Tuesday, October 12, 2004

Ok, I'm feeling a little cranky

Just sent to comments@sbgi.net:
Dear Sinclair Broadcasting --

The public is becoming concerned about your station priorities; recent actions seem to indicate that you place your political views above the public interest and FCC guidelines. First, you demanded that your subsidiaries not run the episode of Nightline in which Ted Koppel read a list of war dead. Now, you have announced plans to force your stations to preempt their usual programming on the eve of the election in favor of a Vietnam "documentary" being billed as news despite its dubious provinance and clear partisan bias. How can you justify the timing of this broadcast? Either it is news, and should be run now, or it is simply a plan to run a last-minute smear of one of the candidates in order to bias voters as they go to the polls.

I am not fooled by your labeling of propaganda as news. I not only request that you rescind the order for broadcast of this program, but intend to follow up by contacting stations in my region to let them know how little I think of their "balanced reporting." If no action is taken at Sinclair headquarters, I and many of my fellow citizens will start to boycott companies that advertise on local Sinclair affiliates -- they should be spending their advertising dollars on stations that are able to distinguish editorial content from news programming, and that inform, rather than mislead, their viewers.

Sincerely,
[me]
If you can send a civil letter to advertisers, you may find some near to you here.

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