[opendtv] News: Dems Walk A Dangerous Path With Anti-Kerry-Film Complaint
- From: Craig Birkmaier <craig@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: OpenDTV Mail List <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 15 Oct 2004 07:15:22 -0400
Via Shoptalk
Dems Walk A Dangerous Path With Anti-Kerry-Film Complaint
Collin Levey
Seattle Times editorial columnist
The late Chief Justice Warren Burger once remarked that "free speech
carries with it some freedom to listen." And, he might have added,
the freedom not to.
That would be a good thought for the Democrats to chew on this week,
before they say some things they might regret. This is an election
season after all, and fuses are predictably short. But when 18 of
them, including Ted Kennedy, Dianne Feinstein and Patty Murray
decided to file complaints with the FEC and the FCC to stop the
airing of an anti-John Kerry film, some people got goose bumps.
The issue, Democrats say, is that Sinclair Broadcasting, owner of 62
stations, would violate the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance laws
governing this election. The film, preempting normal programming,
would supposedly amount to a contribution to the George Bush
campaign. FCC Commissioner Michael Copps called the move a betrayal
of the public trust that networks are given along with their portion
of the spectrum. The government, ergo, should step in to control the
editorial content offered by news stations.
This is a very dangerous path to wander along, even if you do have
bread crumbs. If we decide that campaign-finance laws may have a veto
over what Americans may or may not see during their evening news
hour, where exactly do we draw the line? If political shows, say,
Rush Limbaugh or Air America Radio or "The O'Reilly Factor" - are
quantified as partisan, could they too amount to political
contributions from their respective broadcasters?
We've seen two very different philosophies in play on this issue
recently. With the release of the anti-Bush film "Fahrenheit 9/11,"
Republicans ranted and raved and called the film a sack of lies and
filmmaker Michael Moore a commie propagandist, sure. But they never
even hinted that his right to produce it, or Americans' right to see
it, should be proscribed.
Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe and the
Democrats have lamely defended their position on the distinction that
people had a choice whether or not to see "Fahrenheit" and they had
to pay for it. "Stolen Honor," by contrast, will automatically appear
on their televisions, and for free!
With apologies for the remedial observation, broadcast networks and
movies in the theaters operate on two different business models,
network programs are "free" because the broadcasters make their money
from commercials, while moviegoers offer up a direct ticket price.
The difference between Bob and Harvey Weinstein's model distributing
the Moore film and that of the Sinclair brothers distributing the
Kerry film is a market one, not a matter of any relation to the
government, or campaign-finance law.
Certainly, as any ratings-sweep-obsessed network exec will tell you,
nothing on television is "compulsory" in the way McAuliffe is
suggesting. And, far from the era of three network stations
dominating, vast majorities of Americans now can access hundreds of
cable or satellite stations from their clicker. Unless Democrats are
planning to go out and break the thumbs of couch potatoes across the
land, Sinclair's affiliates will be just one choice, as they are
every night.
No one is contesting the political agenda of the Sinclair brothers,
though reasonable people might say the film merits network attention
on the basis of pure newsworthiness. While Democrats have tried to
fit the genuine, ancient anger of Vietnam vets against Kerry into the
matrix of Bush "dirty tricks," any reporter with half a brain should
have figured out long ago that this is one of the great, novelistic
themes of the election. What goes around comes around, at least as
long as anyone who remembers is still living. And it basically has
nothing to do with Bush.
Anyway, the political biases of the Sinclair family pose no threat to
American democracy precisely because we have a free media. All
networks could run slanted news stories but they don't. And why?
Because the market values objectively reported stories, that's what
sells, brings advertising and so on.
This column, too, is political opinion, so I'm free to say this: The
Kerry campaign is desperate to proscribe the film because it
addresses the most damning and sticky characterization of Kerry, that
he is an opportunist, as much today as he was back in the Vietnam
days when he conveniently became an antiwar leader. It is this
quality that sticks in people's craw: not that he was a mediocre "war
hero" or whatever other charges were leveled against him, but that he
is a serial sellout. His inconsistency is calculating, and ultimately
cruel.
More politically salient, the Democrats' actions this week have
undercut large parts of their own campaign-finance arguments,
including those they had upheld by a divided Supreme Court. To those
who objected to the stringent reforms on First Amendment grounds, the
party was vehement that money could be regulated because "money is
not political speech" and so not worthy of protection.
So tell us, senators, if "Stolen Honor" is not political speech, what
exactly is it?
They seem to be saying a film documentary is really "money" and thus
can be regulated. If so, every broadcaster and publisher in the
country has reason to worry.
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