CBS and ABC Decry TV Chain for Running Anti-Kerry Documentary (Stolen Honor..Kerry Bloggers Wild!)

The chutzpah of CBS and ABC. On Sunday night, both decried how the Sinclair Broadcast Group has told its owned and operated televisions stations to run an anti-Kerry documentary, Stolen Honor: Wounds that Never Heal. On the CBS Evening News, reporter Kelly Cobiella noted how "Sinclair has given the lion's share of its political contributions to Republican candidates. This year, the company's CEO wrote out the largest personal check allowed by law to President Bush's re-election campaign." ABC anchor Terry Moran stressed how "Democrats decry this move as a political smear and yellow journalism" before Geoff Morrell relayed how "Sinclair's owners have donated $58,000 to re-elect President Bush."

The stories failed to inform viewers how ABC and CBS have given free air time to the anti-Bush screed from Michael Moore, Fahrenheit 911, or how the corporate chieftains at both networks are Democrats and/or large donors to Democrats, including the Kerry presidential campaign. To say nothing of CBS using forged documents for a prime time hit piece aimed at destroying President Bush's credibility.

On June 27, before a re-run of a laudatory profile of Michael Moore, CBS's 60 Minutes promoted Fahrenheit 9/11 by airing a nearly minute-long excerpt of one of its most disparaging sequences about President Bush, showing him sitting in the classroom for seven minutes on September 11, 2001.

A few days earlier, ABC's Good Morning America spent about seven minutes showcasing Fahrenheit 9/11's highlights of how after President Bush was informed a second plane had hit the World Trade Center, he stayed in front of elementary school kids for another seven minutes. "Was valuable time wasted?" asked Charlie Gibson at the top of the June 22 show. Diane Sawyer imparted great meaning to the time passage: "It was seven minutes in the life of a President, seven minutes in the history of the nation, it's seven minutes a lot of people are using as a kind of Rorschach test."

On the money and party affiliation side for Disney, owner of ABC, and Viacom, owner of CBS: Disney CEO Michael Eisner is a long-time generous donor to Democratic candidates and in March former Senator George Mitchell, the very partisan Senate Majority Leader when Democrats held the body in the late 1980s and early 1990s, was elected Chairman of the Board of the Walt Disney Company. For more about Mitchell's ascension: http://www.mediaresearch.org/cyberalerts/2004/cyb20040304.asp#6

ABC's Geoff Morrell warned that through Sinclair the documentary "could be seen by nearly a quarter of all U.S. households." CBS anchor Mika Brzezinski referred to Sinclair as "the nation's largest television group owners." Cobiella described Sinclair as "a company with the power to reach a quarter of American TV viewers. Sinclair owns 62 local television stations across the country, including affiliates of Fox, ABC, WB, UPN and three CBS stations, in a number of states still up for grabs in the presidential race."

In fact, as Cobiella alluded to, Sinclair is mainly made up of little-watched WB and UPN affiliates, as well as some stations so small they don't even have any network affiliation, and their few affiliations with ABC and CBS are limited to a few small markets. Their largest CBS affiliate is in Sacramento, the 19th largest market, and their largest ABC affiliate, on channel 30, is in an even smaller market, St. Louis. For a list of Sinclair's owned or operated stations (they manage many stations owned by others): http://www.sbgi.net/business/markets/all.shtml

Nonetheless, World News Tonight anchor Terry Moran treated Sinclair's programming as big news, announcing on the October 10 World News Tonight/Sunday: "A major broadcasting company, with access to more than 60 television stations, is stirring controversy this weekend with its plan to pre-empt regular programming in order to show a film attacking John Kerry. Democrats decry this move as a political smear and yellow journalism."

"In a move likely to heat up discussion of the intersection of media and politics one of the nation's largest television group owners will announce shortly it's urging its stations to air a controversial film about the Democratic candidate for President."

Kelly Cobiella began: "It's called 'Stolen Honor,' a 42-minute film that asserts John Kerry's Vietnam war protests actually prolonged the war. Fellow Vietnam veteran and longtime Kerry critic Carlton Sherwood produced it, and claims Pennsylvania war veterans paid for it."

Cobiella: "The movie, available as an Internet pay-per-view, has found a broadcast distributor in Baltimore-based Sinclair Broadcast Group, a company with the power to reach a quarter of American TV viewers. Sinclair owns 62 local television stations across the country, including affiliates of Fox, ABC, WB, UPN and three CBS stations, in a number of states still up for grabs in the presidential race. A Sinclair executive tells CBS News the company wants its stations to air the film the third week of October as a news program, and says it has offered Senator Kerry a chance to answer the claims on air. The Kerry camp is skeptical."

Chad Clanton, Kerry campaign: "I think it's hard to take any offer seriously from any group that's going this far over the line."

