LETTER TO DAVID SMITH, CEO OF SINCLAIR BROADCASTING GROUP, INFORMING HIM OF A NATION WIDE BOYCOTT OF ALL SINCLAIR STATIONS AND OBJECTING TO HIS IMPLICIT AND TACIT ENDORSEMENT OF WAR CRIMES.

Former FCC Chairma, Reed Hundt,
 explains why Sinclair should reconsider their decision

20 Democratic Senators call for and FCC investigation

Mr. David Smith
Chief Executive Officer
Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc
10706 Beaver Dam Road
Hunt Valley, MD 21030
Phone: (410) 568-1500
Fax: (410) 568-1533
Email: investor@sbgi.net
Web Site: http://www.sbgi.net/

Dear Mr. Smith,

Please be advised that Veterans in Defense of Truth and the Bill of Rights is calling upon all its members and all Americans concerned about protecting the honor of our nation and the Bill of Rights to boycott all of your Television Stations and all of the Advertisers who appear on your stations.

We take this action because of your assault on the fundamental principles implicit within the 1st Amendment of the Constitution concerning freedom of the press, and because you are implicitly and tacitly endorsing government policies that promote the commission of War Crimes in Vietnam and in Iraq.

As Chief Executive Officer of one of the largest owners of television stations in the country you are entrusted with a special responsibility on behalf of all Americans to fairly represent the news that effect our lives. Unfortunately, you have betrayed that responsibility and by your specific actions you are implicitly and tacitly endorsing the committing of war crimes by our nation while attacking those who had the courage to step forward and told the truth.

Your actions amount to defending the criminals and attacking the victims of war crimes that were the direct result of policies by our government. These are many of the same types of policies implemented by the Bush Administration that led to the War Crimes in Abu Ghraib.

The recent announcement that your network has ordered all 62 of its stations to air "Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal" without commercials in prime-time next week, just before the Nov. 2 election. (as reported in the Washington Post) demonstrates that you have no regard for either the truth or the public interest with which you are entrusted as part of your licensing by the FCC.

Even worse, your promotion of this shameful and deceitful material and your failure to discredit both the movie and the swift boat ads which were created by closely related individuals, despite  overwhelming evidence that shows them to be false and misleading amounts to an endorsement of War Crimes by you personally and by your company.  This is shameful, intolerable, indefensible and un-American. The false misleading and slanderous show you are promoting and the related "Swift Boat" ads are an implicit defense of war crimes committed by our government and as a result are a direct attack on the millions of heroic soldiers who had the courage to serve honorably and bravely in Vietnam and to come forward with the truth in Vietnam and Iraq.

Your actions amount to a defense and endorsement of those who we know committed crimes and is an attack those who had the courage to step forward and try to stop them. You are a disgrace to the news profession and by your implicit and tacit endorsement of War Crimes you disgrace all American soldiers who served honorably and courageously in Vietnam, and those who likewise served honorably and courageously in Iraq and Afghanistan.

As a result of your unconscionable actions I am calling upon all members of Veterans in Defense of Truth and the Bill of Rights, and all other Americans who are concerned about protecting the honor of our nation and the Bill of Rights to boycott all of your stations and all of the Advertisers who appear on your stations.

Furthermore, as you have engaged in a pattern of misusing the license granted to you by the FCC, for example in April you ordered seven of you ABC-affiliated stations not to air a "Nightline" segment that featured a reading of the names of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq, we are demanding that your license be revoked at all of the stations you own and will mount a public protest when your license comes up for renewal.


Sincerely,

Sherman Rattner,

Veterans In Defense of Truth and the Bill of Rights.

Click here to send a letter to David Smith and Sinclair Broadcasting Company.

Reed Hundt: Sinclair ought to know better - and so should the FCC Reed Hundt October 13, 2004 HUNDT1013

Why is it important that Sinclair Broadcasting be urged in all lawful ways that can be imagined to reconsider its decision to broadcast on its television stations the anti-Kerry "documentary"? Because in a large, pluralistic information society democracy will not work unless electronic media distribute reasonably accurate information and also competing opinions about political candidates to the entire population.

Certainly, for the overwhelming number of voters this year, controlling impressions of the candidates for president are obtained from television. In all countries, candidates for public office aspire to have favorable information and a chorus of favorable opinion disseminated through mass media to the citizenry.

