Viewer Challenges TV Station’s Airing of Abortion

In the second controversy in eastern Ventura County over public access TV in recent weeks, a Thousand Oaks woman is challenging a cable station’s airing of an abortion.

Rhonda Lippman flipped on the public access cable channel as she fed her preschool-age children lunch on Sunday and was horrified to see graphic footage of an abortion.

Simi Valley residents expressed similar concerns last month after that city’s local cable operator broadcast two episodes of white supremacist Tom Metzger’s talk show on its public access channel.

Lippman, a 32-year-old homemaker, plans to plead for stricter government regulation of the public access channel at tonight’s meeting of a City Council committee on cable TV issues.

But to guarantee free speech, the public access station is required by law to air any show that a resident brings in on a proper-sized videocassette, except pornography, commercials and lotteries, said Peter Scovill, director of community programming for Ventura County Cablevision.

“Summit University,” the one-hour show that Lippman said contained gory pictures of aborted fetuses as well as live abortions, could not legally be banned from the public access channel, legal experts said.

The station’s managers do, however, have the power to schedule shows for late evening if they’re defined as “patently offensive with respect to sexual or excretory terms as judged by community standards,” said Tracy Westen, a former adviser for the Federal Communications Commission who now teaches communications law at UCLA.

That last phrase--”as judged by community standards”--tantalizes Lippman and other family values activists.

“I would like to see a group that’s representational of the community, from all walks of life, determine what is healthiest for the community,” said Councilwoman Jaime Zukowski, who sits on a new committee studying the public access channel.

“There is use and misuse of public access. If it is not beneficial to the community and not educational or enlightening . . . if it is something meant to frighten or something that could be used as propaganda,” it should not be shown on the cable channel, she argued.

In Simi Valley, resident Steve Frank complained that putting Metzger’s talk show, “Race and Reason,” on Comcast, the local cable station, reinforced a myth that Simi Valley, where the Rodney G. King beating trial took place, bubbles over with racism.

“This is not a racist community,” said Frank, a public affairs consultant. “These types of things give a bad impression of the town. Instead of looking for excuses about why this is on the air, we should be looking for solutions to stop it.”

Less than 1% of Ventura County Cablevision’s 67,000 viewers regularly watch the public access station, which is beamed to Thousand Oaks, Moorpark, Piru, Camarillo and Santa Paula, said Johnny Giles, director of governmental affairs for the cable network.

Despite the small audience, Lippman believes that the cable company should take a hands-on approach to scheduling, if not pre-screening, its programs.

“Whoever’s in charge just needs to be more careful that they don’t show programs like this on prime time or on weekend afternoons, when the kids are likely to be watching TV,” she said.

But wary of violating the First Amendment, Ventura County Cablevision maintains a hands-off policy regarding most scheduling.

“There’s a big gray area--if you put a show on late, are you effectively negating their freedom of speech or discriminating against them?” Giles said. “If the time they want is available, we usually give it to them.”

Times staff writer Phil Sneiderman contributed to this story.