http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA472609.html?display=Breaking+News&referral=SUPP Honoring an Invite Broadcasting & Cable, 10/15/2004 6:39:00 PM Even before Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) requested equal time on Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc. stations, a company executive told B&C having Kerry appear in a controversial broadcast was the plan all along. "We told Kerry before we produced anything that we wanted his participation, and we sent him a copy of the documentary," Sinclair Vice President of Corporate Relations Mark Hyman told Bill McConnell (B&C, Oct. 18, page 16). "We were quietly waiting for his campaign to get back to us and tell us what he wanted to do when the L.A. Times story appeared." Sinclair found itself in the middle of controversy again this week after the Los Angeles Times revealed the company's plans to air all or part of a documentary attacking presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry. The film, Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal, charges that Kerry's protests against the Vietnam War in the 1970s were used by the North Vietnamese to demoralize U.S. POWs. Sinclair has asked all of its 62 owned stations to preempt regular programming to air the Stolen Honor program. On Friday, Kerry's campaign lawyer Marc E. Elias sent a letter to Sinclair President David D. Smith requesting time on each station at an hour when an audience similar in size to that of Stolen Honor could be expected to be watching. At press time, the company had not responded to the campaign's request. But Hyman told B&C earlier this week, "if John Kerry comes in, it would be a huge get for us. He hasn't done a sit-down interview with a real news organization-with anybody besides Dr. Phil, Regis and Kelly, and Jon Stewart-since the Democratic Convention." Kerry supports rolling back media consolidation, and Sinclair is the country's largest station groups in terms of number. But Hyman dismissed the idea that Sinclair's broadcast was motivated by corporate interests. "So we would put ourselves in his gun sight? Kerry spokesman Chad Clanton told Fox News, 'They'd better hope we don't win.'" Sinclair was accused of pro-Bush bias in April when its ABC affiliates dropped the edition of Nightline with Ted Koppel's reading of the names of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. "I haven't hidden that I'm conservative in my political beliefs, but nobody here had anything to do with this documentary," said Hyman, who delivers pro-Bush editorials on Sinclair stations on The Point. "When it was offered to us, we spent 2 1/2 weeks vetting the people who made allegations. We didn't forge any documents or hire fake actors." Hyman said airing the documentary special close to the election was not a blatant attempt to hurt Kerry: "Under that standard, every single news report of bombings in Iraq or the death of a soldier or stories of economic performance that is weaker than expected should be considered an in-kind contribution to John Kerry." But why air the program so close to the elections? Hyman said the veterans interviewed in Stolen Honor did not come forward until August. "According to the filmmaker [Carlton Sherwood], none of the big broadcast networks wanted to speak with him," Hyman said. "That's why he went shopping for other venues. We did our due diligence on his film and saw something to it." ---------------------------------------------------------------------- You can UNSUBSCRIBE from the OpenDTV list in two ways: - Using the UNSUBSCRIBE command in your user configuration settings at FreeLists.org - By sending a message to: opendtv-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word unsubscribe in the subject line.