Posted on 10/13/2004 7:23:34 AM PDT by jmstein7
This Sinclair Broadcasting decision has got the left rocked, doesn't it? All they're going to do is air a documentary. I mean, Dan Rather's done this throughout his career. Dan Rather's aired documentaries all over CBS promoting people from Vietnam telling lies about what happened to them in an effort to destroy the morale of those who came back and the American war effort in general, and nobody says CBS shouldn't run documentaries. And we've got CBS doing what they did with Bill Burkett and the forged memos, well, nothing's happened with that and there's an investigation but Rather is still there and Andrew Heyward is still there, Mary Mapes is still there. We've got the Mark Halperin memo at ABC which is really nothing new, it's just confirmation of what we've always thought. But here comes Sinclair Broadcasting, a private sector broadcast group which is going to air a documentary called Stolen Valor on 62 of its TV stations, and the left is threatening to go to the FCC! They're going to go to the FCC to stop this.
We have some audio sound bites from Good Morning America today. Dick Durbin appeared, fresh off his appearance on the Senate floor trying to say that George W. Bush chose a little cell over Christopher Reeve. Here's Dick Durbin answering Diane Sawyer's question. "Senator Durbin, Sinclair has said look, this is a news documentary. They're former POWs. They have a right to express the truth that they see. What's wrong with their running it?" DURBIN: Sinclair Broadcasting is not dedicated to the public interest. They're dedicated to a political agenda. Just a few months ago they wouldn't broadcast a Nightline program memorial to the soldiers who had died in Iraq saying it was too critical of the Bush administration, and now they want to give the Bush campaign this scurrilous documentary in the closing days of the election and do it calling it news. Now, the reason they call it news is they said, well, we invited John Kerry to come by so clearly it's balanced. Everybody knows that's preposterous, it's just another example of extremism.
RUSH: It's none of your business, senator. I mean, you can have whatever opinion you want about it, but then to go try to shut 'em down? You know, you people with your networks have been doing this for 30 years while denying it all along. Now, here's a little 62-station network that's going to come along, most of these stations though are in battleground states, a-hem, and they're just fit to be tied over this, this is not serving the public interest. Why? Telling the truth about John Kerry by Vietnam vets who were with him in Vietnam is not serving the public interest? Guess that's true. Can't handle the truth about John Kerry. The truth about John Kerry would not serve the Democrats' interests, and it is that which they say is the public interest.
So also on Good Morning America, the Sinclair Broadcast Group vice president Mark Hyman, and Diane Sawyer said, "Mr. Hyman, your response to this because you heard Senator Durbin say, and a lot of people think, this is just pushing a political agenda and a broadcast owner should not be doing that."
HYMAN: Well let me first state up front we haven't even decided on a final format. We're still waiting for John Kerry, we're hopeful that he's going to agree to participate with us because, frankly, if this issue wasn't raised today we wouldn't be talking about these Vietnam POWs, men who suffered horrific abuse and unspeakable torture for many, many years in captivity. They more than anyone else have earned the right to speak and most of them ended 31 years of silence to reply to comments made by John Kerry. They have a right to be heard and we think this is an issue that's very newsworthy. I just don't understand why John Kerry is running away from these men as he's done for 31 years. Why won't he face these men, some of whom he served with that he has called war criminals and accused of committing atrocities? I think this is an absolutely newsworthy event that he ought to take a few moments out of his day and sit down and talk to these folks and set the record straight.
RUSH: Amen. This has been the argument we've all been advancing since the Swift Boat Vets came up about why Kerry didn't deal with it himself. Why does he send out all these surrogates? In fact, not surrogates, he sent out lawyers trying to get these guys' ads canceled. He's done nothing but try to intimidate these people. He will not address their charges. These are serious charges. And of course it's the seriousness of the charge, ladies and gentlemen, we've learned this from the left. The seriousness of the charge trumps the nature of the evidence quote, unquote, that all got started during the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill hearings. Well, we've got some serious charges here.
And John Kerry did do what they say he did. He did come back and call these men criminals, war criminals, committed atrocities, and they didn't, and they want to get the record straight. What is this about broadcasters not supposed to have a political agenda, anybody read the Mark Halperin memo? What is ABC if not a broadcast outlet? CBS doesn't have an agenda with what Dan Rather and Mary Mapes did? Broadcasters have political agendas all over. This idea that there's some repository of total objectivity out there and that Sinclair Broadcasting is coming along and gumming up the works is patently absurd. Well, Durbin's not going to sit for this, folks. Diane Sawyer says, "Senator, you want the FCC in effect to censor them to prevent this, to block this?" DURBIN: Well, this clearly is not in the public interest and I must remind Mr. Hyman, like it or not he has the right to use America's airwaves because the government has licensed him and his company. He doesn't own the airwaves. And for him to decide to use them for one political campaign is, frankly, wrong and violates the FEC rule against corporate contributions to the Bush campaign.
