] The documentary by Pennsylvania-based Carlton Sherwood, a
] former journalist and Vietnam veteran, chronicles Kerry's
] 1971 testimony before Congress and links him to activist
] and actress Jane Fonda. It includes interviews with
] Vietnam prisoners of war and their wives who claim that
] Kerry's testimony -- filled with "lurid fantasies of
] butchery in Vietnam" on the part of U.S. troops --
] demeaned them and led their captors to hold them longer.

[ Sinclair Media Group has ordered it's affiliates to carry this program, which appears to be, essentially, a rehash of the Swift Boat allegations, presented as a documentary, without pretense of objectivity.

Sinclair, you might recall, is the operator who was on the recieving end of John McCain's wrath a few months ago, who refused to broadcast Ted Koppel's reading of the names of our soldiers killed in Iraq and whose executives are substantial contributors to BC'04.

The left side of the netroots community has taken to complaining directly to Sinclair's advertisers, and the Democratic party is challenging the broadcast as a violation of FEC law. The latter seems a somewhat tenuous argument, but the program does appear to be unfiltered bias, presented as news, and the response on a local level appears to be the most appropriate.

It's not so dissimilar from, say, ABC News deciding to air Farenheit 9/11 during primetime, and calling it a newscast. In other words, completely inappropriate. -k]