Posted on 10/19/2004 8:07:12 PM PDT by j.cam
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc., the nation's largest owner of TV stations, said on Tuesday it would only air part of a documentary critical of Sen. John Kerry's Vietnam war record, as critics demanded it cancel the broadcast altogether or face legal action.
Sinclair has drawn fire over its plans to air the 42-minute documentary "Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal," about the Democratic presidential candidate on its more than 60 TV stations on Friday, less than two weeks before the Nov. 2 election.
Furious Democrats have charged that the documentary was a blatant political statement disguised as news and have demanded equal air time from Sinclair, whose top executives have been major contributors to President Bush and Republicans in recent years.
Sinclair said it would not show the entire Kerry documentary, which accuses the senator of betraying fellow Vietnam veterans by testifying to Congress in 1971 against the war and about atrocities he said were committed by U.S. forces.
Sinclair said it would air a special program on Friday called "A POW Story: Politics, Pressure and the Media" that includes a discussion of the allegations surrounding Kerry's anti-Vietnam War activities.
"The experience of preparing to air this news special has been trying for many of those involved," the Baltimore, Maryland-based broadcaster said. "The company and many of its executives have endured personal attacks of the vilest nature, as well as calls on our advertisers and our viewers to boycott our stations and on our shareholders to sell their stock."
Sinclair operates in 39 markets that include battleground states Florida and Ohio.
KERRY CONTROVERSY
Sinclair's shares have fallen amid the Kerry controversy and uncertain advertising revenues. Its stock has fallen almost 17 percent since its plans to air the show were first reported more than a week ago. The shares are down 58 percent in the year to date, and were off 3.5 percent to $6.26 on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, a powerful shareholder lawyer with strong ties to the Democratic party, San Diego-based William Lerach, accused three top Sinclair executives of insider trading and threatened to sue the company if its board of directors does not take legal action itself against the executives.
Lerach, a Democratic Party fundraiser, said the accusations were not politically motivated and were spurred by requests from shareholder clients, including the pension fund for 1199 SEIU Greater New York, a health care workers union, to investigate Sinclair's recent stock declines.
"We are equal opportunity suers," he said.
Lerach accused Sinclair vice presidents Frederick G. Smith and J. Duncan Smith, and board member Robert E. Smith of selling thousands of shares of Sinclair in late 2003 and early 2004, just before shares began to fall.
He said the accusations were based on studying publicly available documents of stock sales.
"We have discovered that senior executives and a director of Sinclair appear to have taken advantage of their inside knowledge of the company's business and prospects to sell over $18.5 million worth of Sinclair stock," Lerach said in a letter to the board.
The company's statement did not address the Lerach's accusations and a company representative was not immediately available for comment.
Meanwhile, a group called Media Matters for America said it was underwriting costs for a Sinclair shareholder, the investment firm Glickenhaus & Co., to demand the broadcaster provide an opportunity for a response to the "Stolen Honor" show. Glickenhaus holds about 6,100 Sinclair shares, according to Media Matters.
Sinclair reportedly fired its Washington bureau chief on Monday after he accused the company of "indefensible" conduct for planning to air the anti-Kerry film. The company issued a statement calling the journalist, Jon Lieberman, a "disgruntled employee," according to The Washington Post.
(Additional reporting by Jeremy Pelofsky in Washington and Arthur Spiegelman in Los Angeles)
With all the pro-Democratic-party bias coming from Sumner Redstone's Viacom (with their CBS forgeries, anti-Bush books and their coverage on 60 Minutes, Lies about the draft on MTV), ABC, NBC (home of Kitty Kelly), NY Times, Washington Post, NPR, PBS, LA Times, Time, Newsweek, Reuters, the AP, etc., how did the Democrats win this fight?
Why are the liberal Democrats so effective at fighting what they declare to be media bias, and why are conservative Republicans so ineffective that Bush lets the liberal media supply debate moderators exclusively? Why is the documentary Stolen Honor not airing in its entirety, and why does Dan Rather still broadcast the evening news while MTV still claims that Bush will start the draft?
Why is Sumner Redstone not even being criticized in the conservative media? Though Sumner Redstone suddenly claimed he was pro Bush after he was caught with forgeries trashing Bush, he has bragged for years that he is a liberal Democratic activist. And he throws a party on MTV for the President whenever a Democrat wins. And he held softball townhall meetings on MTV for Clinton and Gore when they ran against Republicans. And he got caught with forgeries trashing Bush. And he has MTV lying and claiming Bush will bring back the draft. And his Viacom gives far more money to Demcrats.
Imagine of Repurt Murdoch pulled this partisanship? We already hear him constantly trashed as a Republican activist in the liberal media. Yet Redstone gets a pass from the conservative media.
And no one accuses the Democrats of censorship when they block a Documentary? Imagine of Bush or the Republicans tried to censor Michael Moore?
According to Reuters: "Furious Democrats have charged that the documentary was a blatant political statement disguised as news and have demanded equal air time from Sinclair, whose top executives have been major contributors to President Bush and Republicans in recent years."
How could they make this point stick when CBS and NBC gave almost exclusively to Kerry. See:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1242416/posts
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=40862
They were never going to show the whole thing in the first place.
If the publishers of this documentary can't get it out via broadcast/cable, maybe they might consider releasing it on the internet?
I would gladly donate some server space and bandwidth.
Sh**!
Air the WHOLE thing!
His stock dropping cooled his heels to air the WHOLE thing.
His stock dropping cooled his heels to air the WHOLE thing.
He was financially intimidated.
here is a pps chart for Sinclair for the last 6 months......you can change it to various lengths from one day to "max" by clicking the "Range" hotlinks at the top of the square:
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=SBGI&t=6m&l=on&z=m&q=l&c=
here's the insider transactions, rarely are these up-to-date though:
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/it?s=SBGI
It's just another case of Democrat censorship. There is no reason not to show the whole documentary, there is surely an audience for it. If the Democrats don't want to watch they can just change the channel, but censoring the words of genuine American war heroes is just wrong.
It is availble via internet for less than 5 dollars. Spread the word and send folks to the website
www.stolenhonor.com
sorry, I'm an html doofus
www.stolenhonor.com
It is available on the internet for less than 5 dollars.
sorry, I'm an html doofus
SINCLAIR=WIMPS
and apparently a double poster, sorry
Admin Mod if you could please?
looks like a good time to buy their stock, it's at $6.24 now after all this is over it will at least double
Isn't one hour better then none at all?
why can't we put out a mass freep to buy their stock, for 50 bucks you can buy about 7 shares it's not much but if several hundred people do it at least we can send a mesg of agreement and when a companies stock starts to climb people start to buy it.
At the last minute, Sinclair Broadcasting has reshuffled the broadcast schedule for their program on "Stolen Honor" and now call it "A POW Story: Politics, Pressure and the Media". The new schedule and content of the program is described in the Sinclair press release shown in the post below:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1250402/posts
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