...And Your Country in the Bargain.
By Brad Friedman on 10/11/2004, 3:41pm PT  

I've been too busy of late with a few non-blog realted deadlines to give the proper coverage to the story of the 62 ABC Affilliates being ordered by their owner, the rightwing Sinclair Broadcast Group, to run an anti-Kerry propoganda documentary in the days before the election on all of their local ABC afflilliate stations.

Sinclair is the same group that ordered their affilliates not to run the Nightline broadcast in which Ted Koppel read the names of those killed in Iraq. At the time, Sinclair did so because they charged, without even seeing the broadcast in question, that the show was "motivated by a political agenda designed to undermine the efforts of the United States in Iraq," and charged that "ABC is disguising political statements as news content."

Apparently that concern only applies to the political statements that Sinclair Broadcast Group themselves don't wish to force their afflilliates to make.

As I say, I've not been able to adequately cover this story. It's a very important one for you to follow however and help educate folks about. So I'm gonna point you towards both Josh Marshall who has some good coverage today (read the linked article, and the one below it) as well as Left Coaster who has more detail and what you can do to help put a stop to this egregious abuse of the public airwaves for political gamesmanship by the Republican Media Elite who control it!

If there's one thing I believe we've all learned over these last few months (and four years); Democracy is not free. Vigilance and hard work is sometimes required to maintain the very democracy that our Government claims (often quite cynically) to be trying to defend. You (yes, you reading this) must do something on occassion to keep these cretins and cynics honest and to keep your democracy flowing.

UPDATE: The Boycott of Sinclair is on! Here is a list of Sinclair's advertisers and contacts for them! Let them hear from you! BE CLEAR AND DIRECT, BUT BE POLITE WHEN MAKING CONTACT!

UPDATE: More from Marshall pointing out how the "documentary" in question is actually an hour-long anti-Kerry spot actually made by the SwiftBoats Vets for Bush!

                 

Article Categories: (Uncategorized)