RUSH: Well, it's a little late to be complaining about FEC rules being violated. I don't hear you complaining about what George Soros has been doing or Michael Moore or any of this. And, by the way, Senator Durbin, remember how you Democrats scoffed at the government getting involved in the Dan Rather episode? A couple Republicans wanted hearings on that and you said, "No, this is none of the government's business, the freedom of the press." Freedom of the press, Senator Durbin, what happened to freedom of the press? I guess it only exists when the press exhibits the freedom you deign okay. But Sinclair obviously is abusing their freedom, eh, senator?
This is another instance, another episode, ladies and gentlemen, where a naturally occurring news event is serving to illustrate exactly who liberals are, elitists and power-mongers who will use the power of the government to force people away from actions that are critical of Democrats. That's what campaign finance reform is. Campaign finance reform is nothing more than the political class saying who can and can't say what when about them. It's an absolutely absurd, dangerous law, CFR, and so you have to get around it by doing things like this.
I guarantee you, if Sinclair Broadcasting were running a piece on Bush's National Guard service; it would be promoted by Dick Durbin. It would be promoted by ABC. It would be promoted by all the networks. And Dan Rather would try to get an exclusive with this guy Hyman from Sinclair Broadcasting. If they were doing that, they would be heroes, they would be stars, and you wouldn't be hearing a word from Democrats about how this is unconscionable. Hyman responded to the question, "Mr. Hyman, the FCC says don't do it, are you going to not do it?"
HYMAN: First of all, one, I don't know what part of this is considered scurrilous, that these men were Vietnam veterans, that they were prisoners of war, that they suffered abuse and torture, that's what's scurrilous? The second part is, it's sort of an old tactic, that if you can't discredit the message attack the messenger. In the case of the producer, 33 years of service, including Gannett, where he won a Pulitzer prize, a Peabody in television, he won several Emmys, he's worked for televisions stations, he worked for CNN, 33-year career, and Senator Durbin pulls out the less than one year he worked for a particular newspaper to try to attack this particular man. It's shoot the messenger because we don't like the message. That's a tactic that, frankly, the American public should look past. The question is, why won't John Kerry face these people, why is he afraid of a bunch of 60- and 70-year-old tortured and wounded American POWs? If he's afraid of them, what happens when Al-Qaeda attacks us? Is he going to run away from them as well?
RUSH: There you have the vice president of Sinclair Broadcast Group, Mark Hyman, acquits himself rather well, rather strongly.
My friends, nuclear materials, materials from nuclear weapons manufacturers are missing from Iraq. Uh, how can that be? Let's go to the Fox News Channel's day side with Linda Vester today. Chad Clanton, one of the multitudinous Kerry spokespeople was out there and this is what he said, talking here about Sinclair Broadcasting airing the documentary Stolen Valor.
CLANTON: I've got some breaking news here I brought with me. The FCC just issued a statement about 30 minutes ago. This is an abuse of public trust. Listen, they better look out there at Sinclair Broadcasting. I'm not a lawyer, but they've stirred up a lot of people. (booing)
VESTER: Let Chad make his point.
CLANTON: We've got thousands of people now very mad jackballed up calling these stations, protesting, threatening boycotts of their sponsors. I think they're going to regret doing this and they better hope we don't win.
RUSH: Whoo ooh! Little Chad comes out with a big threat there. What is "jackballed" up? Anybody heard that phrase before? Guarantee if I uttered it there would be a fine coming. Jackballed up. Anyway, he said they better look out, Sinclair Broadcasting, and the audience booed. That was boos from the audience, not a bunch of protesters of Sinclair. I don't think Chad has the brains to know that or not.
Well, I have this statement. He's wrong. The FCC has not issued a statement on this. They may, but they haven't. What has happened is that an FCC commissioner has issued a statement. That commissioner is Michael J. Copps, and he stated, "This is an abuse of the public trust. And it is proof positive of media consolidation run amok when one owner can use the public airwaves to blanket the country with its political ideology -- whether liberal or conservative. Some will undoubtedly question if this is appropriate stewardship of the public airwaves. This is the same corporation that refused to air Nightline’s reading of our war dead in Iraq. It is the same corporation that short-shrifts local communities and local jobs by distance-casting news and weather from hundreds of miles away. It is a sad fact that the explicit public interest protections that we once had to ensure balance continue to be weakened by the Federal Communications Commission while it allows media conglomerates to get even bigger. Sinclair, and the FCC, are taking us down a dangerous road."
