NEW YORK, October 13, 2004 -- The Sinclair Broadcasting Group -- that wonderfully fair and balanced media firm that made news in April for refusing to run a Nightline program in which Ted Koppel read the names of American soldiers killed in Iraq -- is up to its old political tricks again. This time the controversy centers on a suspect documentary highly critical of John Kerry's anti-war activities 30 years ago that will appear on as many as 62 television stations owned or managed by Sinclair.

The film, "Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal" is produced by Carlton Sherwood, a former reporter for The Washington Times, which, of course, is subsidized and controlled by the controversial and politically conservative Reverend Sun Myung Moon and his followers in the Unification Church.

Sherwood bills himself as a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist. His film, according to its website, will compare and contrast Kerry's "own words" with the words of soldiers who were still serving in Vietnam while the future Massachusetts senator was "leading the anti-war movement." Its publicity claims that "Stolen Honor" features devastating testimony by former POWs about the demoralizing effect that John Kerry's war-crimes accusations had on them.

In a March 12 story on Fox News Channel, Sherwood described Kerry as "principally responsible for cementing the image of Vietnam veteran as drugged-out psychopaths who were totally unrestrained and who were a murderous hoard. "

A closer look at Sherwood's 'investigation' of the Moon organization, however, sheds considerable light on the Sherwood style of 'reporting' and, thus, on the credibility of the allegations contained in "Stolen Honor."

As revealed in my film "The Resurrection of Reverend Moon," which was broadcast in 1992 on the PBS documentary series Frontline, the Unification Church played a key role in the preparations for "Inquisition," even going so far as to review and propose changes to the text, according to James Gavin, an aide to Rev. Moon.

As Gavin noted in a letter I obtained, Gavin assures Moon that the author "has assured me that all this will be done when the manuscript is sent to the publisher." This was done, the memo states, to help the Unificationists best "silence critics."

Sherwood's tome was published by Regnery Gateway, the Washington, DC-based company that is now profiting handsomely from the publication of "Unfit for Command," the highly partisan 256-page indictment of John Kerry's wartime record penned by "Swift Boat" veteran number one, John O'Neil. Regnery's A-list of authors also includes such right-wing mouthpieces as Michelle Malkin, Denny Hastert and Oliver North.

One Regnery Gateway writer, former Washington Times Editor James Whelan, told Frontline that Carlton Sherwood had informed the company's head, Alfred Regnery, that the Moon organization planned to purchase 100,000 copies of Inquisition. At the time, Regnery strongly denied the report. Sherwood followed suit and rejected the report that the Unification Movement had exerted any editorial control over his book.

Sherwood's "Stolen Honor" is a similar sleight of hand -- a publicity stunt masquerading as journalism. Mark Hyman, Sinclair's vice-president for corporate relations (who doubles as a conservative news commentator on its stations) said the company would broadcast "Stolen Honor" because it is newsworthy. Hyman told CNN's Aaron Brown last night that the Stolen Honor story "is news. I can't change the fact that these people [Vietnam veterans profiled in the documentary] decided to come forward today. The networks had this opportunity over a month ago to speak to these people. They chose to suppress them. They chose to ignore them. They are acting like Holocaust deniers and pretending these men don't exist."

If the Sinclair Broadcasting Group's track record of political contributions is any indication, executives at the company may have a more political agenda than they care to indicate. According to The Center for Responsive Politics, an organization devoted to tracking political contributions by individuals, PACs and corporations, Sinclair executives give overwhelmingly to Republican causes and candidates. Of the top twenty TV and Radio companies to make political contributions in 2004, Sinclair Broadcasting Group, is among the most conservative, giving 97 percent of its more than $67,000 in political contributions to GOP candidates.

By comparison, Clear Channel Communications, the conservative radio colossus run by longtime Bush cronies Tom and Steve Hicks, has given only 75 percent of its 2004 contributions to Republicans; Democratic candidates have received the remaining 25 percent of Clear Channel's political largesse.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Sinclair CEO and President David Smith personally gave $2,000, the maximum individual contribution, to President Bush's 2004 re-election campaign. (see report: http://www.mediachannel.org/views/dissector/affalert187.shtml).

As further evidence of Sinclair's political leanings, after 9/11, the company required their affiliates to express complete allegiance to the Bush Administration on the air.

This is "political service" journalism at its worst. In the film, Kerry is described to viewers as "a willing accomplice" for "enemy propagandists." Sherwood's allegations in "Stolen Honor" echo those of the anti-Kerry veterans group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, and two of the former prisoners who appeared in that group's veracity-challenged television ads -- including one who was a Bush campaign volunteer -- were interviewed in Sherwood's film.

An excerpt from the documentary's transcript reads:

"Little did the American prisoners of war imagine that half a world away events were conspiring to make their precarious situation even more desperate. That an American Naval lieutenant after a four-month tour of duty in Vietnam was meeting secretly in an undisclosed location in Paris with a top enemy diplomat. That this same lieutenant would later join forces with Jane Fonda to form an anti-war group of so-called Vietnam veterans, some of whom would be later discovered as frauds who never set foot on a battlefield. All this culminating in John Kerry's Senate testimony that would be blared over loud speakers to convince our prisoners that back home they were being accused and abandoned."

Billing this doc as news, however, carries certain key advantages for Sinclair. As a news program, the film, which will be run commercial-free, may be exempt from federal regulations that require equal time for Senator Kerry's campaign to respond.

Instead, the Kerry camp is calling on supporters to boycott Sinclair advertisers and demonstrate against its stations, while a group of Democratic senators -- including Kerry's mentor, Senator Edward Kennedy, are asking the Federal Communications Commission to investigate Sinclair's broadcast plans, charging that the documentary is not news, but really a political advertisement favoring Kerry's opponent, President Bush.

-- Rory O'Connor's blog, "Media Is a Plural," can be found at www.roryoconnor.org.

© MediaChannel.org, 2004. All rights reserved.

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