[Mb-civic] EDITORIAL A Tone-Deaf Broadcaster LATimes

[Michael Butler]

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-fcc15oct15.story

EDITORIAL

A Tone-Deaf Broadcaster

 October 15, 2004



 Talk about shooting yourself in the foot. Sinclair Broadcast Group, an
owner of TV stations across the country and an advocate of lifting current
federal limits on media ownership, is interrupting regularly scheduled
programming on its stations nationwide next week to force them to air a
documentary opposing John F. Kerry. If opponents of further media
concentration had floated this as a hypothetical scenario to advance their
cause, they would have been laughingly dismissed.

 But with breathtaking political tone-deafness, Sinclair has come to their
rescue. There is a strong case for revising the decades-old media ownership
rules, but thanks to Sinclair, the case will be a tougher sell. It's no
wonder investors rushed to sell shares in the ineptly managed media company
after The Times first reported Sinclair's plans to compel most of its 62
stations to air "Stolen Honor." The 42-minute film claims, according to its
producer, that Kerry's "lies, false testimony and distortions" about the
Vietnam War encouraged the North Vietnamese to torture U.S. prisoners.

 After The Times reported Saturday that Sinclair would air the show as a
news broadcast next week, 17 Democratic senators asked Federal
Communications Commission Chairman Michael K. Powell to investigate whether
"current law and regulation" permitted broadcasters to air such "blatantly
partisan" programming. They do, Powell responded Thursday. The federal
Fairness Doctrine, which once demanded more or less equal broadcast time for
differing political views, is pretty much dead at the hands of federal
courts.

 Viewers may recall that Sinclair, six months ago, barred its ABC affiliates
from airing an episode of ABC's "Nightline" in which anchor Ted Koppel read
the names of soldiers killed in Iraq. Koppel's roll call, Sinclair said, was
"a political statement disguised as news content." Now, it claims just the
opposite for "Stolen Honor."

 On Tuesday, some Democrats, recognizing that the FCC would probably be a
dead end, filed a second appeal with the Federal Election Commission,
arguing more narrowly that "Stolen Honor," produced with financial aid from
the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and aired without commercials, is a
political ad and an illegal corporate campaign contribution by Sinclair to
President Bush. The fly in that ointment is that the FEC is toothless by
design, dominated by the political parties. Sinclair says it has asked Kerry
to answer the film's charges after the broadcast, but that would be roughly
equivalent to asking Bush to sit down to react to Michael Moore's
"Fahrenheit 9/11." 

 Opponents of Sinclair are direly predicting that its anti-Kerry broadcast
might throw the election to Bush, but that seems overblown even for those
who relish big media conspiracy theories. If anything, the controversy is
more likely to energize Kerry voters.


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