Sinclair Broadcast Group, owner of six ABC affiliates, said none of its stations would air tonight’s edition of "Nightline," during which Ted Koppel will read the names of US military personnel killed in Iraq. Sinclair said the program "appears to be motivated by a political agenda designed to undermine the efforts of the United States in Iraq."
Also, a Sinclair spokesman said the program was "trying to stir up negative emotions in our involvement in the war…"
That’s in a Newsday story picked up by the Albuquerque Journal this morning.
Terrible, isn’t it? First, the pinkos show photographs of the coffins of dead American soldiers. Now they want to name them! Hey, if this goes on, we may get fewer young Americans to die for …for…well, freedom.
The freedom of TV owners to censor news, that is.
PS The Albuquerque Journal’s Op-Ed offerings today are from Charles Krauthammer, John Dendahl and one Gene Healy of the CATO Institute - a Washington, DC rightist, a Santa Fe rightist and a libertarian.
(Actually, the CATO guy is arguing for individual liberties of the Constitutional kind, but you get my drift. The Journal, like Sinclair Broadcasting, believes deeply in its first Amendment right to create an unbalanced marketplace of ideas.)