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Stolen Honor: Sinclair Under Fire
worm eater writes "The Sinclair Broadcasting Group, in its latest politically charged move, has announced that it will air a 90-minute anti-Kerry documentary a week before the election. The video, 'Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal,' was funded by a group of Pennsylvania POWs that has merged with the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Sinclair, which is the largest TV broadcasting group in the nation, has 62 affiliates, many in swing states. It made news in April by refusing to let any of its affiliates air an edition of Nightline in which Ted Koppel read the names of US soldiers who had died in Iraq, saying the broadcast was politically motivated. Predictably, liberal blogs are fighting back."
Fahrenheit 911 is OK but this isn't? Doesn't that sound a little hypocritical?
nos laetus epulor qui would domito nos
Let me get this straight- nobody's willing to air Fahrenheit 911- an utter lack of journalism but at least about events that happened in the last 4 years- but this will get on the air?
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Remember, the only logical standard for judging is "If the other side did the exact same thing, how would you feel?"
If your are pro-Kerry, but it wouldn't bother you to see a hatchet job on Bush at the same time by the same basic people, then you really have no grounds to complain.
Flip-side, if you are Pro-Bush, but would not want to see a hatchet job on Kerry at the same time, then you should not support this.
Personally, since I sort of fall into the latter category (I'm not 100% for Bush, but Kerry has completely failed to convince me he is better in the ways I personally care about; this is disclosure, not a request to be "corrected", OK?), my personal opinion is that this is an inappropriate action to take, and I don't care what side does it. If it was run earlier, I don't think I'd care, and there have certainly been hatchet jobs on both sides meeting this criteria, but the closer you get to the election, the more important it is for large entities to shut the hell up and leave the final voting as a matter between the candidates and the voters.
POWs like John McCain? Scarred veterans like Max Cleland? Maybe the veteran William Laws Calley? For shame!
Maybe a drunk, AWOL frat boy high on coke and Air National Guard issue oxygen could help us set the record straight here? I hear he got kidnapped by Delta Kappa Phi once and forced to drink a whole keg of Bud, I guess that makes him not only a POW, but subject of cruel and unusual punishment as well. Talk about stolen honor...
Money for nothing, pix for free
Without regard to your political leanings, I suspect you will live to regret saying that.
What this really does is set a precedent opening the door to outright political warfare over the public airwaves. You can be certain if this goes forward, that some politically-motivated group will respond with an anti-Bush message much worse than anything even Moore would be accused of stooping to. (And remember, if it air's after the Kerry attack, there will be even less time for the forces-of-truth to pick apart the lies.) It may not happed this election cycle, but once the tactic is considered allowable, you can write-off any hope of getting fair and balanced coverage of the issues from any aspect of the public media. The prize will be just too big to ignore.
We mustn't be led into the trap of saying "it's okay for <one candidate> to get away with ruining our country, because <the other guy> got away with it; down that road lies only madness and ruin.
The thing about things we don't know is we often don't know we don't know them.
As long as the TV station gives up its broadcasting rights (at least, for the private bit of spectrum it has a free, government mandated, monopoly on) for the duration of the broadcast, I certainly agree with you. A newspaper endorsing a candidate and printing the fact on its own paper with its own ink and distributing those papers with its own gasoline is certainly comparable to a TV station endorsing a candidate and transmitting the fact on its own wires and distributing those signals with its own huge long cables.
- Amendment I
While the "freedom of the press" could possibly be stretched to cover the situation, it's still a pretty big stretch. Congress is not doing a ruddy thing to silence a large media group. A corporation. Businesses are not people, and should not be viewed as individuals. There is no proviso securing the unhampered freedom of speech for a business; it's a right guaranteed only to human beings.Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
Now, if Kerry were to use his position as a senator to enact punitive bitch-slap legislation that was aimed at Sinclair, then yes; there's a clear violation. However, as it stands, what we have here is a media conglomerate throwing its corporate weight around to promote a particular political viewpoint. Period.
So much for the "Liberal Media" meme.
Doing my level best to piss off the religious right wing...
>[T]his is really no different from the New York Times endorsing a candidate for president
The NY Times, or any other newspaper, doesn't use the publicly owned airwaves to distribute its copy and doesn't need a government license to publish. Sinclair, and all other teevee stations do and are subject to the FCC Fairness Doctrine and its implementing regulations. If this is OK, them I'm sure all our neo-con pals will be OK with Turner Broadcasting airing Farenheit 911 on Monday November 1, followed, of course, by a fair and balanced panel discussion at 11 pm PST.Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
I like this quote from one of the web pages:
Sure, be outraged, but you can't do anything about it. The right exercised their outrage about Farenheight/911 as well, and that is also a "slanted, inaccurate documentary." It's funny how the biggest supporters of one thing can be the biggest opponents of the same thing when it is done by the other side.I think it's ridiculous that this is the same company that didn't let the Nightline air where Ted Kopple read the names of those killed in Iraq.
read the names of US soldiers who had died in Iraq, saying the broadcast was politically motivated.
