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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
Damn those liberals that control the media! This is just a vast conspiracy to distort Bush's record and try to get Kerry into office by bringing up stuff that happened decades ago. Can't they let the DWI arrest and the Guard service stories die?
Geesh. And all this time I never believed the stories about the "liberal media".
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
But on the other hand, they don't give an affirmative statement that the documentary is not intended to attack Kerry.
Since they're basically slashdotted, this is on their front page:
We welcome your comments regarding the upcoming special news event featuring the topic of Americans held as prisoners of war in Vietnam. The program has not been videotaped and the exact format of this unscripted event has not been finalized. Characterizations regarding the content are premature and are based on ill-informed sources.
Massachusetts Senator John Kerry has been invited to participate. You can urge him to appear by calling his Washington, D.C. campaign headquarters at
(202) 712-3000.
if you would like to make further comments on this matter, you may do so at:
comments@sbgi.net
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.
Very interesting. Do you have a link? Not that i don't trust you, i just want to read more about it.
... and tell them you're not going to be buying their products as long as they support Sinclair. Hurt Sinclair where it really stings - in the wallet.
List of Advertisers
Furthermore, just in case you don't think your phone call will do anything, see a little morale-booster from Kos.
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.
Fahrenheit 911 is OK but this isn't? Doesn't that sound a little hypocritical?
It's not hypocritical. People who see F9/11 are voluntarily paying $10 per movie ticket / $15+ per DVD to watch it. Plus, they have to make the decision to go out to the local cinema/video store to view/obtain it. Much more time-consuming that simply flipping on your television.
There would only be hypocrisy if F9/11 was being broadcast for free on television. But that's not the case.
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
http://www.encyclopedia.com/html/e1/equaltime.asp
a Federal Communications Commission rule that requires equal air time for all major candidates competing for political office. It was preceded by the fairness doctrine, abolished in 1987, which required radio and television broadcasters to air contrasting views on controversial public issues.
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.
wow. So many open targets...where to begin...
1. Michael Moore doesn't own 62 stations, and he didn't force anyone to show his movie. He made it, and people gladly lined up to see it. It may have been a little too conspiritorial in a few places, but no one has proved it untrue, and it's certainly not showing up masquerading as a news show.
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.
3. George Soros also has not forced anyone to broadcast anything. He's written a rational essay, and paid for it to be dispatched like any other advertising. See point #1.
Now if Dan Rather had put Fahrenheit 9/11 on TV and dressed it up as news, then you might have a point, but you seem to be hanging on to your simplistic views a little too tightly.
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.
Did anyone else read the headline and think the same thing?
- 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.
Excerpts from "Stolen Honor", from the ever witty Adam Felber.
Look out honey, 'cause I'm using technology; Ain't got time to make no apology
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.
There is an important difference between the "documentary" Sinclair intends to broadcast and F9/11 and the concerts you cite. People actively chose to attend those concerts; they were not broadcast on TV. People paid money to go see F9/11. The concert halls and movie theaters are private property. By contrast, the airwaves are public property, and broadcasters are granted the privelege of using assigned frequencies with the understanding that they will not abuse that privelege. That is why, for example, the FCC levies fines for indecency. It would NOT be OK for a network syndicate to order its stations to broadcast F9/11 uninterrupted before the election, just as Sinclair's plans are not in the public interest.
"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.
--- Often in error; never in doubt!
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.
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.
Wouldn't we be speaking Vietnamese?
"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."
Actually the "liberal" media's coverage of the Swift Boat Vet ads dramatically increased their air play and dramatically increased the damage they did to Kerry. I don't think most people would have seen them had they not been played over and over nationally and internationally on the news.
"I won't go into farenheit 911"
Why not because you know you would embarrass yourself? Why, because Faherenheit 911 was never given free air time other than snippets on the news just like the Swift Boat Vet ads. You have to pay money and go out of your way to see Fahrenheit 911. Big difference between that and Sinclair giving this propaganda film a huge block of commercial free time in prime time. Moore's distribution strategy is pretty smart. This move by Sinclair is likely to cause more backlash than win Bush votes. I say let them go for it though I think each affiliate should be allowed the choice to decide if they are going to carry it.
I suckered my dad into watching Fahrenheit 911 on DVD with the deal I would watch Farenhype 911 the Republican rebuttal featuring Ann Coulter, the wicked witch of the right. He lasted until Moore started showing pictures of the dead and wounded Iraqi civilians and walked out when they showed wounded soldiers screaming in pain. He came back and ranted about Moore using blood and gore. My parents then sat down for the evening entertainment looking at gruesome fake corpses on CSI. I tried to tell him all he was seeing was the reality and horror of Iraq, reality you don't normally see because the war coverage is so heavily censored by the Bush administration and the "liberal" media. Its stuff we did see in Vietnam. All the American public sees most of the time is the Pentagon claiming how many insurgents they killed today. For some reason they never count the dead women and children.
