|
Sinclair takes flak for anti-Kerry documentary,
fires dissenting journalist
Compiled by Willy Rosencrans
Oct. 27 (AGR) – Sinclair Broadcast Group, which owns or
operates 62 television stations that collectively reach 24 percent of
the American market, announced two weeks ago that its stations would
air a documentary, Stolen Honor: Wounds that Never Heal, about
Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry’s anti-Vietnam War
activity, in place of regular programming before the Nov. 2 presidential
election.
Backlash from stockholders and advertisers resulted in the media giant’s
decision, announced Oct. 19, to run a different program, A POW Story:
Politics, Pressure, and the Media, which also included a discussion
of Kerry’s anti-war activity. That program was broadcast Oct. 22.
Sinclair, a major campaign contributor to the Bush campaign, was widely
denounced over its decision in April to bar seven of its ABC-affiliated
stations from airing a reading of the names of US soldiers who have
died in combat in Iraq.
Sinclair’s stock has fallen 53 percent this year. It dropped seven
cents, or one percent, on Oct. 15 to close at $7.04. It traded at a
52-week low on Oct. 18 of $6.49. Before Sinclair’s plan to show
the documentary was first reported, the stock was at $7.50.
After Sinclair changed its broadcast plans, the stock rose 12.6 percent
on Oct. 20 to close at $7.05.
That decision notwithstanding, car and furniture companies in battleground
states, such as Minnesota, have pulled ads from local Sinclair stations,
and hamburger chain Burger King said on Oct. 20 that it would not run
its commercials during the program.
Kenneth J. Campbell, a University of Delaware professor who is one of
the veterans depicted in Stolen Honor, sued the movie’s
producer for libel, saying the film combined footage of his appearance
at a 1971 war protest with a voice-over which claims that many of the
supposed veterans who took part in the event were later “discovered
as frauds” who “never set foot on the battlefield, or left
the comfort of the States, or even served in uniform.”
“ I nearly lost my life in Vietnam multiple times,” said Campbell,
“and to have someone say I am a fake and a fraud and didn’t
even serve in Vietnam is utterly despicable.”
Sinclair sacks ‘disgruntled employee’
Sinclair fired its Washington bureau chief on Oct. 18 after the newsman
publicly protested its plans to air Stolen Honor.
Jon Leiberman, who had worked for the TV broadcaster for nearly five
years, called the upcoming program “blatant political propaganda,
not objective journalism,” because it was airing so close to election
day. He added that he had told his boss that he refused to work on it.
Leiberman, 29, who made similar comments that appeared in the Baltimore
Sun that same day, said he was fired late in the day for violating company
policy by speaking to the media without prior approval.
Leiberman, who started at the Sinclair Washington bureau more than a
year ago, said he told his supervisor Oct. 17 that “as an objective
journalist, I can’t be part of this program and I won’t be
a part of this program,” adding: “We work too hard for credibility
in this business.” He said that he wasn’t protesting Sinclair’s
decision to air the program — just its plan to label it as news.
“I would have preferred that they did it in the context of an editorial
or a commentary or a programming special, but to call this news and
to put this under the guise of a news program, in my opinion, is wrong,”
he said.
Leiberman also said, in an interview on CNN, that “I feel that
our company is trying to sway this election” in favor of Bush.
Before he was fired, Leiberman said he was speaking out because at Sinclair,
“there is such a big influence in the newsroom from editorial and
higher-ups in the company…. My hope at the end of the day is that
this just wakes up some people in our company and we just do a better
job at being fair, that what we call news is news, what we call commentary
is commentary.”
In a statement read on CNN, Sinclair called Leiberman a “disgruntled
employee.”
Sources: Knight-Ridder, LA Times, Reuters
Indymedia asks: ‘Who took our servers?’
Oct. 22 — Two weeks after the hard drives
of two Indymedia servers were seized from the London office of a US-owned
web hosting company called Rackspace, Caroline Flint, UK Home Office
Under-Secretary, answered parliamentarian questions by stating that
“no UK law enforcement agencies were involved.”
The seizure shut down around 20 Indymedia websites, an internet radio
station, and other projects. The servers were returned a week later
because “the court order had been complied with,” but still
no information is available to Indymedia as to who seized them and who
now might have copies of all the public and personal information they
contained.
An FBI spokesperson originally suggested to Agence France-Presse that
the FBI issued a subpoena to Rackspace, but that it was “on behalf
of a third country.” Later he denied that the FBI had any involvement
whatsoever.
A few days after the seizure, a senior federal prosecutor for Geneva,
Switzerland, also confirmed that she had opened a criminal investigation
of Indymedia, but said that she had not asked for the servers to be
seized.
A Italian judge from Bologna confirmed that she issued a request to
US authorities for the server’s IP logs concerning certain posts
published on Italy Indymedia. But she says that she did not request
the seizure of the server hardware, either.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), who is representing the interests
of Indymedia, has contacted all the likely suspects in the US —
including the FBI, the State Department, and the Federal District Court
in Texas — that could have issued the subpoena referenced in Rackspace’s
public October 8 statement concerning the Indymedia server. But none
of them did claim responsibility for the seizure.
“Were our servers abducted by aliens?” asks Clara, an Indymedia
volunteer from the Netherlands. “Two weeks have passed and we are
no step closer to knowing who took our servers, why, or even on which
continent they were.”
The only thing that is known is what Rackspace volunteered in their
statement: that they received a court order in the U.S. Efforts are
now underway by the Electronic Frontier Foundation to unseal that court
order.
Meanwhile, the international outcry continues. 5,000 individuals have
signed on to Indymedia’s solidarity declaration (solidarity.indymedia.org.uk),
and numerous others continue to contact Indymedia offering their support
to help insure that secret court orders and mysterious government agencies
don’t shut down Indymedia’s websites ever again.
Source: Indymedia
|
