ustxtxb_obs_1974_07_26_50_00011-00000_000.pdf

Newspapers Magazines Political Specialists Signs and Placards Bumperstrips Office Supplies 100% Union Shop Happiness Is Printing By 1? July 26, 1974 FUTURA PRESS ,c Phone 512/442 7836 1714 SOUTH CONGRESS P.O. BOX 3485 AUSTIN, TEXAS THE BEST lloolfsrortsS VEST or 3 STot= 1H DALLAS, 4535 McKinney Ave. 5219 Wont Lovers Lane 205 South Zang 4141 VIVOist/sToNAVe. WAIF The $3.80 victory AMPAC to TEXPAC were properly disclosed. Hart’s staff asked that AMPAC submit for the record a sworn statement indicating that the entire sum came from donations of $100 or less \($100 is the threshold amount for requiring source Dr. Phil Caper of U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy’s subcommittee on health expressed an interest in the relationship between Blue Cross-Blue Shield and the TMA. He requested that lists of all officers and directors of Blue Cross, Blue Shield, the TMA and the TMF over the past five years be supplied for the record. Pickens indicated that he would “try” to gather that information for the subcommittee. Dean Sharp, a staffer for Hart’s subcommittee, questioned the TMA representatives on fiscal aspects of the Medicaid program. Overton said that such matters were not within the knowledge of witnesses present. He suggested that Blue Cross officers Eugene Aune and Tom Beauchamp should be called to respond to Sharp’s questions. The subcommittee adjourned before Sharp could complete his questions. Hart and his staff apparently intend to follow up with written interrogatories to Blue Cross-Blue Shield. The witnesses present were also instructed that they will be required to provide written responses to further questions. Cox is an Austin freelance writer and researcher specializing in health care questions. Many of the charges Pickens, Overton and Stone were contesting were made by Cox, who testified \(along with former Sen. Joe Bernal, Rep. Mickey subcommittee hearings. Cox has developed some of those charges in Observer articles. A CLARIFICATION In the April 12 Observer Jackee Cox wrote a story on the medical establishment in Texas entitled, “A little conflict of interest music, please.” Our author’s note explained that part of the material for the article was gathered while Ms. Cox was working for the Juarez-Lincoln Center and funded by a grant from the National Migrant Information Clearinghouse. The Juarez-Lincoln Center subsequently published a technical booklet by Ms. Cox, HMOs in Texas. The research grant did not in any way finance Ms. Cox’ article in the Observer. She did it on her own time as a freelance assignment. Ed. Austin How to jack around several multi-million dollar corporations, hold ’em up, throw ’em up against the wall and generally get what you want for a grand, sum total of $3.80. In late June, the Austin Television Action Council and the Austin Black Media Coalition achieved significant and substantial agreements with Austin’s three television stations concerning minority hiring and public affairs programming. The first thing that should be noted about this signal triumph for Right, Truth, Justice, Freedom, Good Guys and the American Way is that it’s a damn good thing the other side never figured out who they were up against. ‘Cause, folks, they wasn’t up against nobody. At least, nobody who would ordinarily cause a large communications company to quake in its corporate boots. The Council and the Coalition are, in fact, largely paper organizations, comprising a motley assemblage of blacks, browns, students, feminists and miscellaneous activists. The groups stayed maybe a half-step ahead of the managements of the three television stations throughout the month-long negotiations, leaving the managements with the impression that they knew what the hell they were talking about. They were actually learning as they went along. The stations also cove in on account of they were haunted by nightmare visions of having their FCC licenses held up and maybe revoked after extensive and expensive legal proceedings. In fact, the $3.80 in Xeroxing fees that KTBC charged Rodney Griffin, a researcher for the citizens groups, about broke their collective budget. The Austin Black Media Coalition is, for all practical purposes, composed of two women and a front man. Linda McGowan and Erna Smith, two of the funniest and most formidable black women in the state, were busy this spring helping get Wilhelmina Delco elected to the state legislature. But they took time off in April to attend a workshop on the media and license challenges run by Pluria Marshall, a Houston activist. What the hell, they thought, let’s DO it. They enlisted Dr. John Warfield, chairman of the Afro-American studies department at the University of Texas. “Always helps to have a Ph.D. out in front for you,” observed McGowan. They called a meeting to which all concerned black folks in East Austin were to come and all of 20 people showed up. McGowan thereafter, during the negotiations with the stations, grandly referred to these 20 as “my constituents.” As in, “Don’t give me that shit, man, I can’t go back to my constitutents with an offer like that. They’d kill me. I got to have more than that.” The chief negotiator for the Council was Bob Thompson, a senior law student who actually has some media credentials. He worked for KTBC as a newsman for a short spell and spent four months last summer at the FCC in Washington, D.C., learning at least a little about the licensing procedure. “Austin was just such virgin territoty,” he said wonderingly. “We had people walking into those stations, asking to look at public documents the FCC requires the stations to keep and the stations didn’t even know what we were talking about.” Thompson’s Council included the Women’s Equity Action League, some Brown Berets, UT students from both the law and communications schools, Father Joe Znotas of St. Julius Church in East Austin and a distinct lack of a cast of thousands. The best thing they had going for them was the dismal record of the town’s three TV stations, which among them had once had one black reporter. A. V. Ludington, executive vice-president at KTVV, started things off briskly by observing that he would hire colored people, if he could just find some that were qualified. When asked how the station filled its vacancies, he allowed as how word