Vincent L. Hoffart

Gippergate Vincent L. Hoffart

Is the Federal Communications Commission engaging in preferential treatment while granting licenses for broadcasting stations? Are the permits and licenses being granted to those whom the record evidence indicates should prevail, or to those with political influence? Are the FCC's decisions best for the public interest, or best for the private interests of the Fifth Estate? Finally, is it time for a congressional committee to investigate this agency? The author says yes!

Vincent L. Hoffart challenged the renewal application of KISW, and FM station in Seattle, WA, owned principally by Mr. and Mrs. Danny Kaye, in order to obtain a construction permit to install and then operate his own FM station on that channel. This book chronicles the ensuing fiasco.

Full of verbatim testimony taken from a public hearing, Gippergate is about phony notarizations. It is about misrepresentations, alleged perjury, and conflicts in sworn testimony on the part of the judge, the review board and the FCC. Mr. Hoffart demonstrates how time and again his charges of statutory violations were swept under the rug in order to grant renewal to the incumbent, an influential broadcaster. The author invites the reader to follow his story closely. Are his charges warranted? Has there been a serious miscarriage of justice? As Mr. Hoffart concludes, perhaps a congressional hearing of a grand jury investigation of such FCC activity can best discover whose interests are being protected and, more importantly, whose are not.