"The specter of pandering ... is grotesque and incredibly disconcerting in a democracy."

The Los Angeles Times has two stories today that update previous posts about Sinclair and Disney.

Many reports in the last week accuse Sinclair, which owns seven ABC TV stations, of preempting Ted Koppel's Nightline coverage of Iraq casualties. Sinclair is openly supportive of the Bush administration and the Iraq war, and has been accused of distorting news coverage to advance the company's relationships with administration.

The Times article groups Sinclair with other corporations such as Clear Channel and Walt Disney, accused of "censoring political thought in order to curry favor with Republican-controlled Washington." The story quotes Charles Lewis, of the Center for Public Integrity: "The problem with Sinclair is that they have both partisan political and commercial reasons to pull their punches in their daily coverage of news events....the public in the cities where they have stations is getting anything but fair or balanced news coverage. The specter of pandering ... is grotesque and incredibly disconcerting in a democracy."

Bill Moyers includes not only Sinclair and Clear Channel, but also Fox News in the group of big media companies that manipulate the news for political gain. Clear Channel openly backs Bush, and has sponsored pro-war rallies.

A related article, "A Real Threat to Expression?" compares Sinclair's actions with Disney's. Disney prohibitied its Miramax division from distributing Michael Moore's documentary, "Fahrenheit 9/11" reportedly because the film is too controversial. (The film is highly critical of the Bush administration, and links Bush to the family of Osama bin Laden.) So are Disney and Sinclair just two sides of the same coin? The article argues that, while "it would appear that Moore vs. Disney and Koppel vs. Sinclair are similar controversies," "policically motivated corporations moving to crush the expression of ideas," are really quite different.

According to the Times article, the Disney case is more a matter of "corporate timidity," since Disney does not suppress other dissenting views. For example, Koppel's Nightline aired on Disney-owned ABC, and another Disney subsidiary published a "virulently anti-Bush book," The Exception to the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers, and the Media that Love Them.

Sinclair is completely different, and more Evil, in that the media company has "an unabashedly right-wing slant and a tight hold on the news decisions of its stations." There's no wall between the news office and the business office, which corrupts the news in favor of business and political machinations.