Ramblings From Justin Penney

Sincliar... oops I mean Sinclair, a media conglomerate that own 62 television stations in 39 markets was going to air and anti-Kerry documentary on all 62 of it's stations. After quite a bit of public outcry, pulled advertisers and a 15% drop in their stock value have "backed down" but instead will air a different documentary titled A POW Story: Politics, Pressure and the Media. This "news" program will feature clips from the anti-Kerry documentary. This new one is supposed to "examine the role of the media in filtering the information contained in these documentaries" and explore "allegations of media bias by media organizations that ignore or filter legitimate news and the attempts by candidates and other organizations to influence media coverage."

I get the impression that this switch of programs is simply a pacifier to get the stock price back up. I am fairly certain that the same points will be made just toned down a little. The complete partisanship of all of this really makes this new documentary that looks at "media bias" look rather suspect.

Sinclair has a lot at stake in the upcoming election that effects it's bottom line. It is one of the largest television broadcasting companies in the country reaching more than 24% of the population. This is also an organization that is against it's upper limit on media ownership. The Bush administration supports lifting the media ownership restrictions allowing the large companies to gobble up more stations. The eyes of 24% of Americans if pretty powerful when playing politics as they have been doing, imagine if they were bigger!

I am hoping for irony to step in and after seeing this stunt pulled more people will realize that concentrated media power can and will be abused. I also cannot wait to hear some cracks as to the "liberal bias" in the media after this.

# posted by Justin @ 2:39 PM