From WNYC in New York, this is On the Media.

I'm Brooke Gladstone.

And I'm Bob Garfield.

It began at a congressional hearing about network coverage of November's election night fiasco.

California Democrat Henry Waxman had heard a rumor that Jack Welsh, chairman of General Electric Company,

which owns NBC, had been rooting in the newsroom for George W. Bush,

and even pressuring news staffers to call the close race for Bush.

Waxman had further been told that there was a videotape made by NBC's Promotions Department,

capturing indicting evidence of Welsh's interference.

At the hearing, he asked then NBC News President Andrew Lack if such a tape existed.

Lack, under oath, said if he could find such a tape, he would send it to Waxman.

More than nine months later, in spite of a spate of increasingly sharp official correspondence and a not-too-veiled threat about a congressional subpoena, no tape has been delivered.

Congressman Waxman joins us now. Congressman, welcome to on the media.

Thank you. Pleased to be with you. All right. Why do we care? I think we should care for two reasons. One, we don't know, and this tape may tell us, whether he, in fact, pressured the

news people to make the decision rather than have the news people make the decision.

Secondly, NBC uses the public airwaves.

They have a public responsibility.

Even if they're owned by General Electric, there has to be some kind of separation between the corporate ownership and the news people.

Andrew Lack, while I guess from your perspective, maddeningly refusing to actually address your direct questions,

does, and some of his correspondents, make a trenchant point.

And he says that all of the

networks relying on the same voter news service data called the election for George W. Bush within

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