KOTV, Tulsa's CBS affiliated station, received approximately 100 phone calls from viewers after the station pulled the plug on a "60 Minutes" segment Sunday night.
The segment on Dr. Jack Kevorkian, the so-called ``suicide doctor,'' included a videotape supplied by the retired pathologist that showed Kevorkian injecting a terminally ill patient with a lethal dose of drugs. It was promoted by CBS network over the weekend, said Ron Longinotti, KOTV's general manager.
"We made a decision, sometime on Saturday afternoon, that this was just beyond the line of good taste to show the actual moment of death and the injection," Longinotti said. He said the station was unable to view the segment prior to its airing on ``60 Minutes.''
"The CBS press release indicated that they were going to do a story on Kevorkian and that he had his own videotape of the actual sequence leading up to the death of his patient. We made a decision that we felt this was beyond the border of good taste in the telling of the story," Longinotti said.
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Longinotti said a CBS promotion by Dan Rather on Friday night's "CBS Evening News" was the first indication the station received of plans to show "the moment of death." Prior to that, the network in formation on the program was limited to five lines in a press release. Officials from A.H. Belo Corp., which owns five CBS affiliates among its television holdings, made the decision not to air the segment on any of its stations, and informed the network of its decision.
"We (at Channel 6) had indications that the video was going to be much more graphic, detailed and sequenced in the way that it showed the actual administration of the various chemicals that make up the lethal cocktail,'' said Longinotti. ``We didn't have any assurances of how that was going to be shown. We decided it was not in good taste to show the moment of death.
"There is not rule book in a situa tion like this. We're groping a little, but we err on the side of being conservative, I think, to insure that we don't offend anyone. By the same token, we have had a long standing belief that we don't televise executions. We cover the story, of course, of death row, but we don't show the actual event of the death. We report on the death," he said.
The phone calls to KOTV came minutes after Longinotti made an on- air announcement that the station would not carry the controversial segment, instead airing 17 minutes of news, weather and sports. After the newscast, the station joined "60 Minutes" in progress.
"We had a lot of calls Sunday night and several more today," he said, in an interview Monday. "Initially, they were running 80 percent disappointed in our decision and about 20 percent in favor. I think that has evened out now.
``Those calls that came in during the broadcast were mainly from those who had seen the network's promotions during the weekend's football games. Obviously, the people who were looking forward to the story were the ones who were the most disappointed in the decision and, consequently, the most vocal about it," Longinotti said.
"Ultimately, the decision was made corporately but I don't know that we would have made a different decision . . .
``Historically, the company has spoken out before, (stating a policy) that we do not want to show the mo ment of death whether it's in a breaking news situation, a hostage situation or an execution. This was real and it was a death,'' Longinotti said. ``The decision was consistent. I think everyone wished they had more time to deal with this. We didn't have a lot of advance notice that this was going to be taking place."
Rita Sherrow can be reached at 581-8360.