RALEIGH -- Think about it a minute: What if a legislative committee worried about what an N.C. State University engineering professor was researching about the resistance of, say, public buildings or bridges to terrorist attacks? And just to make sure it knew that professor was not doing anything that would help terrorists, what if that committee were to issue a subpoena demanding all research, notes, videotape or digital images?
Or suppose a political science professor at UNC-Chapel Hill was researching, say, the impact of contributions on political campaigns and how they affect legislation benefitting special interests? And suppose the committee had heard that special interests were pressuring the university to squelch that research, and just to make sure it saw the light of day, suppose the committee subpoenaed that research and planned to make it public in a hearing?
We don't know what would happen today, because some key figures in North Carolina higher education did nothing to stop it when the Senate Judiciary II Committee subpoenaed information from UNC-TV, the statewide public television system that operates under the UNC system and its Board of Governors. UNC President Erskine Bowles did not intervene in that controversy, nor did UNC-TV general manager Tom Howe. Instead, UNC-TV thought it over, got some legal advice that it had to comply, and turned over the materials.
It was a shameful episode in timidity. They should have gone to court. Had UNC President Emeritus Bill Friday still been running the system and overseeing UNC-TV, "I'd have sat on it," he said Thursday.
Friday has some sensitivity to inappropriate meddling in the university system. He was president of the university in 1963 when, late in the legislative session, lawmakers adopted without previous notice the infamous Speaker Ban Law that prohibited subversives from speaking on university campuses. It was more than intrusive. It was a constitutional breach of the First Amendment that damaged the university's reputation and diminished the state's image.
The issues of this episode are not the same, but one similarity is clear, says Friday: "It's the intellectual equivalent of the Speaker Ban Law."
Neither Bowles nor Howe would discuss their decisions not to oppose the committee's subpoena of UNC-TV's research. It involved the health impacts of Alcoa's now-shuttered aluminum smelting plant at Badin on the Yadkin River. Senate Judiciary II Committee Chairman Fletcher Hartsell, R-Cabarrus, and other senators thought UNC-TV was resisting broadcasting research by one of its reporters on Alcoa's environmental impacts. UNC-TV insisted that it had not rejected airing a documentary and said it would run three news segments on its North Carolina Now weekday news program.
But it also said it was agreeing to furnish the subpoenaed materials because it was a state-supported agency and because it was not sure its news operation was covered by the N.C. reporter's shield law. It also said it planned to begin broadcasting three segments the same day the committee wanted to air it.
Compliance was a mistake. Sure, UNC-TV is a state agency and it should comply with subpoenas for information on how the station operates. But I don't believe furnishing its raw news research to a legislative committee does anything other than undermine the credibility of a professional organization - and send a warning to potential sources that anything they say or any tips they provide may wind up on a powerful legislator's desk. That's devastating.
It also puts other public broadcasting organizations in this state in a bad spot - particularly WUNC Radio, which has an outstanding news ethic and highly professional reporters who are mindful to their obligations to listeners.
Who would want to work there?
UNC's and UNC-TV's refusal to resist the subpoena has dismayed many in the broadcast business. One of them is Jim Goodmon, CEO of Capitol Broadcasting Company's operations and its flagship station WRAL-TV, and a longtime supporter of UNC-TV. Goodmon said he tried to get Bowles to intervene and urged Howe to resist. "I told him he ought to be in jail" rather than comply with the subpoena, he said Thursday. "This is just as important an issue as if it were an academic issue," he said. "Public television should not be the investigative arm of the legislature."
I've heard from some people who don't see the harm in UNC-TV's compliance with the subpoena. They think it's a matter of transparency and wonder why the agency wouldn't be happy to comply. They don't see that it violates basic journalistic standards to allow the government to intervene in their operations. That's the kind of thing that happens in banana republics or communist regimes.
But also important is this: What happens if top-notch public TV or radio reporters conclude the legislature has just put them in an untenable position, and go elsewhere?
As Goodmon put it, "Any journalist worth his salt would not want to work there now."
That would be a high price to pay for a committee's well-intentioned but ultimately damaging attempt to get an important story on the air. It wasn't worth the cost.
Jack Betts is a Raleigh-based columnist and associate editor for The Charlotte Observer.
