Tim Karr at mediachannel.org writes today about how the Sinclair Broadcast Group, who chose to pre-empt Friday’s “Nightline” could have a political agenda behind their decision.
Mediachannel reports about a statement that Sinclair sent to the media today, where they state that “ABC is disguising political statements as news content.”
If that’s the case, then what is the political statement of our government not reporting on the deaths of soldiers - and most of the press buying into it…of not wanting to show the pictures of American soldiers’ coffins arriving at Dover AFB in Delaware - and trying to say that the families of the soldiers had requested that. I haven’t heard one statement decrying what the photographers did with their photos - photos they got fired for - in fact, the father of one of the soldiers, Bill Mitchell, thanked the Seattle Times for running a photo against Pentagon orders.
This whole thing isn’t about partisanship. This is about humanity. I firmly believe that this isn’t a “ratings grab” for ABC. This is 11:35pm (well, Eastern time), people. If Ted Koppel called a 9pm program to do this, we’d have another discussion. He is in a unique position of being able to dedicate time on a national scale to offer something to the American soldiers who gave their lives to defend other human beings. Forget the fact that you might not agree with the war or not - remember the fact that these are people who died doing their job.
[I feel much better now. Now back to your regularly scheduled media reporting]
1 response so far ↓
1 jenett.radio // Apr 30, 2004 at 2:28 pm
an ugly political machine in motion…
My reaction to the obvious political agendas of broadcasters is very close to what Tom said. I’ll just add …