Ted Koppel To Honor Iraq War Dead On Friday's "Nightline"

[Dont Hurt Me]

Im glad Koppel is doing this, if my son was of age i'd tell him to go to Canada or elsewhere for this agenda of Bush's. getting our sons and daughters killled for what? Iraq wasnt a threat to the U.S. that much is clear now. the threat we now have is loosing our rights,freedoms and libertys by this administration and all the knuckleheads in congress that gave George to much authority. our other problem is we now have a world that hates us. way to go George! you have killed our kids for what? you got rid of our surplus for what? Bin laden is still hiding, Mexico is still wide open, enviroment has been 100% ignored, all of this for his little made up war. where are those WMDs? getting killed for George and his oil buddies has little honor in it. getting killed to stop Hitler from taking over the world was all about Honor.

 

[Chip NoVaMac]

Prime time, friday night, during sweeps, with commercial breaks. This thing has profits written all over it. They should have aired this on memorial day and commercial free. This wasn't political in nature, but a business decision.

TV stations set there advertising price based on sweeps week. The fact that this aired will mean that the network can charge more for airtime over the next year. Way to use the sacrifice our soldiers made to make money. Not a classy move.

The idea was nice, but the timing was all wrong.

On the surface you are right about the Sweeps period.

Keep in mind there are two sets of commercial airtime. National and local. I am not sure about this show, how the split of commercial time is made. But if it were commercial free, the local stations lose their revenue. Also depending on how long this was scheduled in advanced, the station would have to do "make good" ads to replace the lost time slots. And depending on the inventory levels at the station, this may mean another revenue loss.

 

[Sparky's]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3675683.stm
God I love censorship, it makes for such a well informed, global, community. When governments start repressing the horrors of war from their citizen's eyes, to further their personal goals, it degrades the world's view of that country for years to come. I am extremely angered at this complete lack of respect for the citizens of the us, and how the government has gotten to a point at which they think, and do, control, exploit and sit on the media. This needs to stop, now, and it should start with the other EU nations bringing their troops out of Iraq.

Who says Sinclair has anything to do with the government. It's a Family Owned publically traded company that has its fingers in a lot of pies, which may or may not involve political support, But how dare you say the government was responsible for this decision

http://www.sbgi.net/about/profile.shtml

I also think its time to start paying attention to what the "volunteer" troops are saying about the conflict. "They (the Iraqy insurgents), haven't seen anything yet..." the attitude of the troops is we are here to kick a** so lets do it!

 

[Chip NoVaMac]

Who says Sinclair has anything to do with the government. It's a Family Owned publically traded company that has its fingers in a lot of pies, which may or may not involve political support, But how dare you say the government was responsible for this decision

http://www.sbgi.net/about/profile.shtml

I also think its time to start paying attention to what the "volunteer" troops are saying about the conflict. "They (the Iraqy insurgents), haven't seen anything yet..." the attitude of the troops is we are here to kick a** so lets do it!

Given the FTC trying to allow for massive media consolidation, the media companies are beholden to the government.

The government since 1992 has controlled the press in the coverage of the final homecoming of American troops. All if one is to believe, because Bush I was shown split screen on CNN being positive about the first war in Iraq. While CNN covered bodies being returned from the war.

But the larger argument is the suppression of information to 5% of the TV market place by Sinclair. This is censorship by Sinclair. Just because it did not meet their conservative agenda.

Remember that the airwaves belong to the American people, by law. Broadcasters are just the stewards.

 

[Gabriel]

Who says Sinclair has anything to do with the government. It's a Family Owned publically traded company that has its fingers in a lot of pies, which may or may not involve political support, But how dare you say the government was responsible for this decision

Well, there are a number of reasons why we might be suspicious. First, Sinclair has very strong ties to the Bush administration. The company's PAC has given 99-100% of its money to Republicans since 2000 - this is the company's political donations, not its employees. If we look at the senior executives the numbers are even more striking, hundreds of thousands of dollars to Bush. Check out the Center for Responsive Politics http://www.opensecrets.org for data that comes from the FEC.

Also, during the Medicare debate, Sinclair ordered its stations to run fake news stories produced by the administration making the administration's case for medicare reform. The broadcasters reading the stories pretended to be journalists but were in fact actors hired by the Bush administration.

I'm not saying that the government was necessarily responsible for this decision, but it seems like a reasonable speculation.