But what about Reba...

Conservative Sinclair Broadcast Group is forcing its stations, which reach nearly one-quarter of the country's TV households, to pre-empt their programming days before the election to air a film that attacks John Kerry's anti-war activism.

That's the same conservative Sinclair Broadcast Group which refused to air an episode of Nightline because Dan Rather humanized the events in Iraq by having the gaul to read the names of all the dead American soldiers last spring. Sinclair officials said the program "appeared to be motivated by a political agenda."

Could this pre-emption decision by Sinclair possible be motivated by politics and therefore prove this station of hypocrisy? Well, let's see. The producer of the film, Carlton Sherwood, formerly worked for Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge, whom George W. Bush later appointed as the first Secretary of Homeland Security. The Bush administration has selected Sherwood to create and manage a new federal website aimed at first responders (police officers, firefighters, etc). While working as a Ridge administration official, Sherwood directed then-Gov. Ridge's award-winning broadcast TV and radio operations in Harrisburg.

So the former right-wing propaganda flunky is airing a right-wing propaganda "news program" (that's how they are deciding to classify it) favoring the right-wing candidate just days before the election. That bad taste in your mouth right now, ladies and gentleman is called Carol Rove.

Today a filmmaker behind a new pro-John Kerry documentary offered it to Sinclair Broadcasting-- free of charge -- to see if the company is interested in showing its viewers a balanced presentation of the candidate. "My argument," says Paul Alexander, director of the critically-acclaimed "Brothers in Arms" film, which examines Kerry's experience in Vietnam, and casts him in a favorable light, "is if they're going to air 'Stolen Honor' then they should run my film, and preferably in the hour right after it. I'm sending them a letter tomorrow demanding that."Earlier this week as the controversy brewed, a Sinclair spokesman told the New York Times the company would consider running a Kerry documentary from a different perspective. Alexander's offer may effectively, and publicly, call Sinclair's bluff.

I'm all for free speech. And free speech means expressing our outrage when a major corporation with a history of right-wing bias tries to change the outcome of an election by airing a slanted, inaccurate documentary. Ther such a thing called the equal time rule in the broadcast regulations that says you must give an equal amount of time to all candidates if you give any time to either. Sinclairs license should be revoked if they blatantly break this rule because of some right-wing partisan decision.

So we have to tell them that we disagree with this decision. Contact their advertisers You can look them up locally here. Don't let these guys get away with this. Demand that they stop controlling the facts and let all sides be heard. This is a terrible abuse of OUR public airwaves and we will not stand for it.