Cobiella: "In the past eight years, Sinclair has given the lion's share of its political contributions to Republican candidates. This year, the company's CEO wrote out the largest personal check allowed by law to President Bush's re-election campaign. In a January interview with Television Week, Sinclair President and CEO David Smith said, 'Our news media has intentionally dumbed down the news, and we all know why they do: Because they have a political agenda.' The company made headlines in April for pre-empting a Nightline program on its ABC affiliates, accusing host Ted Koppel of trying to make a political statement by reading the names of soldiers killed in Iraq."

Danny Schechter, Mediachannel.org: "The public interest is being lost to the corporate interest."

Cobiella: "While media critic Danny Schechter says airing the anti-Kerry film so close to an election could be viewed as inappropriate, it does not break federal broadcast rules."

Schechter: "Others will follow if it's successful. The problem is, the truth could be a casualty."

Cobiella concluded: "It's the latest salvo in a campaign where media has become the weapon of choice."

The Los Angeles Times on Saturday first reported Sinclair's programming decision. The Baltimore Sun's version of that story: http://www.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/tv/bal-te.campaign09oct0 9,1,1283456.story?coll=bal-artslife-tv

Moore is on tour right on college campuses right up until election. The film maker's Bush-bashing pseudo-documentary, Fahrenheit 9/11, came out on DVD October 4, (Columbia TriStar, $29), but two of his previous films, Bowling for Columbine and The Big One, are now out as well repackaged as the Michael Moore Limited Edition DVD Collector's Set (MGM Home Entertainment, $30). Two Moore books have arrived in stores: Will They Ever Trust Us Again? ($22), a collection of letters sent by soldiers in Iraq, and The Official Fahrenheit 9/11 Reader ($14).

Defeating Bush in November has become Moore's mission, so he pushed for the DVD to come out before the election. "I thought as many Americans as possible should see it before they vote in the election," he said.

Moore used lies (well documented) to sway the voters toward Kerry. The documentary Stolen Honor, is a factual account the Old Media media wouldn't tell..

Synopsis: STOLEN HONOR: WOUNDS THAT NEVER HEAL, will present former POWs telling "their compelling and chilling stories of their brutal life as prisoners of war in North Vietnam and the additional suffering and extended captivity they endured after their North Vietnamese captors read to them John Kerry's words accusing American soldiers of atrocities and demanded the POWs confess to Kerry's "war crimes" allegations."

"The surviving men and their families, who felt betrayed by Kerry then and now, speak out through Stolen Honor against the lies, false testimony and distortions made by young Mr. Kerry in the early 1970's. Funding for the documentary's production was made possible by Pennsylvania veterans."

"Many POWs were interviewed for the documentary which produced more than 20 hours of vivid testimony of the unspeakable physical and psychological abuse they suffered in the North Vietnamese prison camps. Then, in mere moments in 1971, Kerry willingly gave the North Vietnamese what the brave POWs had endured torture and solitary confinement to avoid saying."

"Stolen Honor, was released Thursday, September 9 and previewed at the Marine Officers Reserve Building in Washington, DC with many POWs and their family members featured in the film. The 45-minute film includes testimony from highly decorated POW's and their wives of previously undisclosed details regarding life in the North Vietnamese prison camps after John Kerry's congressional testimony and public anti-war statements and activities."

The biased networks (you might know who they are) gave Moore plenty of air time, when they would not give air time to our Swiftboat vets until viewers forced the Old Media to at least recognize their existence. In fact, CBS's 60 Minutes ("9:03am the second plane hits the towers. 9:43am the plane hits the Pentagon. Kerry discusses how he became aware of the attack in a Senate room with Barbara Boxer, etc, when the second plane hit the WTC. He then says they were unable to think and then "boom" (as though it happened immediately) the plane hit the Pentagon." That event was 40 minutes later.)

Rather tried to push forth the " Burkett memos" which he or Mary claimed they had been working on for years (?)released conveniently just before the election and which we know failed thanks to "buckhead" and friends.

MSNBC's Hardball Matthews refused to concede that he had distorted Dick Cheney's comments about a 9/11 link to Iraq and MSNBC's Keith Olbermann set out to prove that Cheney had drawn such a connection, but Olbermann selectively edited a series of Cheney remarks, leaving out Cheney's specific rejection of any such connection.

The Halperin Memo Dated Friday October 8, 2004 just sent out in an email and released to the net by most likely an ABC insider, suggested favoritism in questions to Kerry during the debates.

All of the Old Media selectively spent as much as time as they could to the same handful of Jersey Girls ignoring the other families of 9-11. Thus, the 150 ignored 911 Families started their own website to show all Americans they were not backing Kerry as he so suggested with a broad stroke of the brush they were.

We could cite examples of destructive bias and slander in the media for hours. There would be no need for the showing of Stolen Honor at this time if bias in the Old media had not been so flagrant on a daily basis. Now it's our turn to be witness to the truth.

Hope I didn't bore you, Quick1;
and I probably did.

Thanks for your comment.

fight_truth_decay

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