October 15, 2004Sinclair's abuseYou may have heard the hassle over in the US about Sinclair Group forcing their local subsidiaries to air the anti-Kerry "documentary" during prime-time as an interruption to their normal services. It's pretty disgusting to see this kind of thing happen, but what's more disgusting is support based on partisan narrow-mindedness such as can be found over at Precinct 333. The comments are really nauseating, because they show a real partisan interpretation of the events and situation. You can click below to read the my comment - the weblog in question wouldn't let me post over 1000 characters in response so I had to do it here. It's very interesting to see the bickering. Especially as a foreigner who's lived in the US for a while. It's amazing how you guys are so partisan that neither side is willing to ever criticise anything that might promote its political aims, while mindlessly seeking arguments to defeat opponents, without ever really listening to what they have to say. I have yet to hear a Bush supporter say the slightest negative thing about Bush, and the same applied to Kerry. As far as their supporters are concerned, their candidates are the Angel Gabriel Made Flesh. Frankly, from an outsiders point of view (and I don't like either candidate for different reasons), this particular issue is pretty clear cut. 1) The timing. This is clearly, unambiguously an attempt at influencing the elections. 2) The content. It focused on a single individual with the goal of proving a single thing. Reading who it was made by, and based on its intentions (given when it's being released), it's clear that they had decided what they were setting out to prove before they even started filming or investigating, this is therefore not impartial. Any effort to say this is providing information that is in anyway impartial is disingenuous and dishonest. 3) The workaround. They seek to circumvent campaign restrictions by allowing Kerry to "participate" which means showing an unambiguously biased propaganda film, followed by putting Kerry opposite a hostile panel, in front of a hostile audience, having to defend himself against 40 minutes of non-stop attack. They know full well that if they offer this he won't take them up on it, because it regardless of the truth or the facts it would be electoral suicide, and Precint333's question as to whether Kerry has the "guts to speak to the American people on this matter" is once again disingenuous. This is not documentary. It's the rich sponsors of a political party seeking to broadcast propaganda to the influencable in order to assist in an election campaign, and it's nauseating no matter how you look at it. But this all misses the bigger picture. As an attempt to influence the vote, Sinclair's actions have already partly succeeded (and the fact that some Americans will celebrate this as a success is a sad indictment). Even if they don't broadcast it now, they've achieved what they want, because it can't be taken off the internet, and by raising such a ruckus, they've managed to get better advertising than even their money could buy. Calling this "protected speech" and hiding behind the constitution isn't a valid defense. It's a demonstration of how the rights in the constitution can be abused, and therefore an argument against unrestricted, uncontrollable free speech. As such, it is dishonourable, and does a disservice to all those who fight for those rights to be maintained, and who fought so hard for them in the first place. The founding fathers must be turning in their graves. I don't care if Bush or Kerry wins, but Sinclair deserve censure for this. UPDATE : More on this. It gets worse. The information that follows is from this article from CNN.
Comments
I couldn't resist bringing up one more little thing : There's a poll on the stolen honor website that shows exactly what the makers of this documentary think a "balanced view" is. The question is What is your opinion of Sinclair Broadcasting's intent to air Stolen Honor on all 62 of their television stations, during prime time, October 21 –24? Now make your mind up about the options :
Where's the "I am completely against such a blatant attempt to influence American elections by pretending that partisan propaganda is actually 'truthful journalism' as stated in option 2" option? It's saying "In which of these 4 ways would you like to make us look worthy and noble?" Yuck. Imagine that -- during an election year, people might try to influence elections. Heaven forbid! But in this particular case, we are talking about information and accusations that have been repeatedly made over the last 30 years -- and which the major media doesn't want to cover. The Winter Soldier hearings were a crock, and those involved were unwilling to provide so much as one piece of evidence to document the charges they made. Kerry's testimony has sat poorly with most Vietnam vets since 1971 -- but no one wanted to look at the specifics. Specific charges of abuse of POWs by the North Vietnamese using Kerry and his activities in an attempt to psychologically weaken those REAL war heroes have been made by the POWs since their release in 1973 (including by John McCain). And Kerry still has not authorized the release of all his military records. Contrast this with the Left's treatment of the clearly bogus Bush AWOL story. There exists a wealth of document evidence proving that Bush completed his commitment, we are still regulary subjected to news stories and shrill Leftist bleatings about Bush being AWOL (or even a deserter) -- despite the utter lack of evidence to support that contention. And by the way, Kerry has been offered time to speak without being a part of the panel. He could lay the whole issue to rest by apepearing on the broadcast. Instead he refuses to do so, and then claims he is entitled to "equal time". That is a sign of cowardice and mendacity on his part. Posted by: ThePrecinctChair at October 17, 2004 06:34 PMWhile it's perfectly legitimate for a group to seek to get answers to such things, the way it's being done here remains despicable. Appearing after a documentary designed to trash him, regardless of whether he gets to speak on his own, would still be political suicide. It's letting people who want to see him lose set the agenda, speak for 45 minutes non-stop, and then to hope to defuse that cunningly-laid trap with a single speech. You can't win that fight, regardless of what the truth is. Politically he has absolutely no choice but to fight the broadcast, and then demand equal time to make his statements if it gets broadcast anyway. If Sinclair don't want people telling them what they can and can't say, then they shouldn't expect Kerry to allow them to put him in a position where he has no right to choose what topics to speak on. Why should Kerry sit on 60 local stations and, by publicly responding to the allegations (sponsored by and associated to his Republican electoral opponents), give them weight? If Sinclair want to carry out this blatant attempt to use huge amounts of primetime media coverage to trash Kerry, then he should absolutely be allowed equal time on the same stations with same sized audiences to send out his message. With his own agenda, not Sinclair's. If Sinclair is the great defender of free speech you paint them as, then they would have absolutely no objection to this. Ownership of media should not be allowed to become a political tool, that's why there are laws that govern this kind of thing during elections, and if Bush were asked to sit in front of a panel of soldiers who were supposed to be in his unit but never remember seeing him there, and were willing to talk about it publicly, he'd turn it down too - he's no idiot and neither is Kerry. Posted by: Nicolas at October 18, 2004 10:37 AMI read about this without paying much attention to the details. My real problem is that this is really Michael Moore's fault. He started the ball rolling by making a one sided partisan hate mongering 'documentary' and its hardly surprising that Republicans thought it was a pretty good idea. Posted by: Incandenza at October 20, 2004 11:11 AMPost a comment
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