Censoring Nightline

I just used this form at Common Cause to write Sinclair Broadcasting about its decision to pre-empt Ted Koppel's airing on the names and photographs of fallen US soldiers on tonight's Nightline program (see my letter below).

Now my daughter and I are off to demonstrate against this decision in front of the offices of Columbus, Ohio's Sinclair-owned ABC affiliate. We'll be standing in front of the station and reading the names of those who have died, the names Sinclair Broadcasting does not trust Central Ohioans to hear . . .

My Letter

Dear Mr. Smith:

One of the ways we protect the rights and responsibilities of citizenship in our democracy is establishing laws to insure Americans are given access to issues effecting our nation over the people's airwaves.

My family and I planned to watch Nightline tonight to see the faces and hear the names of the American soldiers who have died in the present war, to honor the fallen by meditating on their sacrifices and by discussing what this war and all wars mean for the world in which we live.

You have no right pre-empt these images and the thoughtful debates in our home and around the country they may engender. Indeed, just the opposite; you have a legal obligation to present programs that serve the public interest and promote informed debate.

Sinclair Broadcasting has justified its decision by claiming that Ted Koppel's program is partisan -- a laughably hypocritical rationalization from a broadcasting corporation that misleadingly insinuates Mr. Hyman's rabidly partisan editorial commentary into local news programming.

I cannot but wonder why Sinclair Broadcasting finds putting real names and real faces to the inanimate statistics of America's war dead is an act of partisanship. It seems if the label "partisan" belongs anywhere, it on the chests of corporate media executives who would censor the public's right to know.