Daily Kos among others has some good information on the Sinclair Broadcasting Group's refusal to broadcast Friday's edition of ABC's Nightline that is devoted to honoring the American soldiers killed in Iraq.
Not surprisingly, Sinclair has good Republican connections. Kos also links to this article at the rightwing NewsMax about how Sinclair's management has ambitions to make their company the "next Fox." How many ways are there to recycle the daily Republican Party line?
This is one to remember. A Republican-Party-oriented company is opposed to honoring American servicepeople who have died serving their country in Iraq.
Somebody a few years from now, after we've made our exit from Iraq and the blowhard Republican Rambos are blathering about how it was the sissy liberals who made us lose in Iraq, where if we'd just been manly enough to torture and humiliate a few more prisoners, we would have "won" - this is one one to remember.
Because when the blowhards start telling their phony shories about how the peaceniks dishonored Iraq War veterans and spit on them and called them babykillers, etc., some people will respond with, "Oh, yeah, I remember one time a network wanted to do a show honoring soldiers killed and they didn't even want them to show that."
After another couple of spins through the Republican echo chamber, it will become, "The antiwar types didn't even want the names of soldiers killed in the war mentioned on TV shows because they said it was honoring baby-killers and murderers."
So before the new myth gets rolling, let's remember that when it was actually happening, the real headline for the story should have been:
Prowar Republicans oppose honoring American war dead
President even refuses to attend funerals of soldiers killed in battle
9 comments:
With all respect, Bruce, I think that your claim about the intent of Republicans is extraordinarily unfair.
It's certainly true that MANY Republicans do not want the broadcast to run for fear that the long list of names and photos will turn more people against the war. That much is clear. It is quite a leap to then claim that the opposition is because they don't want to "honor" the servicemen. One does not automatically mean the other.
This is pretty much the same kind of tactic politicians will use against each other. Imagine the scene: a Democrat votes against a tax cut bill because it contains spending cuts for education, for example. How angry are you when a Republican claims that Democrats are against CUTTING TAXES??
I honestly don't think either side is opposed to HONORING our servicemen. The bigger question should be what the intent of the broadcast really is: a genuine tribute to our servicemen, a political statement, or simply a ploy to get ratings.
Patrick
Patrick, since this won't be as "sexy" as show as a Lacy Peterson case update, ABC is likely to sacrifice some ratings to do this.
Unfortunately, what I described here, even though my approach was obviously polemical, is accurate about the Republicans' political intent. And there seems to be little reason to doubt that the company which wants to position itself as the next Fox News has a partisan intent with this action.
The mission of the Republican Party is to comfort the comfortable. The reason that the now-abandoned Powell Doctrine had such political appeal for Republican politicians is that it allowed only for operations like Grenada or Panama or the Gulf War, which were short in duration and low on American casualties.
One of the main lessons the Reps learned from Vietnam is that long wars tend to disturb the comfort of the comfortable. In particular, they believe that TV coverage of soldiers in Vietnam undermined support for that war and support for the Democratic President who was prosecuting it.
I think that was a misreading of the Vietnam experience. But Republican politicos and media companies like Sinclair are operating on that premise. - Bruce
The May sweeps period is the most important time of the year to the television industry because ratings during this time period are used to determine what broadcasters will charge during the holiday season in fourth quarter.
If you are unwilling to accept the "official" explanation from one media company (Sinclair) that their decision not to clear the show over their ABC affiliates ISN'T politically motivated, then how you can you so easily ACCEPT the "official" explanation of another, larger, RICHER media company (ABC) that airing the broadcast isn't some kind of political statement, considering so much is at stake financially for the show to entice people to watch? I mean to say, where does the "lying" begin and end?
I've never worked for nor had any dealings with Sinclair or ABC, so I don't know what their intentions are -- beyond making a profit -- from an insider perspective. But as someone who has worked in the media for more than 15 years, I am dubious when I hear any media company claim it ISN'T about the ratings when they're INSIDE a ratings period.
