Press Clips
by Cynthia Cotts
The War According to Sinclair
April 30th, 2004 4:50 PM
ditor's Note: Last night a janitor found the following memo in a dumpster inside the headquarters of Sinclair Broadcast Group in Hunt Valley, Maryland. He showed it to his mother, who faxed it to Press Clips, with the humble suggestion that her son, an anti-war and legalization activist, would make an excellent candidate for a profile in the Voice. Because of the explosive nature of the purloined memo, we have decided to withhold the identity of the source.
ABC Nightline Smear
The Sinclair Broadcast Group announced on Thursday that it will censor the April 30 edition of Nightline, in which Ted Koppel plans to read aloud the names of U.S. servicemen and women killed in Iraq. We think Nightline's ratings stunt is the moral equivalent of terrorism. As we will elaborate in this weaselly and unsigned statement, our decision to snuff out Nightline is a patriotic gesture aimed to tranquilize taxpayers and prevent them from recognizing the boondoggle in Iraq. As Sinclair CEO and president David Smith likes to remind us, serving the public interest is not in our self-interest.
No organization holds our media industry and the executives who use it to line their pockets in higher regard than Sinclair Broadcast Group. While Sinclair would support a mendacious effort to cover up the alarming number of Americans who have died in Iraq, Mr. Koppel is using simple, indisputable facts—names and photos of the dead, no less—to dramatize the war and give viewers a chance to judge its consequences. However, an informed citizenry is anathema to the corporate state, and we suspect that many of those currently working toward this goal have financial connections to Al Qaeda. Dick Cheney informs us that we are not alone in this viewpoint. As a result, we have decided to preempt the broadcast of Nightline this Friday on each of our ABC affiliates.
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http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0418/cotts2.php
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