By now you've probably heard that a broadcaster called Sinclair Group is planning to run an infomercial masquerading as "news" blasting John Kerry for his anti-war activities post-Vietnam, claiming that those activities caused the Vietnamese to torture American POWs. This action raises a host of issues, but the one that really hits home is the one Reed Hundt, who is a former chair of the FCC, expounds upon in this letter written to Josh Marshall of TalkingPointsMemo.
. . .since television was invented, Congress and its delegated agency, the Federal Communications Commision, 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 an honored by almost all of them. This tradition is embodied in the commitment of the broadcasters to show the conventions and the debates.
Hundt continues:
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.
And he concludes:
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.
Makes sense to me.
For more on all of this, see Josh or Kos. Keep checking back both places.
Update: Campaign Desk weighs in on this issue.
Posted by Linkmeister at October 12, 2004 12:10 PMI can see the point Hundt is making, however; while the FCC's historical guidelines' purposes are to keep the backdoor level of governmental control out of the press (ie: campaign donations), in the same hand; we should approach this issue with great care seeing as we are dealing with the first amendment here.
I think Hundt needs to better classify 'propaganda' and the specific points that have led him to believe that this documentary (or what have you) is such. The FCC also needs to be equal-handed in dealing with broadcasting companies and if it goes after the Sinclair Group, it needs to investigate CBS for adamantly pushing forged documents relevant to President Bush.
Lastly, the FCC must not function based on 'tradition' as Hundt put it, but must function on laws. As soon as he gets back to Josh Marshall with some cold, hard laws, let me know.
Posted by: Josh at October 12, 2004 12:45 PMWell, I'll tell you what. This looks to me, among other things, like an "in-kind" gift of an hour of very precious airtime to the Bush campaign. So a suggestion I've seen bandied about is that Sinclair then be told they must show "Fahrenheit 911" or "Going Upriver" in order to balance the gift, also before the election, on all the stations which aired this thing.
Posted by: Linkmeister at October 12, 2004 12:53 PM