Baraka
10-22-2004, 01:23 PM
Sleaze and smear at Sinclair
David Smith and Carlton Sherwood, the two men behind the "Stolen Honor" fiasco, are a perfect match.
In the face of lawsuits by stockholders, loss of advertising, questions about its abuse of the public airwaves and a falling stock price, however, Sinclair quickly cobbled together a revised program.
The first is David Smith, chairman and CEO of Sinclair. After being arrested with a prostitute during a sting in Baltimore, Md., in 1996, Smith, as part of his plea agreement, ordered his newsroom employees to produce a series of reports on a local drug counseling program, which counted toward Smith's court-ordered community service. "I really hated the way he handled our newsroom and what he expected his reporters to do after his arrest," LuAnne Canipe, a reporter who worked on air at Sinclair's flagship station, WBFF in Baltimore, from 1994 to 1998, told Salon.
The second is Carlton Sherwood, the producer of "Stolen Honor." Sherwood calls Sen. John Kerry a traitor for opposing the Vietnam War and concedes he never asked to interview Kerry for the documentary he made about him. This incident is not out of character for Sherwood, who has a history of erroneous reporting. In 1983, Sherwood leveled charges against the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund. In a four-part series for a local Washington TV station, Sherwood suggested that the veterans responsible for creating the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall were misspending -- if not stealing -- donated money. One year later, when Sherwood's charges proved to be baseless, his former television station employer was forced to air an extraordinary retraction and donate $50,000 to the fund in order to fend off a lawsuit. "It was a hit piece," Bob Doubek, who served as project director for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, told Salon. "All of Sherwood's stuff was conjecture, smoke and mirrors."
link (http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/10/22/sinclair/)
David Smith and Carlton Sherwood, the two men behind the "Stolen Honor" fiasco, are a perfect match.
In the face of lawsuits by stockholders, loss of advertising, questions about its abuse of the public airwaves and a falling stock price, however, Sinclair quickly cobbled together a revised program.
The first is David Smith, chairman and CEO of Sinclair. After being arrested with a prostitute during a sting in Baltimore, Md., in 1996, Smith, as part of his plea agreement, ordered his newsroom employees to produce a series of reports on a local drug counseling program, which counted toward Smith's court-ordered community service. "I really hated the way he handled our newsroom and what he expected his reporters to do after his arrest," LuAnne Canipe, a reporter who worked on air at Sinclair's flagship station, WBFF in Baltimore, from 1994 to 1998, told Salon.
The second is Carlton Sherwood, the producer of "Stolen Honor." Sherwood calls Sen. John Kerry a traitor for opposing the Vietnam War and concedes he never asked to interview Kerry for the documentary he made about him. This incident is not out of character for Sherwood, who has a history of erroneous reporting. In 1983, Sherwood leveled charges against the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund. In a four-part series for a local Washington TV station, Sherwood suggested that the veterans responsible for creating the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall were misspending -- if not stealing -- donated money. One year later, when Sherwood's charges proved to be baseless, his former television station employer was forced to air an extraordinary retraction and donate $50,000 to the fund in order to fend off a lawsuit. "It was a hit piece," Bob Doubek, who served as project director for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, told Salon. "All of Sherwood's stuff was conjecture, smoke and mirrors."
link (http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/10/22/sinclair/)