So as you can hear, this is not a FCC statement. It's one commissioner. He's in the minority on this commission, by the way, all the time just because of the makeup of the commission. His name is Michael Copps. You know if these guys keep up everything is going to be on satellite one of these days and they're going to have to regulate that. This business of public airwaves is going to be a thing, it's never going to go away but I'll tell you, people aren't going to put up with this. The First Amendment is being trumped or the attempt is made to trump the First Amendment. These guys don't have to air what ABC says. They don't have to air Nightline if they don't want to. How many times do affiliate stations not air what the network offers that's between the network and the affiliate station? It's not between the government and the affiliate station. If Sinclair didn't want to air that episode of Nightline, then it's up to the ABC execs who deal with affiliate relations to call Sinclair and say you're breaking a deal or whatever the deal is, if there is a deal and you're breaking it, then you negotiate it that way. But it takes place between the two private sector entities. The government doesn't get involved in this kind of stuff and here's old Copps here worried about media conglomeration, yet he stands fully behind the concept that the government ought to get involved and use its judgment to determine what's suitable for the public airwaves and what isn't when it comes to the First Amendment. Political speech is specifically spelled out in the First Amendment.
Folks, you have to realize what is going on here it. All started with campaign finance reform. Campaign finance reform is the direct raping of the Constitution and the First Amendment. Political speech, First Amendment was what was specifically identified and meant when the first Amendment was written. And any effort by Congress to impede it is unconstitutional, and yet it happened and the president signed it, and a bunch of judges said yep, passes muster with us. So you have the political class writing a law saying who and what cannot be said against them. When, by the way, that's what CFR is. And then you've got this private broadcaster, they are free to air what they want to air.
You know, what's going to happen is that somebody's going to get a hold of the Michael Moore movie and they're going to try to run that, you know, on a network station. That would be the logical response to it, at least from the left -- no, I'm sorry, the left's logical response is to suppress. The left's logical response is to suppress what they don't agree with and what they don't want to hear. Linda Vester responding to Chad Clanton when he said, "They better hope we don't win," She said, "Wait, is that an implicit threat?"
CLANTON: No, what we're saying here is what they're doing is wrong, everybody knows it, and they got a lot of people that are very upset. I think you'll see a lot of protests, you're already seeing a lot of calls. Look, they're trying to get a 90 minute political spot paid for, for nothing. They're getting it on the airwaves to help President Bush. It's wrong, and --
VESTER: Chad.
CLANTON: It makes me so mad I want to throw my boot through the TV set, it's wrong, and people are sick of it.
RUSH: You know, it's just amazing the hypocrisy of these people. They don't find anything wrong about what CBS does and has been doing with Dan Rather and the bunch, they don't find anything wrong with the Mark Halperin memo, in fact they excuse both. And then they sit around and they have, you know, little dinner meetings where they applaud Rather for his body of the work over the course of his career. All of these stories on the Bush National Guard and so forth that got aired by all the networks ad infinitum, infinitum, whichever, none of this was a problem. Whatever it takes to win.
The question that these guys have to answer is what are you so afraid of and don't you understand, Mr. Clanton by making such a big deal of this all you're doing is inspiring more curiosity about it than what already or otherwise exists? Everybody is going to wonder what the big deal is now. These guys are just acting fit to be tied. The Kerry campaign is actually acting as the best promotional vehicle for this documentary they could have possibly have had. This is what the Democrats don't want you to see, will be the promotion, this is what John Kerry doesn't want you to see and refuses to address. There's any number of ways to make this all work.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
We just got a definition of word "jackball." What happened out there is that Chad Clanton, or I guess it's Chatsworth Clanton Osborn, Jr., well, what did he say, he said, "Thousands of people are very mad jackballed up calling these stations."
I said what's, "jackballed" up? I never heard of that. So one of the staff went out there and tried to find the term "jackball" and found it in something called the Urban Dictionary. The Urban Dictionary is a slang dictionary with your definitions. You can put your own word in the Urban Dictionary, define your world, it says here. I'm just going to tell you what came up when we went to the Urban Dictionary. We looked up jackball: jackball is a dumb person who keeps getting dumber, and the source is Linda Ronstadt of the Stoned Ponies fame, August 10th of 2003.
So if Chatsworth Clanton Osborn, Jr. said that thousands of people are very mad, jackballed up calling these stations, he's saying that Kerry supporters are getting dumber and dumber out there and they're calling all these TV stations, this according to the Urban Dictionary. You can find it on your nearby web browser.
Media mullahs like Dan Blather feel threatened.
Several of us have posted that we got a response to our email to Sinclair indicating that the film is in development and we have been misled thinking that this is set to go.
T4P
:o)
No, that they will air the film itself is not in question.
What is in question is the REST of the content. Sinclair is hoping to film a panel discussion about the documentary to follow the airing of the documentary itself. That's what they're talking about.
Gotcha and thanks.
Freedom of speech for me but not for thee. Typical leftist rationale used to decide which speech meets with their approval. If its something they don't like, the First Amendment gets thrown straight out of the window.
Note to Mort: That was public pressure, Kondracke. What's being done here is being done by politicians, people who also have regulatory control over a private business. There IS a difference.
Bump for later read.
--- I think they're going to regret doing this and they better hope we don't win.---
This is the same bozo that wanted Unfit for Command pulled from the shelves, yet Kerry doesn't fire him...
lunchtime bump for later read
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