Reading the names of the fallen used to be considered an act of honoring the memory of the soldiers who made the ultimate sacrifice.
Honorable and truthful activities should be carried out regardless of whether some political faction or other thinks they can make hay from it.
It's yet another symptom of our society where perception trumps substance. What matters is how something is perceived - not what it actually is.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
I don't understandy why this documentary is such a big deal then. This is a documentary (it's factual) that calls into question John Kerry's behavior after/during the Vietnam war. 60 Minutes aired a documentary that called into question George Bush's behavior during the war. 60 Minutes was broadcast on FAR more stations then this will be. Dan Rather reported misconduct by Bush during the war. It could be called news, history, documentary, whatever you want. The behavior of John Kerry at the same time is now being reported by some other source (although maybe less "reputable" than Dan Rather).
This is not a sensationalistic documentary like Moores, this is going to be speeches given by Kerry, an account of where he was, and interviews with wives of POWs who say that their husbands were made to listen to Kerry as torture when they were in prison (to demoralize them, I guess).
To complain about this but not Dan Rather's 60 Minutes is a double standard.
"The key issue here is this, this is a freedom of speech issue."
Incorrect. Airwaves are not "free speach" zones. They are heavily regulated finite resource. They are leased to business but they are a public resource. One of the requirements from the FCC is that they are administered in the public interest. Sinclair claims that this program is "news".
That claim - that this is a 90 minute news piece done for the public good - doesn't pass the laugh test.
Just wait till some crappy band steals your nic.
2. Despite what you are determined to believe, while the memos may have proven to be fake, the 'real facts' did in fact get out and guess what, they support what's expressed in the memos. That's what made it possible to verify them. Everyone and their brother agreed that what's in them is true.
While I disagree with all your points, this one is particularly troubling. Are you saying that it is okay if evidence is fake, as long as it supports your assumptions? What if a district attorney submitted into evidence a photoshopped picture of the defendant killing somebody, just to help his case that if the 'real facts' got out, everyone would know the defendant was a murderer? Wrong, wrong, wrong... conclusions should be arrived at based on the evidence at hand, not evidence conjured up to support foregone assumptions.
"Everybody and his brother" has expressed similar doubts about Kerry's record but you don't see the Swift Boat Vets fabricating documents do you? They get blasted enough as "liars" just for providing eyewitness accounts that paint Kerry in an unfavorable light, but if someone resorts to criminal acts of forgery to make Bush look bad, that's alright?/P.
On "Good Morning America" - admittedly not the home of hard-hitting news - a Sinclair V.P. and a Democratic Senator squared off on this issue. I'm a Kerry supporter, and while the Democratic Senator listed some very good points, the Sinclair VP had some equally good points to the point where I was thinking to myself, why all the bluster from the Democratic Party.
That is, until the Sinclair VP repeated the Republican party line saying that if Kerry can't sit down and face this group of Vietnam veterans, how can he face up to al Quaeda {paraphrase}?
Right there, it became obvious that the Sinclair Group is politically motivated.
Lets see We have Jean val Jean (Dan Rather) at CBS who pursues the rediculous air national gaurd story for 5 years and finds nothing but forged documents and testimony from a Kerry campaign chairman.
At ABC we have, both candidates lie but Kerrys are harmless so we should go after bush.
The economy adds 350,000 jobs in March and the New York times reports "Bonds Down on Jobs Figure"
You have moveon.org relentlessly targeting anyone that disagreeing or even bearing bad news about or for the democrats. Their latest target was Gallup for reporting the president was up in the polls.
You have just about all the liberal media pulling out the stops to pull a smear job on the swiftboat vets. The only points they have been able to prove is that some of the vets charges are true and others are subject to dispute.
I won't go into farenheit 911 or CBS running the antibush book of the week club on 60 minutes. Kitty Kellys character assasination tome that got nearly 4 hours of morning show coverage on the major networks.
All the above being said the men that made stolen honor were POW's in Vietnam. They have earned the right to have their say. You may be the most ardent supporter for either side, American citizen or other but you have your freedom of speach because these men and others like them paid the price. If it weren't for them and others like them that stood up for freedom NO ONE reading this would have had any freedom and we would all be speaking german or russian.
Faux news is great! I love to laugh at the ridiculous things stated on that show! I love it!
