CBS aired its long-awaited feature on the prosecution and imprisonment of former Alabama Governor Don E. Siegelman this evening at 7:00. In a stunning move of censorship, the transmission was blocked across the northern third of Alabama by CBS affiliate WHNT, which is owned by interests of the Bass Family.

--Scott Horton, "CBS: More Prosecutorial Misconduct in Siegelman Case" Harper's

What's next? A Gulag in Mobile Bay?

Scott Horton, a lawyer-journalist who blogs for Harper's, has been covering not only the Siegelman affair, but the complicit Alabama Media, who have received heavy fire for their aggressively partisan coverage of this and any other politically-oriented story. The same company owns almost every major daily in the state - Birmingham News, Mobile Press-Register, Huntsville Times, and Montgomery Journal.

The dailies, incensed at the national exposure, are firing back at Horton now, to the extent that one Dan Curry, a staffer for the Mobile paper, has been given a leave of absence to write a BOOK about how unfair it is to have anyone suggest that allowing a US Attorney to plant stories in their paper is in any way a partisan act. I'll wait for the miniseries, myself. ^o^

If there IS a miniseries, it will undoubtedly have more luck being broadcast than 60 Minutes did. It's Alabama, after all.

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