Glenn Reynolds thinks that the attempt to prevent the Sinclair TV network from airing an anti-Kerry propaganda movie is a worrying encroachment on free speech. Fritz Schrank compares it to the anti-Bush propaganda movie, “Fahrenheit 9/11.” I’m not so sure. There is surely a distinction between a movie shown in theaters and a movie shown over the publicly regulated broadcast airwaves. Owners of TV stations do have some public obligations in the way that movie theater owners and distributors do not – especially in an election campaign. Here’s FCC commissioner, Michael Copps:
“This is an abuse of the public trust. And it is proof positive of media consolidation run amok when one owner can use the public airwaves to blanket the country with its political ideology — whether liberal or conservative.-Some will undoubtedly question if this is appropriate stewardship of the public airwaves. This is the same corporation that refused to air Nightline’s reading of our war dead in Iraq.-It is the same corporation that short-shrifts local communities and local jobs by distance-casting news and weather from hundreds of miles away.- It is a sad fact that the explicit public interest protections we once had to ensure balance continue to be weakened by the Federal Communications Commission while it allows media conglomerates to get even bigger.-Sinclair, and the FCC, are taking us down a dangerous road.”
As I’ve said, it’s a free country, and my instincts are against any attempt to regulate this kind of thing. But the blatantly partisan nature of this move – and its dissemination of rank smears into millions of homes – is still troubling. If CBS announced they were pulling regular programming to air “Fahrenheit 9/11” a week before the election, do you think no conservatives would protest?
The Dish 