Wrong method produces right result

Cape Girardeau's Cable Television Advisory Committee used the wrong process to come to the right conclusion about a controversial program on the city's public access channel.

The issue started at an April 7 city council meeting when Mayor Jay Knudtson said he'd had complaints about inappropriate language on Tony Heckemeyer's program on the cable-access channel, a rebroadcast of his weekly radio program that airs on KSIM in Sikeston, Mo.

Knudtson called the program "a joke" and said the council should consider pulling the plug on it. Come to find out, the plug had been pulled eight weeks earlier over the same allegations.

The program began airing on the public-access channel at the behest of former city councilman and county Democratic Party leader Tom Neumeyer.

Heckemeyer is a former circuit judge and a staunch Democrat who lost to Jo Ann Emerson in the 1998 8th District congressional race. He's done the radio show for almost four years.

Told of Knudtson's allegations, Heckemeyer said he's just interested in "straight old raw politics."

Indeed, city manager Michael Miller and others searched the tapes at the cable access station and didn't find any obscene or vulgar language at all.

The council tossed the matter to the Cable Television Advisory Board, which was appropriate. It's the kind of thing that board exists to handle. The Federal Communications Commission, which helped legislate open cable access about a decade ago, and the local cable company have no legal say over what is aired.

But the city has an ordinance that dictates what can and cannot go on the air and in what format it can be displayed.

For some reason, the Cable Television Advisory Board members decided to have a closed session with city attorney Eric Cunningham, citing "litigation" as the reason. No one threatened litigation. Cunningham said the meeting had to be private so he could explain the issues surrounding public-access programming.

There shouldn't have been anything said in that secret meeting that the general public shouldn't know. A conscientious advisory board member should have tried to protect the public's interests and insisted the meeting be kept open. That didn't happen.

During the closed meeting, the board decided to put Heckemeyer's program back on the air with the city-required explanation about the program. Neumeyer said he would take care of that.

This was a victory for the First Amendment, albeit a small one. The program is expected to start airing again on Tuesday.