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Originally Posted by shakran
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.
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Well ok, then. I'm not a media attorney (are you? you seem to know a lot about media law), but the argument against the broadcast would have to focus on what you implicitly acknowledge - no matter what something is on its face, you have to look past that to see the truth.
FYI, though, the First Amendment is not as clear cut on this issue as you think. There is an ongoing tension between First Amendment rights and campaign finance laws, and the courts have struggled with it. What it comes down to today is that yes, everyone has the right to speak their mind, but the government may put restrictions on invididuals and corporations contributing to political campaigns. I don't pretend to know the details of the rules, but suffice to say that you can't use the First Amendment as a defense to violating campaign finance laws.
Anyway, back to the original point. What is the difference between a one-sided documentary and a two hour political add? I don't know. Do you? I don't think it's a big stretch for a court to look at this as, in essence, a massive in-kind political contribution. Look at the backgrounds of the film-makers. Look at the political activities of Sinclair. (Rather than link to various sources, take a look at
TalkingPointsMemo.com, where Josh Marshall has put together a lot of information). I don't think any can argue that this piece is basically a 1-hour attack add against Kerry.
Is BC04 behind it? I doubt it. They're not stupid enough to order something like that (b/c it would be a clear violation of laws if they did it).
Calling it a "news program" and using that to get around campaign finance laws is pure form over substance.
On th equal time rule, I will yield to you since you apparently know more about it than I do. I can understand smooth's confusion on what you said, though. I assume you meant to say that if the documentary's focus was not
on promoting one candidate, it was exempt from equal time. Obviously, this documentary is focused on one candidate, but on attacking him, not supporting him. Is that the rule?
Besides, I think the equal time argument is a non-starter, since the Kerry campaign doesn't want to dignify the documentary with an in-kind response.