"You may be the most ardent supporter for either side, American citizen or other but you have your freedom of speech because these men and others like them paid the price."
There are many brave veterans to whom we do owe a the debt you describe. These particular POW's did make a great personal sacrifice and they do deserve to be honored for it. Do they deserve to pick our President for us, no. If they want to speak their peace let them buy air time or distribute this as a movie or DVD like everyone else.
These particular POW's didn't do anything that gave me my "freedom of speech" or even protected it. They fought in a deeply misguided war, one that the U.S. didn't fight to win, didn't win and which killed millions of people, many of whom were innocent civilians. Vietnam and especially Nixon's prosecution in fact deeply threatened our Freedom of Speech, remember the Pentagon Papers, Kent State, Watergate, and before that Chicago 1968.
You are just engaging in shameless flag waving.
Kerry's testimony might not have been the smartest move for someone planning a political career but it wasn't untrue. The U.S. did commit a pretty long list of atrocities in Vietnam, all the ones Kerry listed, the fact that you and these POW's are in denial over it isn't helping anyone. You think I'm lieing, well read the Toledo Blade's expose on the 101st Airborne's Tiger Force and its rampage through Vietnam. Its not a well known history because none other than Dick Cheney as White House Chief of Staff and Donald Rumsfeld in his first stint as Secretrary of Defense buried the investigation and the story in the mid 70's.
You need to realize someday that America isn't perfect and it most certainly isn't always in the right, and has often made some grave mistake. People who challenge it when this happens are heros too, it takes a lot of guts to challenge your government and your nation when its in the wrong.
@de_machina
Where to begin ?
Lets start by impeaching the credibility of the witness. The secretary is a democrat and a kerry supporter. She wasnt his personel secretary. Last but not least if you watched the interview dan rather did a lovely job of leading her.
If you want further testimony. Col. Killians wife and son both disown the memos, both claim he wouldn't write things like that down. To be fair the son is a republican.
Killians commander disowned the memo's and stated categorically that there was no favoritism for Bush.
Its not that the story has been lost its that there is nothing to it. But to borrow from the man who started 60 minutes "Its a non story even if it is true". What it reveals is the management and staff of 60 minutes and CBS news were willing to whatever it took to damage President Bush. They didn't care if they had to make stuff up because like you they knew it was true so why not it serves the greater good. In case you haven't noticed being willing to do whatever you have to for the greater good is AlQueda's rationale for their actions it was also Timothy McVeighs.
As for Dan Rather this has not been the first case of propaganda he has been party to. It is however the most eggregious.
Well, since we're on the subject of lies, and deception, let's look at the degrees of each of these cases.
While investigating a supposedly thirty-year-old document, a news team discovered that the writer expressed similar reservations verbally. They also discover that the circumstantial facts were all true (missed a physical...outside pressure applied to fudge some paperwork...etc.) News team therefore assumes a document is valid. Sloppy journalism, yes. Personal vendetta by a journalist to sacrifice his career and reputation to smear the President? Doubtful, but some of you will believe anything...
Contrast that to your example. "Everyone and his brother" hasn't expressed similar doubts about Kerry's service. Actually, of all of the servicemen on those 3 patrol boats, ONE EYEWITNESS ACCOUNT has his doubts...the rest of the "everyone" got this information third-hand. They happen to hook up with some Texas political operatives who smeared McCain 5 years ago, they write a book and form a supposed "group" of Swift Boat Vets. Sorry, pretty low on the credibility chart for me.
You, however, seem to have been swept up in the story about the story.
document
While we're on the subject of foregone assumptions,
"everyone and his brother" hasn't expressed doubts about Kerry's service...and while the Swift Boat Vets have Let's see, if we examine what was said
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.
White: Contains facts, no lies.
Grey: Contains facts, half-truths, parts of the story, etc.
Black: Lies. May contain some facts, but definately contains lies.
f9/11 is either white or grey, depending upon whom you talk to. There are no outright lies in it.
The "Swift Boat" stuff is either grey or black, depending upon whom you talk to.
Just because two items are both propaganda does not mean that they are both the same or that they can both be dismissed.
The "Swift Boat" ads are black.
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.
1. No pipleine in afghanistan
a n/david_sar asohn/index.ssf?/base/editorial/1093434977273600.x ml
"However, in 2002 Hamid Karzai and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf agreed to revive (http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?id=674) plans of a trans-Afghan gas pipeline; Alim Razim, Afghanistan's minister for Mines and Industries, described UNOCAL as the "lead company" in the revived plans, although they continue to deny renewed involvement."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit_9/11
I'm saving space and not dealing with your other examples. But they are all just as easily debunked.
Now, lies in the "Swift Boat" campaign.
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregoni
"After the ad ran, Elliott told The Boston Globe he'd made "a terrible mistake" in signing the statement accusing Kerry when "I knew it was wrong." The anti-Kerry group later said Elliott was repudiating his repudiation, but he is no longer available to reporter."
Not just lies but cowardice.