SwiftVets.com

[MJB]

I get the WSJ daily - but this editorial is only available online to subscribers...so...some highlights from today's #2 editorial (sorry for any typos)

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/

"Sinclair Broadcast Group's decision this week to not air "Stolen Honor", a documentary on John Kerry's post-Vietnam antiwar activities, is being cheered by librerals as a victory for truth, honor and the Democratic Party. But we wonder if the liberals in the media might not eventually rue the day, much as the New York Times now rues the special prosecutor it helped to launch in the Joe Wilson-Valerie Plame case.

Sinclair bent under enormous political pressure, but notably a kind we haven't seen wielded before to silence the media. We aren'' referring to the raft of Democratic complaints filed with offical agencies. There's nothin unusual there. A call for an advertising boycott came next - again, not pleasant but not unheard of in this business.

The next step was something new: A double team by trail lawyers and government officials threatening shareholder suites. Out of the gate first was William Lerach, a Democratickfunder who announded plans the week to sue Sinclair because by running the documentary it was creating controversy that cost it advertising revenue. The king of strike suits told the San Diego Union-Tribune: "At a time when the company is experiencing troubles, the board and officers should be focused on creating shareholder value - not pressing a controversial personal political agenda at shareholders' expense."

Media Matters, a liberal media agit-prop outfit, announced it was underwriting another shareholder suit and demanded that Sinclair provide equal time to those with opposing views. (It apparently escaped their attention that the Kerry campaign had declined Sinclair's invitation to respond on air and that the federal "equal time" requirement vanished along with the Fairness Doctrine" in the 1980's.)

But the real kicker came when New York State's Democratic Comptroller, Alan Hevesi, also decided to assail Sinclair. Mr. Hevesi wrote a letter to Sinclair in his capacity as trustee of the state pension fund, which owns 265,000 shares in the company.

"Somecritics suggest that Sinclair management is more interested in advancing its partisan political views than in protecting shareholder value", he writes. "They say Sinclair's partisan agenda also risks alienating viewers, advertisers, and regulators." In other circumstances, this is known as an offer you can't refuse: Pull the show or else.

What's astonishing here is that this legal-political double team has gone on with barely a whimper of protest from the rest of the media. In fact, it is being celebrated as a defeat for all of those right-wing scoundrels who support President Bush. We understand theat most of the press corps is liberal and desperately wants Mr. Kerry to win. Editors and producers may let that distort their coverage, tht they ususally aren't so blinded by partisanship that they can't see their own self-interst.

Now that this trail lawyer-government precedent has been set, who's to stop it if it next turns, as eventually it will, on the New York Times, or CBS? One of the most important protections that a free press has is independent corporate ownership, but what if the Nixon Administration had unleashed its lawyer friends and government pension funds on the Times Company when it was publising the Pentagon Papers, or the Washing Post when it was digging into Watergate? If the standard now is that stirring controversy is a fraud against shareholders because it may cost ad revenue, a lot more media woners than Sinclair are going to become political targets."
_________________
MJB
USAF '85-'92

[Barbie2004]

Thank you so much for sharing this article with us. I, too, am shocked that the MSM is not up in arms about what is happening here.

To save you some time in the future, so that you don't have to retype something you see on the net that you would like to share, try the following:

1. Highlight the text you want to copy by left clicking the beginning of text, hold as you scroll over text, release when you covered text you want to copy. The text that you want to copy should have a "blue" background at this point.

2. RIGHT click, then highlight "copy" on the pop-up menu.

3. Go to the page you want to copy the text to, click on the area where you want the text to be copied to, RIGHT click, then press paste on the pop-up menu.

This will save you from having to "re-type" something you see on the internet. Some webpages have a "no-right click" set up, then you can't copy text on that page using this method, but not many websites have that.

I hope this saves you time.

Again, thank you for sharing this. Great article!

[Rdtf]

my hope is that they played right into Sinclair's plan. It was just too obvious a sure bet they'd do what they did and harass and pressure them. We'll see tonight! Please those of you that watch it give good info about it - I can't get it where I am.
Maybe our pal sround can make a copy of it...

[MJB]

[Hammer2]

Martin Niemöller

"First they came for the Jews. I was silent. I was not a Jew. Then they came for the Communists. I was silent. I was not a Communist. Then they came for the trade unionists. I was silent. I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for me. There was no one left to speak for me."

On resistance to Nazis, recalled on his death 6 Mar 84
_________________
"The price of freedom is eternal vigilence" - Thomas Jefferson
"An armed society is a polite society" - Thomas Jefferson
"The beauty of the Second Amendment is that it won't be needed until someone tries to take it away." -- Thomas Jefferson