Just days before Sinclair made its announcement, some conservatives posting on the far right Web site FreeRepublic.com were tossing back and forth the idea of how they might convince Fox News to run "Stolen Honor." But the consensus among the Freepers was that the movie was too controversial and partisan even for Fox. "It's quite a world we live in when Fox appears to be the moderate," remarks Greenwald, whose recent documentary, "Outfoxed," examined the network's conservative bias.
Once obscure, Sinclair's peculiar brand of corporate leadership is at last receiving attention and scrutiny. While defending its "Stolen Honor" decision, Sinclair's obstreperous vice president Hyman twice this week turned heads by comparing network news organizations to "Holocaust deniers" for allegedly refusing to cover the anti-Kerry accusations of a small gaggle of Vietnam veterans. Aside from his incendiary language, Hyman obviously neglected to account for the wall-to-wall coverage the Republican-financed Swift Boat Veterans for Truth received during the month of August.
After the Democratic National Committee filed a complaint with the Federal Election Committee charging that Sinclair's airing of the one-sided "Stolen Honor" amounted to a corporate, in-kind donation to the Bush-Cheney campaign, Hyman told the Associated Press, "Would they suggest that our reporting a car bomb in Iraq is an in-kind contribution to the Kerry campaign?" Eighteen Democratic senators wrote to FCC chairman Michael Powell this week asking him to investigate Sinclairs move, but Thursday Powell said the FCC would do nothing to interfere with the network's plans.
"He's certifiable," says one Sinclair employee. "At least that's all coming out now. It's like the Wizard of Oz; the curtain gets pulled back and there's this weird guy running things."
In a profile of Hyman that appeared this summer, the Baltimore Sun reported wryly, "He came to journalism in a roundabout way." In fact, the public face of Sinclair's news department has no newsroom experience whatsoever. A 1981 U.S. Naval Academy graduate, Hyman worked for the Office of Naval Intelligence and later as a weapons inspector focusing on arms reductions in former Soviet bloc countries. During the mid-1990s, during the heyday of the Gingrich Republican "revolution," Hyman served as a congressional fellow. After less than two years on Capitol Hill, Hyman in 1997 was tapped as Sinclair's chief lobbyist, director of government relations, and then promoted to vice president of corporate relations in July 1999.
For two years Hyman often made trade-industry headlines for challenging the FCC's guidelines on digital television. And then came Sept. 11. Sinclair went far beyond affixing American flags to the lapels of its news anchors. Its news team at the company's flagship station in Baltimore received edicts to read on air: "[The station] wants you to know that we stand 100 percent behind our President." Hyman has kept up the patriotic coverage: Last February, a Sinclair news crew set off for Iraq determined to find the "good news" stories that other news organizations were supposedly ignoring. Since that expedition, nearly 600 U.S. soldiers have been killed in Iraq. During an interview last September with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, a Sinclair reporter inquired, "Is negative press emboldening the terrorists in Iraq, do you think?"
Soon after Sept. 11, Hyman's commentaries, "The Point," became a daily must-carry on Sinclair stations. Critics of the Iraq war are "whack-jobs," the French are "cheese-eating surrender monkeys," progressives "loony left," and Democratic members of Congress who argued against Bush policies are "unpatriotic politicians who hate our military." At first only Sinclair stations that aired its NewsCentral broadcast were required to carry "The Point." But recently all Sinclair stations have been told to feature Hyman's broadsides, often by shortening their sportscasts.
Sinclair boasts that 1.8 million adult viewers see Hyman's "The Point" every day, making him among the most-watched conservative commentators on television. But the figure is somewhat misleading, because Sinclair news viewers in 39 markets across the country tune in for news, sports and weather. Hyman's simply there, part of the Sinclair package.
Sinclair is the only group owner, from either side of the political spectrum, beaming out editorials across the country to television stations without any local input. "Sinclair's always claiming they're the symbol of localism and that local broadcasters best reflect the values and tastes of the community," says Gene Kimmelman, director of the Washington office of Consumers Union. "How does running a so-called documentary which independent observers say is not factually accurate, how does that serve the community? And has Sinclair asked the communities if they wanted to see documentaries from the other side to balance it out?"
Smith at Syracuse University says the fracas represents a strategic defeat for the broadcast industry, which continues to lobby Congress and the FCC for further media ownership concentration. "This plays right into the hands of people who are opposed to media consolidation," he says. "Sinclair's become the poster child for abuse of consolidation. Broadcasters always claim consolidation doesn't hurt localism, but this [Sinclair episode] is incredibly damaging to localism. Privately, I think broadcasters are furious with Sinclair."
Reed Hundt, the former FCC chairman, encapsulates the latest Sinclair travesty in a line: "It's about a company that's forgotten the standard of behavior for broadcast television."
About the writer
Eric Boehlert is a senior writer at Salon.
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