[opendtv] News: Vet Group Will Pull Sinclair Complaint

Vet Group Will Pull Sinclair Complaint

By John Eggerton -- Broadcasting & Cable, 10/26/2004 6:42:00 PM

A pro-John Kerry veterans group won't push its complaint against 
Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc. over its news special critical of John 
Kerry, but it wasn't particularly happy with the broadcaster either.

The Veterans Institute for Security and Democracy plans to dismiss 
its complaint against Sinclair Wednesday, but also plans to attach a 
press statement expressing dissatisfaction with the program.

  The group filed the complaint with the FCC Oct. 18. In that 
complaint, which anticipated that Sinclair would air the entire 
anti-Kerry documentary, Stolen Honor, the group had asked the FCC to 
rule that the program should not merit a media exemption from the 
equal opportunities clause of the Communications Act. That clause 
requires a station that allows one candidate to use its airwaves to 
offer an equal opportunity for the opposing candidate.

  The group had been prepared to refile the complaint Monday if it 
concluded the show, which aired Oct. 15, was an "attempt to dishonor 
the military record of John Kerry and affect the outcome of the 
election."

Instead, Sinclair aired a special combining the original subject of 
Kerry's anti-Vietnam War protests with the flap that had arisen over 
its planned airing of all or part of a documentary on some POW's 
reaction to the protests.

It also offered something of an olive branch to the group last week, 
agreeing to interview the institute's president, Dick Klass, at its 
D.C. studios. It included part of that interview in the show and, 
Crigler says, promised to deliver a copy of the show to Klass soon 
after its airing.

  "They don't think {the show] rises to legal objection anymore," said 
John Crigler, an attorney for the group, "but it does rise to 
journalistic objection."

  Crigler says his client is still unhappy and believes the show was 
slanted, but gives Sinclair credit for trying "a little bit."
 
 
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