by arthur Weinreb, associate Editor,
May 3, 2004
Soon after aBC announced that Ted Koppel would read the names and show pictures of the over 720 american soldiers that have died in the war with Iraq on the april 30 edition of Nightline, the mainstream media took Koppel’s part in the controversy that developed.
The critics of the program believed that by merely showing the pictures and reading the names without providing any context to the Iraq war or the deaths of these soldiers, the network was simply promoting the anti-war agenda of the american left.
after the announcement that the program would air, Sinclair Broadcasting group, owner of seven aBC affiliates announced that their stations would pre-empt that segment of Nightline. The usual suspects, CNN, the Washington Post and the New York Times made Sinclair’s action and not the broadcast, the major focus of their stories.
The worst offender was the Washington Post. Koppel and Sen. John McCain, who wrote a stinging letter to Sinclair, were quoted at length about how the program was not anti-war and about how Sinclair was doing a disservice by not broadcasting the Nightline episode. The Post also provided lengthy quotes from Military Families Speak Out, an anti-war group made up of families of U.S. soldiers which, being anti-war, were naturally in favour of the broadcast. Fairly lengthy quotes were also given to Free Press (no relation to Canada Free Press) which describes itself as a national media reform group. Free Press criticized Sinclair for pulling the program.
For balance, the Post published a short one-line quote, taken from a lengthy opinion piece by Media Research president, Brent Bozell, merely saying that Nightline’s purpose was "to turn public opinion against the war."
None of the argument, made by Bozell and others, that the context of the war and why these soldiers died should have been part of the broadcast made it into the paper. although the Washington Post sought out opinions of anti-war groups, no opinions were sought from groups who held the opposite view.
The Post, the New York Times and CNN all subscribed political motives to Sinclair, pointing out that top company execs had all made donations to Bush and the Republican Party. Perhaps more telling, these news sources omitted a fact that even made it into the Toronto Star — the day that Ted Koppel was reading the names of the american dead, the networks’ rating sweeps started.