Tuesday, October 12, 2004

CanWest Sinclair Anyone?

38°53' North; 77°02' West

Josh Marshall is one of the Sultans of Left Blogistan in the States. The last couple of days he and others of his ilk have been digging up the dirt on the connection between The Sinclair Broadcast Group and BushCo.

Why?

Because the Sinclair Group is shilling for BushCo's Brain, Karl Rove, Bigtime. Specifically, they are going to broadcast an anti-Kerry schlockumentary on the eve of the American election:

".....(The Sinclair Group) has ordered its 62 local stations to broadcast (the documentary) in the days before the election. Those 62 stations include affiliates of all six major broadcast networks in Florida, Ohio, Wisconsin, Nevada and Pennsylvania. The broadcast will preempt normal prime-time programming on those channels...."

Now this may seem trivial, in that 62 stations is relatively small potatoes south of the border and those particular states are relatively minor media markets.

But the thing to understand is that those are all battleground States, where a 0.5% swing either way in any one of them could alter the outcome of the entire election (ie. the 'official' difference in Florida, which 'won' it for the Shrubbery in 2000 was 537 votes).

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So, should we be worried about blatant media manipulation such as this being used to help swing things in favour of our local NeanderCon chapter next May?

Well, why not?

After all, it's not as if they don't have both the print and broadcast arms of our own 'Made in Western Canada' type of Sinclair group in their pocket already.

And as for the federal Neandercons.....don't forget that Johnny "The EyeBrow" Reynolds had a grand-old time at the recent Republican National Convention learning all the tricks of Mr. Rove's patented "72hr Blitzkrieg Strategy".

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P.S. On the flipside (ie. censorship), it was also the Sinclair Group that refused to allow it's stations to broadcast an ABC Nightline programme in which host Ted Koppel was treasonous enough to read out the names of American servicemen and women killed during the Iraqi Occupation.

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