Producers at Austin Community Television, ACTV, are taking their fight to court against the City of Austin and the Board of Directors of the City Council. They claim they are being censored by the Board, and the City is trying to get them in court.
00:00:35.000Enjoyed talking to him about this when I first began to learn of it when he was leaving one of the board meetings, though he didn't have any details of it.
00:01:30.000And we continued to tell the board, look, repudiate what's in your minutes and what you've said about censoring people.
00:01:36.000Repudiate this, or we're going to have to take legal action.
00:01:41.000And understand that I actually studied the law quite a bit, and I know there was a tort reform four years ago, now it's almost five, where you, it's a tort reform, it's a good thing, where if you don't want to just go right out and sue somebody, you can have an investigative Subpoena, which the courts lean towards and almost always grant.
00:02:01.000And that's what this hearing is coming up for.
00:02:03.000And if that's unsuccessful, then we have the big guns.
00:02:07.000We have violations of the contract with the city, with the charter from the early 70s, with just multi-facets, conflict of interest, dynamite stuff.
00:02:31.000Whereas I can find plenty of lawyers who are ready to go right out and go up against the city and AXS television and anybody else that's involved in this.
00:02:40.000And I know the city's not afraid of that.
00:02:42.000You guys are up here with billion-dollar bond proposals or half-a-billion-dollar bond proposals.
00:02:46.000The point is that AXS television is very, very important.
00:02:49.000Just to give people some background, let me just read Stephen's press release.
00:02:56.000ACTV producers go to court over free speech.
00:02:59.000Austin, Texas producers at Austin Community Television, ACTV, who oppose the ACTV board of directors' moves to limit free speech and expand commercialism on Austin's public television channel, Senate 1116, are taking their fight to court.
00:03:12.000And we will remind you, this is the birthplace of Axis Television, years before Congress codified it.
00:03:18.000And years before the deregulation of 1996, AXS TV was born here.
00:03:24.000This is the Independence Hall of AXS television.
00:03:26.000We have former city council members who have shows like George Humphrey.
00:03:29.000We have black shows, white shows, Hispanic shows, people shows, libertarian shows, Democracy Now!, Republicans, pro-lifers.
00:03:38.000And today, Attorney Steve Gibbons, on behalf of six ACTV producers, and we've got a lot more that want to sign on, just these six filled out all the paperwork.
00:03:47.000It's filing a petition in Travis County District Court in order to depose and subpoena records from ACTV board members and ACTV director John Villarreal.
00:03:56.000On July 22nd, ACTV board members and executive management announced a reorganization of the channels that would effectively limit free speech programming to one channel, Channel 10. The board says it will be called free TV. Austin's free speech and non-commercial public access television channels are threatened by the board's channel reorganization.
00:04:15.000Said Stephan Ray, ACTV producer for the program Democracy Now.
00:04:19.000Producers taking this legal step represent both sides of the political spectrum.
00:04:24.000One of them is George Woolley, myself, Alex Jones, Stephan Ray, and others.
00:04:27.000The board's limits on free speech go against the charter of ACTV, said Jones.
00:04:32.000By that I mean the original documents that established public access television 31 years ago.
00:04:37.000The petition cites potential violations of the Texas Nonprofit Corporation Act, the Open Meetings Act, And I kind of disagree with that point.
00:05:01.000I just, you know, I know this is the right thing to do, but I don't want to get in this because once I get in this fight, I'm going to go all the way.
00:05:07.000I'm sure people are going to buck up and get all, you know, get their chest out, and then it gets really serious.
00:05:12.000I can't imagine the investigations we've done, the stuff we've found.
00:05:15.000And so last night we go to this board meeting that was going to select this puppet board, which I'm a member of, that just advises.
00:05:23.000And we went through these arguments about it all, being producers, and they said, well, they'll look at it a later day, but we did elect some people, and I'm on that little subcommittee.
00:05:34.000And then I said, let's go into L.S. Teca down the street, one of my favorite little restaurants.
00:05:37.000So I go over there, and we've got like 15 people there, and I'm sitting across the table.
00:05:41.000John Villarreal, and I have four witnesses to this, and two of them now sworn this into the court record.
00:05:48.000And I say, so can't we just stop this talk of restricting free speech, what's in your minutes, doing all this?
00:05:54.000And John says, well, in September, you're going to get a handout.
