Dear TV hacks,
Are you aware you have become a conduit for yellow press on the issue of Southron history and a free advertising mechanism for the NAACP? I make my case as follows:
Gary Bledsoe, head of the NAACP in Texas was interviewed 20 September 2000 by Doug Miller of KHOU-TVHouston, Texas. The following is a short transcription, (my observations in parentheses), rebuttal remarks interspersed in bold:

Bledsoe:Why is it that our World War II heroes like Admiral Nimitz don't have any statues?
Doug Miller (interviewer): Inside the capitol Confederate heroes share the space with modern leaders. The NAACP believes the same could happen outside. The state's NAACP director is asking some hard questions.
Bledsoe:It's just a dominance of people who fought for the Confederacy.
This is an out and out LIE! Three monuments out of seventeen are related to the Confederacy. View a map of the Texas Capitol grounds. For those who don't know Texas history, and that apparently includes Bledsoe; Hood's Brigade and Terry's Texas Rangers fought for Texas in the Confederacy.
It's like that's the only war that was ever fought that was of any value to the people of Texas....
This is a bald-faced LIE! See the map again. You can read can't you, Bledsoe?
What we're hoping to do is bring some kind of balance (pauses, swallows hard, breaks eye contact, looking evasively away to the side)...
Better brush up on your body language, Bledsoe.This is the behavior of a habitual LIAR!
so that everybody can come to the table and say that we agree with that.
A major process fault buried in well-intentioned rhetoric! If there is a "balanced" discussion, I am present and participating from the beginning not merely arriving at the end to acquiesce.

E-mail sent to KHOU-TV

Station Manager,
I have these comments about Doug Miller's segment about Confederate monuments dominating the capitol grounds (20 September 2000). While the introduction was positive, it focused on things not related to Austin (Dowling and the museum in Sugarland). The piece became negative when you "went" to Austin. As for Mr. Bledsoe, this is the old bait and switch ploy, plain and simple. He has made a half-hearted, open-ended affirmation now and will aggressively demand much more in the future (the same technique used in removing the flag in South Carolina and the plaques in Austin). Knowing this you should have nailed him down on specifics and asked him if he would go back on his word. Your segment said he had hard questions to ask, well the rest of us do too, but they did not make it on the air.
A little background research on the NAACP would have revealed their national goal delineated in the early 1990's to obliterate the Confederate flag and all symbols of the Confederacy. I would liked to have seen him explain his stance vis-à-vis the national mandate. Anybody that thinks he cares about Admiral Nimitz is a fool. At one point he mentions "balance," breaks eye contact with the interviewer and looks evasively to the side as he pontificates. A good reporter would have pounced immediately. "Mr. Bledsoe, how many Confederate monuments do you want torn down? How many monuments to slaves do you want erected?" Basically, I think you are being manipulated and he has you feeling good about it. A talent indeed. Please keep in mind who he works for and what they want. I also refer you to the following PBS transcript which warns of why journalists aren't historians.
Finally, the segment briefly showed a man in a truck who appeared to be drunk, shouting something nonsensical about a flag and a black man. I did not understand the irrelevant, disjunctive nature of this clip. Who was he? Why was he angry? And at who? This should have been explained. Was this done to try to cast Southrons as radical rednecks? I resent the negative implications, and as a Southron gentleman I would like an on-air apology. No doubt if the skin colors had been reversed, you would have handled this differently.

Sincerely,
Barry J. Lemmons

KHOU has not replied and I await my apology.

KPRC-TV in Houston posted this editorial:

Governor Should Provide Answers Over Plaques, Stand Up And Explain Actions HOUSTON, Posted 4:03 p.m. CDT June 14, 2000 --
Governor Bush's administration did the right thing in replacing the Confederate plaques on the Texas Supreme Court building with statements promising equal treatment for all citizens. We wish it had been done differently. We would have liked to hear the governor say that honoring the Confederate cause and displaying the Rebel flag may have been acceptable for many people in the 1950's when the signs were set, but they do not reflect our ideals for government today, so they needed to come down. Instead, janitors removed the plaques over a weekend. The Sons of Confederate Veterans accused them of acting like "thieves in the night." We question the timing and execution of the switch. Could it have something to do with the hammering Bush took over the Rebel flag flying in South Carolina? And now, are we pretending that our new plaques were there all along? Replacing the plaques was a stand-up thing to do. Why doesn't someone from the governor's office stand up and say so?
I'm Steve Wasserman. Let me hear from you.

The television industry is now comprised of huge brokered marketing conglomerates. They are not searchers for the truth or guardians of free speech. Their business is selling and that means bowing to the whim du jour -- heritage & history be damned. The NAACP has capitalized on this and the fact that humans are very visual creatures. Flashy, shocking images and seven-second sound bites are the industry staple (reference the last paragraph of my KHOU e-mail -- a four second snippet turned the piece negative and buttressed the NAACP's hollow arguments). Television has become a medium where the movie-maker's craft and slick psychology have congealed to form a great cataract across this part of the communication industry. Edward R. Murrow, where are you when we need you?