In a democracy, on the eve of a quadrennial election, the incumbent government plainly has a motive to encourage the media to report positively on its record but also negatively on the rival. But its role instead is to make sure that broadcast television promote democracy by conveying reasonably accurate reflections of where the candidates stand and what they are like.

John Kerry in Mekong Delta.ApTo that end, since television was invented, Congress and its delegated agency, the Federal Communications Commission, together have passed laws and regulations to ensure that broadcast television stations provide reasonably accurate, balanced and fair coverage of major presidential and congressional candidates.

These obligations are reflected in specific provisions relating to rights to buy advertising time, bans against the gift of advertising time, rights to reply to opponents, and various other specific means of accomplishing the goal of balance and fairness. The various rules are part of a tradition well known to broadcasters and honored by almost all of them.

This tradition is embodied in the commitment of the broadcasters to show the conventions and the debates. Part of this tradition is that broadcasters do not show propaganda for any candidate, no matter how much a station owner may personally favor one or dislike the other. Broadcasters understand that they have a special and conditional role in public discourse.

They received their licenses from the public -- licenses to use airwaves that, for instance, cellular companies bought in auctions -- for free, and one condition is the obligation to help us hold a fair and free election. The Supreme Court has routinely upheld this "public interest" obligation. Virtually all broadcasters understand and honor it. Sinclair has a different idea, and a wrong one in my view. If Sinclair wants to disseminate propaganda, it should buy a printing press, or create a Web site. These other media have no conditions on their publication of points of view.

This is the law, and it should be honored. In fact, if the FCC had any sense of its responsibility as a steward of fair elections, its chairman now would express exactly what I am writing to you here. Reed Hundt is a former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.

This originally appeared as a letter to Josh Marshall on his blog, Talkingpointsmemo.com.

Dems ask FCC to probe Sinclair

 20 senators send this letter on reports Sinclair will air an anti-Kerry film before the election. October 12, 2004: 2:29 PM EDT NEW YORK (CNN/Money) -

The following is a letter spearheaded by California Senator Dianne Feinstein and signed by 20 democratic senators.

CNN has confirmed that the following 17 senators signed the letter: Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Edward Kennedy (D-MA), Byron Dorgan (D-ND), Jack Reed (D-RI), Bill Nelson (D-NE), Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), Carl Levin (D-MI), Ron Wyden (D-OR), Bob Graham (D-FL), Dick Durbin (D-IL), Tim Johnson (D-SD), Harry Reid (D-NV), Daniel Inouye (D-HI) and Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), Ernest Hollings (D-SC) and Patty Murray (D-WA).

Text of letter: October 9, 2004

The Honorable Michael Powell Chairman Federal Communications Commission 445 12th Street, S.W. Room 8-A204A Washington, DC 20554 Dear Chairman Powell:

We write to express our concern over a recent LA Times article (attached) regarding the planned preemption of regular station programming by the Sinclair Broadcast Group in favor of an anti-Kerry attack ad expected to last approximately 90 minutes, and to ask that you look into this matter to determine whether it represents a proper use of public airwaves or if, instead, it would violate fairness rules now in place.

The attached article alleges that Sinclair Broadcasting has ordered its stations, including affiliates of Fox, ABC, CBS, NBC, WB and UPN, to preempt their regular programming and replace it with material prepared for political use, shortly prior to the November 2 election.

To allow a broadcasting company to air such a blatantly partisan attack in lieu of regular programming, and to classify that attack as "news programming" as has been suggested, would violate the spirit, and we think the text, of current law and regulation.

Additionally, while there is some indication that Senator Kerry may be invited to a panel discussion following the airing of this "program" in order to satisfy fairness regulations, it seems clear to us that any such invitation would be merely a transparent attempt to circumvent the fine print of the law and proceed with this partisan plan.

Equal time rules exist for a purpose - to prevent the airing of one-sided political content without equal response time given to the opposing view or candidate. In this case, it is impossible to imagine how the equal time rules would be satisfied if this plan is allowed to go forward.

We urge you to investigate this matter immediately, and would appreciate a response as to whether you will, in fact, investigate these allegations."