Kerry attack on primetime

By ANDREW BUNCOMBE


The owner of the largest chain of television stations in the United States and a huge contributor to Republican causes is to disrupt its regular programming schedules two weeks before the election to air a documentary highly critical of the Democratic challenger Senator John Kerry.

Officials from Sinclair Broadcasting confirmed that the company has ordered its 62 stations - many of them in the swing states of Ohio, Florida, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Iowa - to air Stolen Honour: Wounds that Never Heal, during primetime slots next week.

The documentary, by a small production company in Pennsylvania, focuses on Kerry's anti-war testimony to Congress in 1971 and actively links him to the anti-war campaigner Jane Fonda. The documentary includes interviews with former PoWs who claim that their Vietnamese captors used Kerry's comments to demoralise them.

Mark Hyman, a spokesman for Sinclair, said that the show would contain some or all of the 42-minute film as well as a panel discussion of some sort. He said final details had not been worked out but that Kerry had been invited to participate.

He told the New York Times: "Clearly John Kerry has made his Vietnam service the foundation of the presidential run - this is an issue that is certainly topical."

The Kerry campaign dismissed the documentary while the Democratic National Committee said it planned to file a complaint with the Federal Election Commission arguing that the airing should be considered an illegal contribution to President George W. Bush's campaign.

In a letter to the commission, a group of 18 Democratic senators asked for an investigation. "To allow a broadcasting company to air such a blatantly partisan attack in lieu of regular programming, and to classify that attack as news programming as has been suggested, would violate the spirit, and we think the text, of current law and regulation," they wrote.

Many Democrats will be concerned that the documentary could have a similarly damaging effect as the notorious and largely disproved Swift Boat Veterans for Truth advert, which sought to undermine Kerry's claims about his actions in Vietnam. After that advert was broadcast in many swing states, Kerry saw his polling fall markedly.

This is not the first time that Sinclair has found itself at the centre of political controversy. Earlier this year the company, which between 1996 and mid-2004 donated 89 per cent of its total US$2.3 million ($3.4 million) in political contributions to Republicans, ordered seven of its ABC affiliates not to run a programme in which the veteran anchor Ted Koppel read the names of American soldiers killed in Iraq.

Stolen Honour is produced by Carlton Sherwood, a Vietnam veteran and former journalist. It includes interviews with two participants of the Swift Boat advert.

"For 33 years we've been saying how Kerry portrayed us was utterly false. It was purgatory of the worst kind. It was slander," Sherwood said. "But no one wanted to talk about it."

- INDEPENDENT