Local PBS affiliate delays ‘Frontline' report

HARLINGEN — Chuck Crowley said he had seen several promotions for a PBS Frontline investigation into questionable police shootings in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, and planned to watch the program at 8 p.m. Wednesday.

But, instead of Frontline, KMBH, the local PBS affiliate, rebroadcast a concert by Sting, Crowley said.

The Frontline report, "Law & Disorder," covers several cases in which New Orleans police officers have been accused of shooting unarmed civilians in the days following Hurricane Katrina in September 2005.

On Thursday, Crowley, who described himself as a longtime PBS viewer and supporter, called KMBH to ask why Frontline did not air.

He said a receptionist who answered the phone at the local station told him the program contained offensive language. He asked to speak to the station manager but was told he was not available, Crowley said.

Crowley said he has called KMBH at least four times asking to speak with interim General Manager John Ross and has never been able to speak with him, and Ross has not returned any of his calls.

The KMBH program listings did not air an alternate broadcast time for Frontline, but around 1 a.m. Friday, and quite by accident, Crowley said, he found that KMBH was broadcasting the Frontline piece.

He said the only language he heard in the program that could be considered offensive was "the N word," a racial epithet spoken by a black man who was wounded in the shooting.

"I want to know who decides (to censor KMBH programming)," Crowley said Friday. "I want to know how they decide to censor programs."

He said KMBH could have posted a notice at the beginning of the show to alert viewers the program contained language that may be offensive, or the station could have "bleeped out" words it deemed objectionable.

The Frontline piece, available for viewing on the program’s Web site, begins with a notice warning that the program contains "graphic language and imagery."

Ross did not return phone calls from Valley Morning Star and did not reply to an e-mail sent to him on Friday.

A receptionist who answered the phone at KMBH at 11:20 a.m. Friday said Ross was only available in the morning but then added that she did not know when he would be available to respond to a phone message.

Brenda Riojas, a spokeswoman for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brownsville, said she is not involved with KMBH and referred questions to Ross.

Local public broadcasting affiliates can decide if and when to air any PBS programs, an official at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting said Friday when contacted about the KMBH decision to delay the Frontline broadcast.

Eben Peck, the senior director of government affairs for CPB, said, "By law, we’re prohibited from being involved with local programming decisions."

PBS does not know whether any other affiliates rescheduled this week’s edition of Frontline, Peck said.

Some PBS affiliates, Peck said, "bleeped expletives" from two Frontline programs, "A Company of Soldiers" in 2005 and Ken Burns’ World War II documentary "The War" in 2007. Other affiliates rescheduled the program to air one hour later in the evening.

This week’s edition of Frontline is at least the second time KMBH has decided not to air a Frontline program in its original time slot, but moved it to a non-prime time hour.

In January 2007, KMBH, which is owned by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brownsville, refused to air "Hand of God," a Frontline report on child molestation by Roman Catholic priests in the Archdiocese of Boston.

It was one of only two PBS affiliates in the nation to refuse to air "Hand of God."

At that time, KMBH general manager Monsignor Pedro Briseño reportedly said that he wanted to watch "Hand of God" before it aired locally to determine whether it was appropriate for local viewers.

KMBH later broadcast "Hand of God" at 1 a.m., rather than the usual Frontline time slot at 8 p.m.

The other PBS station that did not air the documentary cited a scheduling conflict.

Bishop Daniel Flores reassigned Briseño to "full-time parish ministry" in Harlingen shortly after Flores was assigned to lead the Brownsville Diocese in December 2009.