TV channels to rubbish Kerry as ' Traitor ' on eve of US election

POSTED BY: JaynezTown
UPDATED: Saturday, October 16, 2004 12:41
VIEWED: 9525
PAGE 1 of 6

Check out this propaganda

Looks like the Bush camp will get some help in their smear campaign

QUOTE

One of America's biggest television companies has announced plans to broadcast a film days before the presidential election that portrays the Democratic candidate John Kerry as betraying his fellow soldiers in Vietnam

If it's true, that's the last nail in the coffin of America's media concentration. Fox news which has now become a tool of GW / Rumsfield thought to give as little coverage as possible to the stolen votes by Bush, fails to mention the terrible GW job on the economy or will give minimum reports on the torture in Abu Graib
Fox news a station that would have made Hitler proud. A newstation created by the radical Neo-Con Roger Ailes - media adviser to Bush. Maybe some might consider it low to argue/compare anyone to Nazis, but keep in mind that in June,2004, the Repubs (on GeorgeWBush.com) posted the faces(pics) of Kerry's democratic party: Kerry, Gore, Gephardt, and ....Hitler.

The conservative Sinclair Broadcast Group will reportedly present the film as news on the 62 local channels it owns nationwide.

The film will replace normal primetime programmes supplied by the national networks and reach up to a quarter of the electorate, many in critical battleground states, about a week before the election on November 2. Democratic senators have also said they will protest to the federal communications commission (FCC). The FCC is chaired by Michael Powell, the son of the secretary of state, Colin Powell !!!!

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What happened? What the f*ck happened? It's amazing. They've come up against a candidate who is a total clean-as-a-whistle, straight arrow eagle scout and they just lose it. He doesn't sleep around. A decorated veteran. I mean, Kerry doesn't even have anything they can trump up like "whitewater" or ANYTHING. So this is what they do. Well, it's audacious.

They're only hurting themselves at this point, though. Kerry looks more credible every dang day and Bush just gets more and more strident and nasty and monosylabic.

What is going on in this country? Who responds to this kind of bullying, smearing, smart-ass misrepresentation and red-faced lies? According to the polls, fewer and fewer people every dang day. Yay us!

HKCavalier

Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.

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To make things fair, Fahrenheit 9/11 should play on TV too.

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Ok, you can get some info on

thedailystar , morons dot org, and voice of America news have it


The Sinclair Broadcast Group is going to force other sations to show an anti-Kerry video calling the democrats Traitors .
Sinclair has ordered its 62 stations to air the program just a few days before the real election day - on November 2.


"No one has ever lost votes by lying to the American people!" In the ultimate Orwellian convolution, the draft dodger (Bush) has become the war hero, and the genuine war hero (Kerry) has become a war criminal! In the recently concluded Republican Convention at New York, the name of Osama Bin Laden, the real criminal, and Al Qaeda, the real criminal den were not mentioned even once. The message of the carefully choreographed convention was simple: Osama and Al Qaeda had morphed into a new enemy: Democratic Presidential candidate John Kerry! Bush and the Republicans' rallying cry was: forget Osama and Al Qaeda, America must destroy this new, even more sinister enemy, John Kerry.

The Sinclair Group has made large donations to President Bush's re-election campaign. The company made news in April when it ordered seven stations not to air another program that featured a roll call of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq.


While Mr. Bush has spent $200 billion so far on the war in Iraq, average Americans are hurting. Bush's ill-advised tax cut for the wealthy has resulted in a record $422 billion budget deficit this year alone. Unemployment remains high, close to 6 per cent. Mr. Bush will go down in history as the first President since Herbert Hoover during the depression of the 1920s to record a net loss of jobs during his 4 years in office. Between January 2001 and November 2004, America will have lost at least one million jobs. The stock market is sputtering; the NASDAQ is down 60 per cent from its all time high. More Americans are without health insurance than ever. Mr. Bush has appointed the most rightwing judges to the nation's courts. His environmental record is atrocious. Last week, to please the gun lobby he let the ban on assault weapon lapse after ten years, infuriating the law enforcement agencies who will be the prime target of these weapons. Bush has no exit strategy for Iraq.

Federal election law prohibits corporations and labor unions from engaging in or funding "electioneering communication" within 60 days of an election.

Sinclair's markets clearly reach more than 50,000 people. They clearly intend to broadcast an anti-Kerry smear-umentary within very few days of the election. Few reasonable people would call "Stolen Honor" news any more than they'd call "Fahrenheit 9/11" news.

John Kerry's rise in the polls always seems to be quickly followed by the raising of the terror threat level by Attorney General Ashcroft and Homeland Security Secretary Ridge. This way Americans are scared into rallying around the commander-in-chief. Last weak, Vice President Cheney told Americans that if Kerry is elected, America will be hit again by terrorist. The press reported it as "Vote for Bush or Die!"

Sinclair Broadcasting Group, which owns the largest chain of TV stations in the United States, has told its stations to broadcast a documentary accusing Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry and democrats of betraying the United Sates of America.


I am not a lawyer, and if you think Federal election law is confusing, you're not alone. Having said that, it certainly appears to me that Sinclair Broadcasting intends to violate Federal election law, specifically the prohibition of corporate election campaigning within 60 days of an election


John Kerry has forgotten how vicious the Bushes can be.

In 2000, when the junior Bush's campaign was faltering and Senator John McCain's surging, the Bushies circulated lies that MCCain was a traitor against the United Sates, and that his adopted daughter from Bangladesh, Brigitte, is actually his daughter with a black prostitute!

