Sinclair Solution: An Open Challenge to the Media

We have seen that the FCC (Powell) is going ahead and allowing Sinclair to mandate a shaky anti-Kerry documentary for its member stations before the election. It will be presented as news, depite the previous history of the filmmaker, whose previous work included a series to question the funding of the Vietnam Memorial. He had to publically apologize and donate $50,000 to the fund himself to make it go away. We know that this film, judging by the clips that Sinclair itself presented to the media will try to show that atrocities never happened in Vietnam and that John Kerry was responsible for morale problems in Vietnam. The things that happened in Vietnam are well-documented, and the historical revisionism promises to be intense. The people opposed to Kerry have a right to speak, although they should be held accountable for deceptions.

So let’s give those viewers lots of other alternatives.

Today I send out a call to the media networks, to television stations and radio stations, to community groups, and to local and national networks. Give space to other views, more reputable views. PBS’s Frontline did a respectable job with the Choice 2004 program. Let others step up to the plate, presenting as accurate a picture of what is really at stake in this election as possible. Do shows on the size of our national debt and who owns it. Do shows on the neoconservative plan for American empire since the end fo the Cold War. Show us!

Do your service under FCC rules. You use our airwaves under the condition that you serve our community needs. Have debates, do real investigative journalism, examine claims, show us the issues. We need to cut through all this manipulation of the masses. Be part of the solution. You have a duty to uphold freedom. We deserve community coverage that goes beyond the horserace. Let’s see what you’ve got. Don’t let us down. Fill the airwaves with several possibilities.

Fellow Bloggers: Send requests to your local television and radio networks. Make discussions topic-oriented rather than us against them. Present different views. Write to CNN and PBS, don’t bother with petitions – go right to the source. Be brave – call FOX and MSNBC. Use contact forms online, use your telephone, ask for station managers.

I even have a suggestion for programming. I just saw a film called “Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear, and the Selling of American Empire.” Put out by the Media Education Foundation, it’s narrated by Julian Bond and has interview footage with Pentagon whistleblower Lt. Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, former Chief UN Inspector Scott RItter, Daniel Ellsberg, Nobel Prize Laueate Jody Williams, Noam Chomsky, Medea Benjamin, Mark Crispin Miller, WIlliam Hartung, Vandana Shiva, Kevin Danaher, Chalmers Johnson, Benjamin Barber, and Amry Special Forces Master Sergeant Stan Goff (Ret.), among others. The DVD is already available for purchase online (I blogged it before, but now I’ve seen it). No, I am not at all affiliated with the MEF.