LOCAL NEWS
KIRO Newsradio to air Jan. 6 attack hearings uncensored and unedited
As the House select committee is set to reveal its findings on the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol today, KIRO Newsradio will be airing the public hearing live and unedited.
“It is a historic event,” KIRO Newsradio Newsroom Director Charlie Harger said on the Gee and Ursula Show. “It’s not like we’re expecting members of Congress to be up on the rostrum there and swearing. What we are expecting though, is for many of the smartphone videos that were shot, some of those will be aired during this congressional hearing. These are members of Congress who will be airing these uncensored videos. And the news judgment is we are not going to try to stop a congressional hearing and insert our own bleep sounds or try to sanitize it for the listener as it’s happening live.”
The hearing will start today at 5 p.m. PST. The second will be held Monday, June 13th, at 1 p.m. PST. There may be as many as eight days of hearings before month’s end, and even more in September.
Jan. 6 committee sets prime-time hearing date for findings
Each network — except Fox News, which is not covering the hearings in full — will add analysis and reporting.
Harger stresses the need to air the hearing uncensored as the story and the coverage would be incomplete and misinterpreted otherwise.
“What actually happened on January 6 has been whitewashed. Some folks are saying this was just a peaceful protest,” Harger said. “And that is not far from the truth for what some people believe. I think we need to be reminded of what actually happened on that day and what can be done to prevent something like that happening in the future.”
A key adviser to former Vice President Mike Pence, who was with him at the Capitol when rioters tried to hunt him down, will testify at the House Jan. 6 committee’s public hearing next week.
“I’m hard pressed to remember the last time Congress was evacuated because people violently got inside smashing windows and attempted to stop the results of an election,” Harger said. “This is the first time, at least in a very long time, since the Civil War, that that’s happened. We, as a news organization, need to cover this and we need to be speaking about what happened.”
