To the editors:
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“Scheduled to air on local cable television earlier this year, Wright’s video ran head-on into political problems at the Chicago Access channel offices. Because of the nudity and sexually explicit narrative in the tape, cable administrators decided they could not risk breaching FCC regulations or perturbing potential funders and audiences. Voices of Life did not air.”
This information is incorrect and, to our knowledge, no one on our staff was contacted for a check of the facts. Chicago Access is being charged with censorship in your article, which is a serious charge and misrepresents the facts.
Chicago Access Corporation
However, Cable Access left the final decision of whether or not to air Voices of Life up to the Feedback programmers, who decided to avoid the sizeable risks the tape represented by not including the piece in its schedule. Still, the whole scenario raises important questions about who controls “public” screens, and about the very real cultural politics in which, even with this correspondence, Ms. Heller and I are engaged.
