CTNJ/Opinion:  The legislature should not censor CT-N

Dan Klau is the president of the Connecticut Council on Freedom of Information.

The Connecticut General Assembly recently issued a Request for Proposals concerning the operation of CT-N — the Connecticut Television Network. As presently written, this RFP would dramatically restrict CT-N’s ability to cover Executive and Judicial Branch proceedings, which CT-N has covered for many years. Even more startling, the RFP would give the General Assembly extensive editorial control over the content of CT-N programming.

Why should the public care about the terms of a contract between the General Assembly and the vendor that operates CT-N?

CT-N is Connecticut’s version of C-SPAN, the Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network that was launched in 1979 by the cable TV industry as a public service. It televises many proceedings of the federal government, as well as other public affairs programming, political events, and gavel-to-gavel coverage of Congress. It does so in an unfiltered, politically neutral manner. Like C-SPAN, CT-N has long provided similarly neutral, unbiased coverage of state government in Connecticut.

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