Major networks bow
to Kerry camp

“Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal” is a documentary that deals with John Kerry’s testimony to Congress in 1971 – in which he testified that U.S. forces routinely committed atrocities in Vietnam.

This film includes interviews with 13 former U.S. prisoners of war who recall that their Vietnamese captors used Kerry’s comments to undercut prisoner morale.

Would any of America’s major TV networks be willing to televise this undeniably newsworthy and deeply moving documentary?

Not surprisingly, they refused.

So, Sinclair Broadcasting, nationally headquartered in Hunt Valley, Md., agreed to feature much of this documentary on all 62 television stations it owns – with its pre-empting whatever was previously scheduled – two weeks prior to election day.

Sinclair is the largest broadcast group in the U.S. and reaches 24 percent of all U.S. households with television.

This decision made the Kerry campaign absolutely livid. Spokesman David Wade called the film “lies” and “a smear” while denouncing Sinclair as “another one of Bush’s corporate friends trying to help him.”

But Sinclair’s vice president of corporate relations, Mark Hyman, said: “This is a powerful story. The networks are acting like Holocaust-deniers and pretending the POWs don’t exist. It would be irresponsible to ignore them.”

I learned from Hyman, a 1981 graduate of the Naval Academy, that this documentary was first offered to ABC, CBS, NBC and Public Broadcasting – all of whom refused because the Kerry campaign refused to provide anyone to refute it.

It is interesting indeed to learn from whom these Democrat-dominated networks take their orders.

Chad Clanton, a Kerry spokesman, declared:

“It’s hard to take an offer seriously from a group that is hellbent on doing anything to help elect President Bush, even if that means violating basic journalism standards.”

But Hyman noted: “Clearly, John Kerry has made his Vietnam service the foundation of his presidential run; this is an issue that is certainly topical.”

The New York Times reports:

“A group of Democratic senators, including Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Dianne Feinstein of California, readied a letter calling for the Federal Communications Commission to investigate the move, arguing that the documentary was not news but a prolonged political advertisement from Mr. Bush and, as such, violated fairness rules.”

Is there any evidence at all that any funds for this documentary came from the Bush campaign?

If there were, we can be near-certain that the New York Times and these Senate letter-writers would have listed it.

Among the 13 former prisoners of war in this documentary, there are two recipients of the Medal of Honor.

Kerry spokesman Wade and everyone else in the campaign should be asked:

“Which one of these Medal of Honor recipients and other former POWs does Senator Kerry believe is telling either ‘lies’ or ‘smears’ as Wade claims?”

And why, if there are any lies or smears, is John Kerry unwilling to appear on 62 TV stations – with all his military records – to try to prove these POWs and Swift Boat Veterans are not telling the truth?