Cable TV: Coverage of Important Stories by ‘Full Disclosure’

Thanks for Scott Collins’ cover story on public access cable television on April 21. I see much of the same unfulfilled potential in these cable television stations. As an occasional participant on the public access “Full Disclosure” program, I can speak firsthand on what the mainstream media is missing with regularity.

In contrast to the “commercialism” programs reported by Scott Collins, “Full Disclosure” concentrates on issues covering public safety, government accountability, crime, fraud and corruption, from the people’s point of view.

For the past two years “Full Disclosure” has been cablecast every Sunday morning on Century Cable Channel 3 at 10 or 10:30 a.m. Sponsored by the Citizens Protection Alliance, a Santa Monica based, nonprofit watchdog organization, the program is now featured in 93 communities throughout Southern California on public access television channels.

This Sunday at 10:30 a.m. “Full Disclosure” will again feature “the news behind the news” with an almost unheard-of debate between two prominent Superior Court judges on a little-known but controversial proposal to amend our state Constitution (SCA3). This proposal, if placed on the ballot by our Legislature, would consolidate the Superior and Municipal Court systems into one big system.

While the mainstream media is covering the contrived divorce between Roseanne and Tom Arnold or Tonya Harding’s latest denial, public access television’s “Full Disclosure” is alerting our citizens to crucial issues which will affect the future of our communities and our country.

One must wonder why the Metro edition of the L.A. Times consists of only four pages? Perhaps that is why more people are tuning in to the public service programming such as “Full Disclosure” on community access cable television.

J. TIMOTHY FIVES, Playa del Rey