Anti-Kerry film to be aired in primetime, without commercials

[kitty]

Anti-Kerry film to air in prime-time
Nation's largest TV chain orders all 62 stations to show movie without commercials next week.
October 11, 2004: 1:24 PM EDT

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Sinclair Broadcast Group, owner of the largest chain of television stations in the nation, plans to air a documentary that accuses Sen. John Kerry of betraying American prisoners during the Vietnam War, a newspaper reported Monday.

The network has ordered all 62 of its stations to air "Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal" without commercials in prime-time next week, the Washington Post said, just two weeks before the Nov. 2 election.

Sinclair's television group, which includes affiliates of all the major networks, reaches nearly a quarter of all U.S. television households, according to the company's Web site. But the affiliates owned by the major television networks reach a larger percentage of U.S. homes because they are in the largest markets.

read more... (http://money.cnn.com/2004/10/11/news/newsmakers/sinclair_kerry/index.htm?cnn=yes)

[TB4000]

A rebuttal to Going Upriver, I take it.

[Mr.Lum]

Waste of time.

[ism]

I guess media ethics is totally out the window now. Score another one for media consolidation.

Journalists are being overly polite and calling it "highly unusual."

I read Jim Romenesko's Poynter, which is a media/journalism ethics site. The blog has other coverage of this: http://poynter.org/column.asp?id=45&aid=72617

[ellsworth81]

i guess this is the response to fahrenheit 911 propaganda

[kitty]

except that farenheit 9/11 won't be shown on primetime.

[hooligan]

they should air fahrenheit 9/11 primetime. i swear, this is stupid. people blame kerry on not being critical enough of the shit that bush gets away with, with these kinds of things going on, this election is going beyond bizarre.

[kitty]

moore is trying -- that's why he's not going to be up for best documentary next year... documentaries can't be shown on public tv or something.... i think there's already been a backlash against showing it... none of the networks want to touch it.

[hooligan]

moore is trying -- that's why he's not going to be up for best documentary next year... documentaries can't be shown on public tv or something.... i think there's already been a backlash against showing it... none of the networks want to touch it.
for reals. this election is annoying. it's amazing how the PR machine for bush has worked. this country is worst off than it has been 4 years ago, yet people still like many of his fundamentalist views. we're less respected, the unemployment rate is amazingly high, and the civil rights record of the administration is dismal. (there was some report about how he hasn't done jack shit for minorities, the environment, etc.)

it's time for a regime change.

[Mr.Lum]

moore is trying -- that's why he's not going to be up for best documentary next year... documentaries can't be shown on public tv or something.... i think there's already been a backlash against showing it... none of the networks want to touch it.

huh? PBS is all about docs, with the NAFTA is bad and pollution is a problem and the whatnnot type stuff they show all the time.............................................. ..............

[kitty]

PBS might show it... I don't know, haven't been following the whole thing too closely. All I know is that Moore is having a hard time getting it shown before the election.

Y'know what pisses me off? Bush didn't once meet with the higher ups in the NAACP during his four years. Not once in four years. Yeah... what a record with minorities -- a nonexistent one.

[ellsworth81]

well, if what critics say is true, michael's moore stuff does not really fall under the category of "documentary".

and i saw bowling for columbine - while ok and moderately eye-opening for the random ignoramus in the crowd, it certainly wasn't the best. then again, i wouldnt know how to judge "best"....

please note that i don't have anymore hate for republicans than i do liberals.

[kitty]

farenheit was slightly less steeped in moore-isms than bowling for columbine. but, let's put it this way -- do you honestly think that farenheit 9/11 will be more biased than a 'documentary' about kerry called "Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal"?

[ellsworth81]

it's tough to say - vietnam was a long time ago and isn't of much concern to me - i dont think any bonafide undecided is going to switch to the bush camp after seeing this anti-kerry piece. i may be assuming a whole lot, but i don't think the undecideds are on the fence about the candidate's character/moral fiber.

but yea. the mud-slinging is kinda inconsequential. my opinon of politicians is so abysmal it won't make a difference to me anyway.

and my trust in either candidate to adhere to any campaign promises is shaky at best.

[ism]

The funny thing is, the media backed away from F-9/11 because the right-wing has always been "working the ref." Now that things are obviously the other way around; FCC allowing consolidation, letting right-wing interests gobble up marketshare (Sinclair, ClearChannel, News Corp (FOX)), the right-wing is still complaining.

And guess who has the power to enforce equal time? Michael Powell of the FCC.

