stop at just showing public meetings - they churn out all kinds of original programming intended to make the government look good.

To sum matters up in the light most favorable to Speak Up, we're in the ballpark of a reasonable argument:

(1) The government created a neutral public forum.

(2) The citizens used that public forum to criticize the government.

(3) In response, government officials expressed their displeasure with what the citizens had to say and announced their intention to silence them.

(4) The government then shut down the public-access channel - while keeping its own channel intact, where it liked the content better than that provided by the citizens.

On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge James S. Moody declined to give Speak Up Tampa Bay an immediate, emergency ruling. But the lawsuit will proceed.

Hey, there have been worse cases.

[Last modified October 3, 2007, 23:59:43]