comments_image -

The Eternal Twilight of the Sinclair Mind

Jon Leiberman was fired for challenging Sinclair Broadcasting's cardinal rule: partisanship before principle. But the company's decision to back away from its original plan reveals the high price of playing politics.
 
 
LIKE THIS ARTICLE ?
Join our mailing list:

Sign up to stay up to date on the latest headlines via email.

 
 
 
 

Golly, gee whiz! That’s what Mark Hyman, VP of Corporate Relations at the Sinclair Broadcast Group, seemed to be saying when asked if his company, the largest owner of local TV stations in the country, is biased against John Kerry: "Why would you say that? … I certainly hope not. There shouldn’t be."

Goodness, how could anyone come to such an outlandish conclusion?

Here’s how: in mid-September, 10 commentaries delivered on-air by Hyman in a 12-day period bashed the Democratic candidate. He accused Kerry of joining "the Navy … to avoid being drafted into the Army" and of "a lifetime of supporting communist forces opposed to the U.S."

Then there’s the fact that nearly 90 percent of the $2.3 million in political contributions made by Sinclair and its executives within the last eight years went to Republicans (including 97 percent of the nearly $68,000 donated this cycle alone).

And, oh yeah, the company first planned to pre-empt regular programming on all 62 of its stations to air an anti-Kerry film days before the presidential election – during primetime, without commercials, and without the opportunity for an equal response by Kerry or his supporters. "Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal" brands Kerry as a traitor and a "willing accomplice" of the enemy for his activism against the Vietnam War.

That Sinclair has since backed away from its original plan – announcing Tuesday that it would only air a special one-hour news program, entitled "A POW Story: Politics, Pressure and the Media" – is in itself the sign of the power of grassroots organizing. The company refuses to admit that the protests – which resulted in a $105,000,000 financial loss since Oct. 8 – had any impact on its decision. According to its press release, "Contrary to numerous inaccurate political and press accounts, the Sinclair stations will not be airing the documentary 'Stolen Honor' in its entirety. At no time did Sinclair ever publicly announce that it intended to do so."

Right!

More genuinely shocking than Sinclair's rabidly partisan bias or its disingenuous attempt to hide the same is that someone actually had the courage to burst Hyman’s bubble of feigned innocence. On Monday, one of Sinclair’s own, Washington bureau chief Jon Leiberman, told the Baltimore Sun that the company’s planned airing of "Stolen Honor" is "biased political propaganda, with clear intentions to sway this election."

By 5 p.m. on the same day, Leiberman had been tagged a "disgruntled employee" who let his "political leanings get in the way." He was escorted from the company headquarters in Maryland, and shut out of the Sinclair e-mail system.

"I got fired because I spoke out," he said in an interview with AlterNet. For months he’d been complaining to his news director, managing editor, and even CEO David Smith about Sinclair’s news slant, which he says tilts 10-to-1 against Democrats. But when his complaints were ignored, he went public.

"Nobody will speak out at Sinclair. It’s a culture of fear. But I know in my heart what they’re doing is wrong. It’s not fair and balanced … It’s pure propaganda, and they’re trying to shoehorn what should be a format for editorials or commentary into news," Leiberman says.

"News" is an iffy term at Sinclair. The anti-Kerry documentary is labeled as newsworthy despite the dubious journalistic background of its creator Carlton Sherwood – a past employee of Homeland Security czar Tom Ridge, a former Washington Times columnist, and fawning biographer of the paper’s owner Rev. Sun Myung Moon.

ABC’s Nightline's reading of the names of 700 military personnel killed in Iraq, however, failed to meet Sinclair's definition of "news." In that now-infamous case, Sinclair refused to air the Nightline program in April 2004 on the grounds that the broadcast was "motivated by a political agenda designed to undermine the efforts of the United States in Iraq."

submit to reddit

-
Email
Print
Share
LIKED THIS ARTICLE? JOIN OUR EMAIL LIST
Stay up to date with the latest AlterNet headlines via email
Advertisement
Most Read
Most Emailed
Most Discussed
On REDDIT
On DIGG
 
loading most read content ..
Advertisement
Fox, Breitbart, and Ricketts Try to Bring Back D'Souza's Pseudo-Birtherism

By Steve M | No More Mister Nice Blog

 
 
Activists Speak Out Against Lack of Access to Bradley Manning

By Agence France Presse

 
 
NYPD Catches Sexual Assailant, Then Lets Him Go Free Because He Didn't Feel Like Being Questioned

By Jill F | Feministe

 
 
Gov. Scott Orders Purging of Florida’s Voter Rolls - Just in Time For Prez Election

By Adele Stan | AlterNet

 
 
Abortion Clinics Across Country Put On Alert In Wake of Georgia Clinic Arson Cases

By Robin Marty | RH Reality Check

 
 
Former GOP Congresswoman Blasts New GOP Women’s Caucus: ‘They’re Not Voting In Best Interest Of All Women’

By Josh Israel | ThinkProgress

 
 
Debbie Wasserman Schulz is Wrong on Wisconsin

By LaFeminista | DailyKos

 
 
Pro-Coal Group Pays People to Wear Its Shirts at EPA Hearing

By Heather Moyer | Sierra Club

 
 
Kids Inundate NY Governor With Concerns About Fracking

By Seth Gladstone | Food and Water Watch

 
 
Shareholders, Top Doctors Demand McDonald's Assess its Health Impacts

By Sara Deon | Civil Eats

 
 
 
 
 
loading ...
POWERED BY DIGG'S USERS
 
[ page served from web 1 ]