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Alcoa: UNC-TV tries to unring the bell
posted at 2010-08-05 19:05 | Last modified 2010-08-05 19:07
A couple of alert readers let me know that UNC-TV appears to have removed Vajda's three NC Now segments on Alcoa from its site. When you run a search for Alcoa, the home page for the series shows up -- but if you follow the link, you get this error message.
I contacted station spokesman Steve Volstad to find out if the series had been taken down, and why. Volstad confirmed it in an email:
"We removed the videos that were posted on the North Carolina Now web site yesterday (August 4) because as "point of view" pieces they are not representative of the typical content of North Carolina Now, and we concluded that it was no longer appropriate to distribute them through the site. "
The move follows this week's release of a pretty harsh review of the series by a panel of UNC J-School professors -- a review Vajda herself disputed in this rather odd press release July 16th.
Other sources tell me that Stanly County officials had sought UNC-TV's permission to use the series in an educational capacity to counter what they see as a PR campaign by Alcoa. The station, I'm told, denied that request. Volstad says the removal of the series from the station's site yesterday was not related to that issue.
It's worth pointing out that UNC-TV seems to have done an assiduous job of asserting its broadcast rights web-wide. Various copies of the footage were circulating on YouTube after the segments aired last month. As of today, they've all apparently been removed. I couldn't find a single copy.
Update: Thank goodness for smart readers. Turns out the segments are still available on UNC-TV's site: they're just buried in the NC Now archives, where a keyword search won't find them. If you want to see them, you might want to do so soon.
Part 1 (airdate: July 6)
Part 2 (airdate: July 7)
Part 3 (airdate: July 8)
I've requested a DVD copy from the station, but I doubt I'll get permission to post the segments here. (Especially after this post.)
Unringing the bell
Can a news outlet scrub a story it aired? Technically, yes. UNC-TV owns the story, broadcast rights, copyright, and all, and if it wants to make it go away, it can certainly do so.
Retracting a story is one thing. But "disappearing" a widely-discussed series without explaining its absence is at best poor service to the station's audience, and at worst, flat-out unethical. If the series was allowed to go out over the station's airwaves, then it should either be allowed to live online in a way that lets interested parties find it, or it should be retracted. Or both. Stealth deletion is, well, dishonest. But that's just my opinion.
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