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Originally Posted by balderdash111
Actually, I'm being perhaps a bit more subtle than you give me credit for. My theory is that is in effect a very large paid donation by corporation, possibly in violation of contribution laws. It also violates the rules surrounding equal time
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Your theory does not hold water when held up to media law.
It is not legally a paid donation. It is legally a documentary. FYI documentary does not mean NEWS PROGRAM, it means MOVIE. Anyone who thinks that every documentary out there is produced by journalists and is an unbiased source of news information is sorely mistaken. In fact, the majority of political documentaries have a slant one way or the other, but that's not really the issue here. The issue is that Sinclair has an opinion - speech - it wishes to broadcast. The constitution says the government cannot take Sinclair's right to broadcast that speech away.
It does not violate the equal time rule because the Bush campaign did not buy the timeslot to air this documentary, nor did they produce it and were then given the airtime for free. Since they didn't buy it, weren't given it, and in fact have absolutely nothing to do with the production of the documentary, the stations have no legal obligation to offer the Kerry campaign the opportunity to buy/be given the same amount of time.
The equal time rule says that if a station sells one minute of advertising to Bush, it cannot refuse to sell one minute of advertising to Kerry. In 1959, congress exempted news broadcasts and documentaries from the equal time rule, as long as the documentary's primary focus is not one of the candidates.
Obviosly this documentary hasn't been seen, so it's hard to say for sure, but it appears the primary focus of this documentary will not be Bush. Kerry will therefore have no grounds to demand equal time.
Plus, even if Kerry had the grounds to demand it, the station still hasn't violated the equal time restrictions until it broadcasts it, and then REFUSES to give Kerry the equal time.