Background (Jerome Armstrong, submitted by Stirling Newberry)
The Story:
Sinclair communications corporate counsel decided to pull the Nightline broadcast from their 8 ABC affiliates. Sinclair Broadcasting owns 62 stations, and specializes in "Television Duopolies" - creating markets where all major affiliates are owned by two companies (Fox, ABC, NBC, CBS). They also contribute heavily to Bush -according open secrets the company or its directors have given over $200,000 to the RNC
and Republican Candidates, nothing to Democrats.
One affiliate, WTXL has stated it will run the show, as its contract does not allow for pre-emption, the other 7 have pulled the show.
Today on her radio broadcast, Arnie Arnesen mentioned it, and will do so on her TV show tonight: pointing out that a big deal was made over Tillman, so it can't be because of privacy issues.
The root of this, PAC money and FCC consolidation (see the Newberry campaign blog link) combined with partisanized media ownership is plain for all to see. The nameless dead are only for Bush's reelection.
This comes on a day when a poll was released showing support for the war tanking.
Poynter Online has the ABC News Statement in reply to Sinclair.
David Sirota does the research so we don't have to:
Hard Money Contributions
Soft money contributions
Sirota has more:
Sinclair's CEO David Smith was also a close ally of the White House's in the President's recent decision to deregulate the FCC. As he told the NY Times on 4/3/02, the "decision validates what we have been saying all along: that the rules governing television ownership are outdated, without basis, and anticompetitive in today's media environment." You can see that story
here.
Additionally, the right wing is now touting Sinclair as "the next Fox." As the right-wing website Newsmax reports, "One of the nation’s newest and fastest-growing TV news networks says it's tired of left-leaning news reporting and wants to offer Americans a fair and balanced perspective, just as Fox News Channel does. Fox News eschewed politically correct news to become the dominant force on cable news. And now the Sinclair Broadcast Group has been following in Fox's footsteps to do the same for broadcast news in news markets across the nation." You can see that full story here.
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