CBS News apologized under pressure last month, saying it could not verify the authenticity of d

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So has anyone out there seen Outfoxed? It's a documentary that looks into exactly what you're talking about here. Basically how Fox's nonobjective "journalism" heavly pushes a conservative right-wing agenda, while constantly claiming a fair and balanced point of view.

I think it available on DVD now in the US. I know it's currently playing in cinemas here in Australia.

Check out the website for more info:
http://www.outfoxed.org/

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I was curious about this whole thing so I visited the corporate site http://sbgweb2.sbgnet.com/index.shtml

They must be receiving a ton of complaints already because the following statement is on the main page:

Quote:

---

We welcome your comments regarding the upcoming special news event featuring the topic of Americans held as prisoners of war in Vietnam. The program has not been videotaped and the exact format of this unscripted event has not been finalized. Characterizations regarding the content are premature and are based on ill-informed sources.

Massachusetts Senator John Kerry has been invited to participate. You can urge him to appear by calling his Washington, D.C. campaign headquarters at
(202) 712-3000.

if you would like to make further comments on this matter, you may do so at:
comments@sbgi.net

---

I found it interesting that it's supposed to be an unscripted event. To me that makes it sound more like they're attempting a smear campaign, not less. At least if it was taped in advance they could plead that it was simply timing etc. But to purposely schedule an unscripted show that can't be reviewed makes it all sorts of suspicious. Is it supposed to be a round table or something?

It could just be that the leaking of whatever info (true or not) is an attempt to get everyone upset about a program which may or may not defame Kerry. The bad press the company receives may end up benefitting Kerry's campaign after all. Really, until it airs, there is no way to know.

But what gets me is how is this any different from what CBS news attempted? They used false documents in an attempt to smear the president. CBS is a corporate entity, could we say they were trying to influence the election? Or if Farenheit 9/11 was to air on tv before the election, would that be an unlawful attempt to influence the election (by the production co and by whatever network chose to air it)?

I'm not saying I think they should be able to air the program, I'm just curious as to what everyone thinks (and I'm playing a bit of devil's advocate )




If nothing we do matters, then all that matters is what we do. -"Angel"

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There's a boycott website up encouraging advertisers to pull their ads from Sinclair networks:

http://www.boycottsbg.com/default.htm

There's more detailed discussion here:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/10/12/121355/52


Jayne, your mouth is talkin. Might want to look into that.

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I'll just throw some more information out there. The vice president for corporate relations of Sinclair was on CNN this morning (his name is Mark Hyman). Here are some statements that he made regarding this story (Hemmer is Bill Hemmer, CNN anchor):

Quote:

---

excerpted from http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0410/12/ltm.04.html
...
HEMMER: Democrats say this is illegal. Clearly, you do not. Why not?

HYMAN: Well, a couple of issues. First of all, we haven't even looked at a 90-minute program. But if John Kerry wants to spend 45 minutes or an hour with us, maybe we have a 90-minute program. Again, no formal format has been decided upon.

However, the accusations coming from Terry McAuliffe and others, is it because they are some elements of this that may reflect poorly on John Kerry? That it's somehow an in-kind contribution of George Bush?

If you use that logic and reasoning, that means every car bomb in Iraq would be an in-kind contribution to John Kerry. Weak job performance ratings that came out last month would have been an in- kind contribution to John Kerry. And that's just nonsense.

This is news. I can't change the fact that these people decided to come forward today. The networks had this opportunity over a month ago to speak with these people. They chose to suppress them. They chose to ignore them. They are acting like Holocaust deniers, pretending these men don't exist.
...

---

The third and fourth paragraphs are especially fascinating. The statement relating networks to Holocaust deniers has upset some people. Here is a letter released today by the Anti-Defamation Leage written to the Washington Post (the news organization that wrote an October 10 article about Sinclair and the upcoming broadcast).

Quote:

---

excerpted from http://www.adl.org/media_watch/newspapers/20041011-WashPost.htm
The statement by Mark Hyman, vice president of the Sinclair Broadcast Group, that the television networks were "acting like Holocaust deniers" with regard to coverage of anti-Kerry veterans groups is grossly inappropriate ("Sinclair Stations to Air Anti-Kerry Documentary," Oct. 11).

Regardless of Mr. Hyman's opinion of the quality of news coverage relating to Presidential campaign issues, his analogy to those who deny the Nazi murder of 6 million Jews and millions of others is insensitive and painful. Usage of Holocaust imagery to score a political point is unacceptable. He should repudiate the comment.
Sincerely,

Abraham H. Foxman
National Director

---

What I'm curious about is why Sinclair would choose to put themselves in the middle of such a controversy. Jayneztown has written about the contributions by Sinclair executives to the Republican Party and the Bush campaign so I won't go into any detail on that. But here is something that rang a bell for me. It's from a USAToday article, dated the 11th, entitled "Plan to air divisive film raises questions":

Quote:

---

excerpted from http://www.usatoday.com/money/media/2004-10-11-sinclair_x.htm
...
But many believe Sinclair's provocative decision shows how much the company has riding on the election.

With its heavy concentration of Fox and WB affiliates, ranking in the middle of the pack in mostly midsize markets, Sinclair is barely profitable and laden with debt. It had a net profit of $14 million on revenue of $739 million in 2003.

Sinclair hopes to change that by solidifying its hold on local markets by controlling, for example, two stations in more cities and sharing operating and news-gathering costs. But it needs the federal government to relax several media ownership restrictions.

Sinclair wants officials to permit a company to own two or more stations in more communities than allowed now. It also wants the FCC to ease a restriction that bars a company from owning TV stations reaching more than 35% of all homes, and to lift the rule that keeps companies from owning newspapers and TV stations in most markets.

That's where the parties part ways. FCC Chairman Michael Powell, a Republican, has mad

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