A public broadcaster is suing its own archive's keeper for locking it out.
Nine PBS, a PBS member station, has filed a lawsuit against Iron Mountain, the records management and data storage firm, alleging the company blocked its access to archival material the station had stored with it. The case became public on August 13, 2026. Iron Mountain is one of the largest vendors in the country for corporate and institutional record keeping, storing everything from paper files to digital backups for clients across industries. The dispute centers on Nine PBS's ability to retrieve content it considers its own property.
Public television stations sit on irreplaceable local archives: decades of programming, interviews, and community history that often cannot be recreated once lost. When that material lives with an outside vendor, a station's access depends entirely on a contract, not on physical possession. A dispute like this is a reminder that outsourcing archival storage means outsourcing control, too.
Iron Mountain's entire pitch is that it is the dependable, unglamorous custodian everyone can trust. A public fight over blocked access does not help make that case.