[nonamerasian]

I'd think major networks would be scared to run anything anti either side with people who threaten to boycott channels and their advertisers when they don't agree with programming (Think Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher).

The most political TV is see is LinkTv. A private channel. They don't have to be scared.

I would like to see this film.

[Martino]

This kind of thing would be allowed by the UK's television regulatory body, OFCOM - doesn't the US have any regulations about the transmission of political programmes prior to an election?

[BigLew]

This kind of thing would be allowed by the UK's television regulatory body, OFCOM - doesn't the US have any regulations about the transmission of political programmes prior to an election?Freedom of speech in the good ol' USA. The unwritten rules are completely ignored.

[ism]

This kind of thing would be allowed by the UK's television regulatory body, OFCOM - doesn't the US have any regulations about the transmission of political programmes prior to an election?The FCC has an "equal time" clause. Basically this program should be followed by an airing of something like Fahrenheit 9/11. The FCC decides how to enforce the clause, if they even want to. The FCC Chair is Michael Powell, son of Colin Powell, appointed by Bush. Exercise left for the reader.

[SunWuKong]

Sinclair Broadcast Group, owner of the largest chain of television stations in the nation, plans to air a documentary that accuses Sen. John Kerry of betraying American prisoners during the Vietnam War, a newspaper reported Monday.

hahhahhah... "free" press, so they say...

[Martino]

This kind of thing would be allowed by the UK's television regulatory body, OFCOM - doesn't the US have any regulations about the transmission of political programmes prior to an election?

N'T ... that should have read wouldN'T.

I blame this teeny-tiny NEC laptop I bought in HK, the keys are all scrunched together.

[Shuriken]

I can't tell you how wrong I think this is. A large media conglomerate is forcing its affiliates to screen — uninterrupted — a partisan attack just before an election. And I would object to this even if it were the other candidate who was being trashed in such a manner.

I watched a Sinclair spokesman on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer last night defend the company's decision as handling a news item. He said it was unfair to criticize the show because it was going to include a discussion after the film, and since the discussion hadn't taken place yet, people were criticizing what hadn't happened and what they hadn't seen. He was dripping with insincerity. Obviously, the film will compose the bulk of the time, and lots of people already know the content of the film. By the spokesman including the proposed "discussion" supposed to follow the film as part of the "show," he made a completely ridiculous argument.

Media consolodation must be stopped. The reason that Sinclair can reach so many households is because laws limiting the ownership of media have been relaxed. Suppose that it was a major broadcast network doing this. Suppose that all the networks did it. Could we still say that we have a free press unbeholden to the government?

Comparisons to Fahrenheit 9/11 are off the mark. People who didn't want to see the documentary could simply avoid buying a ticket to it, and it came out early enough for the Bush camp to respond to it. The same holds true for other anti-Bush media.

Dan Rather did something terribly wrong when he based a story about Bush's National Guard service on unsubstantiated documents. But I'm not convinced that he was motivated to "get" Bush more than he was motivated to rush for a scoop. So, claims that Sinclair's move is to balance the biased "liberalism" of the network news is completely baseless. As the media watchdog group FAIR put it, if there is any bias in the media, it is a corporate centrism.

What really bothers me is the brazen way that Sinclair is doing this. The company is transparently presenting anti-Kerry propaganda right before the election, and it is straight-facedly being dishonest about what its doing. Sinclair thinks that it can do this with impunity. But the broadcaster has broken the public trust. There ought to be consequences.

[kitty]

However, if Farenheit 9/11 were shown on primetime, uninterrupted, that WOULD consitute equal air time. This MIGHT end up being (relatively) positive, if Moore can jump on this opportunity...

[hooligan]

1984 baby, they rule our radio waves, television waves, and brain waves. ashcroft is watching you.

[deez nuts]

i would hardly call michael moore's work documentaries.

it's more like a personal editorial.

and no, i won't be watching this anti kerry piece of crap either.

[nonamerasian]

Both this film and a pro-Kerry film is being shown on LinkTV for those interested.

The anti-Kerry film is being shown at 11pm on Oct. 22 and will be repeated along with others a part of the channel's "forbidden films" series.

[Shuriken]

The Los Angeles Times tells me that Stolen Honor did run in its entirety on the Pax television network as a lengthy paid political ad. I don't like this, but at least it's different than a television company foisting its political preferences on its affiliates under the pretense of covering a "news" story.

I also hear that the Sundance Channel is airing a lengthy anti-Bush film just before the election. If true, I think that this is wrong too.