If they didn't want to air this show ON Memorial Day, why didn't they wait until a month AFTER Memorial Day, instead of running the controversial broadcast a month BEFORE and WITHIN a ratings period?
Patrick, I'm afraid I didn't entirely follow your second note. I certainly don't assume that ABC is motivated by purely saintly motives, in this or anything else.
But Sinclair Broadcasting is clearly making a political statement with their boycott and I'm responding to their political statement. The fact that it's part of their marketing strategy to go after the partisan Republican audience doesn't exhaust the political meaning and implications of their action. - Bruce
I'll play devil's advocate.
You make it sound as if you cannot imagine there being any POSSIBLE explanation for Sinclair's action OTHER than the suppression of the program to further Republican interests. It also seems that you completely believe ABC's assertion that they AREN'T making a political statement, despite the fact that some claim ABC is "clearly" trying to make an anti-war, anti-Republican statement. If it's wrong for Sinclair to pull the program because they're turning the matter political, would be wrong for ABC to air the show IF they had a political statement as their intent?
If you owned a group of stations and one of the networks affiliated with a handful of them planned to air a program YOU felt was an "unfair" political statement, what would you do about it?
I'm not trying to defend ABC or Sinclair. I have no ties to either company, and I have no "internal" insight into how either is motivated: if I assume you are correct when you suggest that Sinclair is strongly Republican, I am still left with the feeling that you're only considering that Sinclair itself might have a political agenda here.
I'm just asking if it's possible that BOTH companies might have a statement in mind, and if so, how one is okay while the other isn't.
So what is ABC's political agenda by showing this? Is the United States really reduced to the point that what sounds like will be a serious and unadorned recognition of those who have sacrificed their lives in war can only be processed as a partisan political stunt?
I do think that the prowar crowd (which seems to be shrinking at a surprisingly rapid pace) is wrong in thinking that images of the fallen is automatically antiwar. As I've mentioned in earlier posts, invoking the war dead has traditionally been used to generate *support* for wars.
My understanding from the publicity is that only American soldiers will be shown. There is no plan to include images of Iraqi dead, military or civilian. Or even of other members of the "coalition," several of whom have take losses. So if there is a political statement implied in that, it seems to me that it it doesn't go beyond traditional patriotic recognition of those lost on Our Side. - Bruce
I'm not saying that ABC (or SINCLAIR, for that matter) HAS a political agenda. But to use your point in the previous comment, let's suppose that ABC WANTS to generate SUPPORT for the war, having come to the same conclusion that you have about the power of invoking the war dead. (After all, most giant media companies benefit more when Republicans are in control, right?)
You seem to be so sure that Sinclair:
A) is convinced invoking the war dead will do the opposite...
B) because of its Republican ties, must be out to suppress this attempt to manipulate viewers' opinion towards an anti-war stance...
C) cannot possibly have as its SOLE intention the blocking of a broadcast it considers "unfair" and a "political statement."
What if it WAS ABC's intention to generate support? Sinclair, by blocking the broadcast, would have been helping forward the agenda of those who are against the war, right?
You take ABC at its word when they say there is nothing political intended in its action. Sinclair says the same thing about ITS action. How can you be so sure that only Sinclair has a "hidden aganda?" I am not trying to argue...I simply want to understand how you can be so sure.
Sinclair Broadcasting doesn't hide their agenda of being more rabidly Republican than Fox News, or their support for Bush's war policieis in Iraq.
No one can say what exactly is going on in the head's of Sinclair's decision-makers. But we can look at the normal meanings of words like "political" and say that a traditionally patriotic show honoring the fallen in a war - only the soldiers of the US, not even others from the "coalition of the willing", and don't even think about the enemy dead or civilian "collateral damage" - doesn't qualify as "political" in any conventional usage of the word. - Bruce
The Center for American Progress, in Friday's Progress Report, listed several examples of Sinclair's right-wing agenda...
http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=6228
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