Some media accounts make this sound like a reversal on Sinclair’s part, but I think it’s more accurate to call it a modest first step.
Under mounting political, legal and financial pressure, Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc. yesterday backed away from its plan to carry a film attacking John F. Kerry’s Vietnam War record, saying it would air only portions of the movie in an hour-long special scheduled for Friday.
[…]
Sinclair said it will produce “A POW Story: Politics, Pressure and the Media,” hosted by Jeff Barnd, an anchor at Sinclair’s WBFF in Baltimore, using footage from “Stolen Honor” and other political documentaries while examining allegations of media bias. The company now says that it never intended to air “Stolen Honor” in its entirety, although Sinclair commentator and vice president Mark Hyman had told The Washington Post that the movie would air unless the Massachusetts senator agreed to an interview, in which case only portions might run.
Did Sinclair break under the pressure? Maybe a little, but the problem is far from resolved. Sinclair won’t air the entire propagandistic smear, but it will broadcast something that may come awfully close.
Indeed, no one really knows what “A POW Story: Politics, Pressure and the Media” even is. We know it will use at least some of the anti-Kerry attack documentary, plus some presumably right-wing attacks on the media. As such, the fundamental problem remains the same: a conservative corporation will pre-empt regular program to air a program intended to help Bush immediately before the election. The abuse of the public trust hasn’t changed and, with that in mind, there’s no reason for Sinclair’s critics to ease up from their efforts to persuade the company no to interfere in the election.
And, just as an aside, Salon’s Eric Boehlert raised a good point that Sinclair might have trouble responding to:
[W]hy Sinclair, a television company known for its weak news division and which has little or no history of pre-empting primetime programming for news specials, feels the need to air a POW special on the eve of the election remains a question mark.
We know the answer, but I’d love to hear Sinclair’s explanation anyway.