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San Jose City Council resolution
against the USA Patriot Act
given wide print and TV media coverage
Tom Schinaman
Santa Clara Coalition
Channel 5 covered the passage of the resolution in their 6:30 broadcast last night, and I thought they did a great job. The segment was entitled "San Jose Takes On John Ashcroft" (which made my wife and I cheer), and they actually spent a good two minutes or so (pretty decent for a network news program) on the Act, why it has so many people so concerned and how communities across the country are passing resolutions against it.
They showed footage of the discussion among the council members, including comments by Campos, Williams and Dando, and at the end of the segment they showed part of an interview with Samina (who emphasized that the passage of the resolution sends a strong message to Congress). The reporter (I forget his name) concluded the segment with something like "San Jose joins a list of almost 170 communities across the country, and that list keeps on growing." Very upbeat and supportive.
Channel 4 also did a segment, but I caught only the tail end of it. What I saw, though, was very different in tone from what I saw on Channel 5. Dorothy Erlich of ACLU-NC was interviewed, but U.S. Attorney Kevin Ryan was essentially given the last word (to paraphrase, "people who are concerned about the USAPA have misunderstood it") and the jist of the piece seemed to be that concerns about the USAPA are overblown and its opponents misguided.
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