00:05:57.000We've already paid for our new series and done all this and jumped through all the hoops.
00:06:04.000And he goes, well, Alex, we're going to give you a little handout about 11 and 16, and you're going to be on 10. And we're going to tell you what your program is and where it can be and what channel.
00:06:16.000Because I won't be able to be on those channels because you can't criticize anybody on those channels.
00:06:39.000You know, there is no Patriot Act three months after it's enrolled, you know, the Patriot Act II, with the Speaker of the House, and I have the enrollment sheet from the Library of Congress.
00:06:49.000He's sitting there telling this, and I look to Lee Hill, R. Lee Hill, one of the board members, and I say, Lee, he's sitting right next to me.
00:06:55.000I say, Lee, is this true that, you know, you guys keep denying this to the media, but it's in your minutes.
00:07:50.000The establishment doesn't want us to have this.
00:07:52.000So we can criticize the toll roads, we can criticize the checkpoints, we can criticize the police state, the people's voice nationwide, every week some new established 25, 30 year old access station is being shut down and in some cases it's this slick maneuver of, oh we're commercializing it or we're going to change his designation or we're going to have a program director and he says if you get a show.
00:08:12.000That's not what access television is supposed to be all about.
00:08:17.000And so I just start typing the board members names into Google.
00:08:21.000I mean, literally on Saturday night, my wife comes down at 2 in the morning.
00:08:38.000Austin Time Warner, head of, you know, personnel management and development.
00:08:44.000And I go out to other board members, and they've got big media companies, and they're former heads of major record labels, and they've got big fancy entertainment educational companies, and then I've heard, we're going to have education on Channel 16, and can't have bad stuff around that.
00:08:59.000We're going to get grants, and all the pieces start going boom, boom, boom.
00:09:02.000Then I go down layer after layer and layer after layer of stuff I don't even want to bring up here.
00:11:00.000I have a passion for it because it stands up against tyranny, and it's an Austin landmark and institution.
00:11:05.000You know, I'm trying to stand up for acts of television because what it is for the community and for those that haven't got the chance to get out and have their voices heard and to get involved.
00:11:18.000And I just dearly love it, and there is so much more to this story and so many serious things that are happening.
00:11:28.000Some of the members of the board, some of the members seem like they're willing to listen and try to back off these past rules and laws that they have brought in, regulations, that would restrict speech.
00:11:41.000But then as soon as one has said they don't want to do it, then another denies it, then another says, yes, we're going to do it, and you're going to be given a handout in a month telling you what channels you can be on.
00:11:50.000So I would ask the council that is the true elected body in...
00:11:57.000Austin, Texas, to send interrogatories, letters, registered letters to the board, and demand from them all of these working group minutes for yourself, so you can find out what these true notes are, so you can see it for yourself.
00:12:14.000And we're going to bring you, I wasn't aware that you hadn't seen the minutes, and obviously you're very busy, we'll bring you the minutes of the stuff we've gotten.
00:12:20.000First thing they do is come in Months and months and months ago, what month was that where they set aside the rules, Stephen?
00:12:52.000She gets up at the Millennium Center at one of these forums and is asked about it, and she goes, well, we're for that because, you know, this could hurt people's feelings by criticizing other religions.
00:13:01.000And I'm a realtor, and I almost lost a sale because somebody would want to sell to one religion because they heard something on ACTV. Well, it's not our problem if somebody criticizes some religion.
00:13:49.000And we're not even seeking money at this point.
00:13:52.000We simply want to leave the institution alone so that it is not damaged, and so its protective membrane of free speech is not damaged, their content neutral position as providers to the community.
00:14:03.000We don't want our individual free speech and what we do with our shows to be damaged.
00:14:09.000We don't want any of the producers to be damaged.
00:14:11.000I've been to four or five of these producer meetings, and there might be one producer out of 200 people that shows up.
00:17:07.000Then you call McCracken's office and they say, conspiracy theory, conspiracy theory.
00:17:12.000And then our sources inside the telecommunications system at the highest levels, I don't think we want to give those names out, but Stephan's been conferring with them, looked in the files.
00:17:22.000There's been, on average, 12 complaints a year about AXS TV. I mean, my God, I have a little sandwich shot on the road from me, probably gets 12 complaints a day.
00:17:30.000And they admit that they've got over a thousand phone calls at McCracken's office saying they don't want this.