RALEIGH -- State Sen. Fletcher Hartsell, backed by the Senate leadership, has done something both appalling and brilliant.
It's appalling because, as chairman of a Senate Judiciary Committee, the Cabarrus Republican has steered his committee into what many believe is an unprecedented invasion of the editorial process of a news organization in North Carolina.
And it's brilliant because his intervention has sparked much more public interest into forthcoming news reports about Alcoa Power Generating, Inc. and its industrial operations' effect on the Yadkin River. It has all but guaranteed a far larger audience for UNC TV's findings than would have occurred.
The judiciary committee has requested - and issued a subpoena for it as well - research from UNC TV about Alcoa's operations on the Yadkin River and its effect on people and the environment, among other things. Hartsell believes that the television station - overseen by the UNC Board of Governors and financed in part by the state - has information that would be useful to the public and the legislature as it ponders whether the state ought to create a way to purchase Alcoa's hydroelectric generating plants on the Yadkin.
Alcoa is seeking renewal of its federal license to operate the generating plants. The Perdue administration has formally opposed the relicensing, and the Senate voted last year to create a Yadkin River trust to purchase and operate the station if the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission turns down the relicensing. But that's a long shot. For one thing, the House last year soundly rejected the bill.
By subpoenaing material prior to broadcast by UNC TV, Hartsell and his committee have touched off a sharp reaction from free speech advocates over the First Amendment and government intrusion into how news is gathered and published - and how it is not.
Hartsell believes the information is so important that the committee's request and its subpoena are justified - and in any case he says the shield law does not exempt the media from complying with the legislative subpoena. The law, he says, deals with courts and quasi-judicial proceedings, not with legislative inquiries. And he argues that because UNC TV is a state agency, the legislature is justified in asking for information in the agency's possession.
One reason Hartsell is so intent on making that information public is that he believes UNC TV had enough material for a documentary program that is in the public interest for everyone to see. He has certainly put the heat on UNC TV to produce.
UNC TV's Steve Volstad said Thursday that the organization does not have a documentary but has been working on three news segments that will be broadcast when they are ready. The research was compiled by UNC TV's senior legislative reporter, Eszter Vajda, who declined to be interviewed. But Senate leaders believe that Vajda proposed a one-hour documentary but that UNC TV decided not to pursue it.
The rare issuance of a legislative committee subpoena has tongues wagging all over Raleigh and among North Carolina's corporate community.
I'm sympathetic to those who think the state should recapture the federal license. But I'm genuinely troubled by a legislative committee intervening in a news operation's internal decisions over what stories to pursue, how to frame a story and whether to publish or broadcast it. It's a bad precedent, period.
But I also think Hartsell has adroitly re-engineered a dull legislative policy debate into a lively topic for public consideration: What does UNC TV know, if anything, about Alcoa? What bearing, if any, would it have on the relicensing process? How soon will the public be able to find out?
This may be a wonderful opportunity for UNC TV to show off its investigative reporting skills and fulfill its obligation to inform the public. Or maybe it'll be a boring story with nothing new. I don't know. But I think it's up to UNC TV to decide what and when to air. If the agency is smart, it will do so soon. Tonight would be good.
Jack Betts is a Raleigh-based columnist and associate editor for The Charlotte Observer.