Note that Sinclair is a busness. As such it wants to make $$$ at every oportunity. Last I heard F911 made over $250M. If the Kerry bash piece is such a great work of art that it would actually catch an audience they would have released it to the theaters. Obviously it must be a total bore. THATS why they have to shove it down our throats.
F911 is a riot (in addition to being a pretty good basher of the Bushies). Mr Moore put up a $$$ bounty on anyone who could disprove the content of 911. AFAIK that has not happened. If it were such a piece of propoganda SOMEONE would have poked lots of holes in it. I, for one DO believe that Bush has a cozy relationship with the Saudi royal family. Just too much evidence to dismiss the hypothesis.
Oh, and I am a registered Republican -- and am embarassed that my party has Bush for a candidate. Yikes.
the Swift Boat Vets haven't managed to get a single person who personally served with Kerry to say anything bad about him. The best they have managed to do is people who met him once or twice. I suggest you check out www.swiftvets.org. You'll find that even those people that only met him a few times actually have said positive things about kerry until recenty. I can only assume what Swift Vets did to get them to change thier minds.
1. National? You mean cable. 1 cable station doesn't counter CBS,ABC,NBC,CNN, and MSNBC with their liberal bias
2. MTV and VH1 vs. one country music singer?
3. You named 4 actors, 3 of which don't act anymore and one is dead. How about these:
Altman, Robert; Anderson, Gillian; Asner, Ed; Baldwin, Alex; Basinger, Kim; Begley, Ed, Jr; Belafonte, Harry; Browne, Jackson; Carroll, Diahann; CCH Pounder; Cheadle, Don; Clayburgh, Jill; Clooney, George; Coyote, Peter; Crouse, Lindsay; Crowe, Sheryl; Cusak, Joan; Cusak, John; Daley, Tyne; Damon, Matt; D'Onofrio, Vincent; Duchovny, David; Dukakis, Olympia; Dutton, Charles S.; Earle, Steven; Elizondo, Hector; Elwes, Cary; Farrell, Mike; Farrow, Mia; Fishburne, Laurence; Flanery, Sean Patrick; Fonda, Jane; Franklin, Bonnie; Garafalo, Jeananne; Gilbert, Melissa; Glover, Danny; Goldberg, Whoopie; Gould, Elliot; Guillaume, Robert; Harrelson, Woody; Harris, Ed; Hawke, Ethan; Howard, Ken; Hunt, Helen; Huston, Angelica; Jackon, Samuel; Kaczmarek, Jane; Kanakaredes, Melina; Kasem, Casey; Kirkland, Sally; Lange, Jessica; Leoni, Tea; Malick, Wendie; Manheim, Camryn; Mason, Marsha; Masur, Richard; Matthews, Dave; Moore, Michael; Morales, Esai; Noth, Chris; O'Neill, Ed; Oprah; Paul, Alexandra; Penn, Sean; Raitt, Bonnie; Redford, Robert; Reiner, Carl; Robbins, Tim; Sarandon, Susan; Shalhoub, Tony; Sheen, Martin; Spacey, Kevin; Steinem, Gloria; Stone, Oliver; Strassman, Marcia; Streisand, Barbara; Swit, Loretta; Terkel, Studs; Tomlin, Lily; Turner, Kathleen; Underwood, Blair; Weaver, Dennis; Whitford, Bradley; Whitford, Bradley; Whitmore, James; Woodard, Alfre; Wyle, Noah;
4. You name one religious film? That isn't even a political thing. It's religion.
5. The New York Times gets reprinted in countless papers across the country. Along with the slant of the Boston Globe and LA Times, you have enough to cover the major markets in newspapers with a leftist slant.
6. Talk show? How about Oprah? Who is more influential?
I feel sorry for these guys, American kids that went through hell in Vietnam. But they have turned into angry old men without getting any wiser. Today, they are just letting themselves be used as political pawns. Rather than facing the fact that they were fighting in an purposeless war that the US lost and in which the US injured large numbers of innocent civilians, rather than facing that it was their own government that caused them all this pain and suffering, they want to cling to the illusion that there was nobility and purpose to this war.
The sad thing is that Bush is far more likely to generate the next generation of hurt, confused, and angry veterans. Bush doesn't know first hand what happens to US soldiers in battle and he doesn't seem to care much either (except for photo ops). Kerry may have many flaws, and he may not have seen the worst of Vietnam when he was serving there, but he has actually seen some of the horrors of war and is far more likely to avoid getting US soldiers into trouble unnecessarily.
For many of them, Vietnam was the defining moment of their lives.
But all the evidence that comes out shows how worthless their sacrifice was and how they were used by a government that lied to them.
Some can see how they were used and grow beyond it.
Some cannot and will attack anyone who says that it was a useless war. These are the ones that will be used again by the same government that lied to them last time.