LAST WEEK Democrats fumed and fussed and even filed a federal complaint about a devastating TV documentary airing this week. The segment, called "Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal," alleges John Kerry's anti-war activities during the Vietnam War had a widespread, demoralizing effect on POWs and soldiers.
Perhaps Kerry's admittedly strong debate performance just got to their heads, but the Democrats are running high on hypocrisy. The party that claims to uphold freedom of speech and oppose the Patriot Act is now trying to use federal elections law to seriously undermine the freedom of the press. The whole thing would be silly if it weren't so scary. While their claim is legally baseless, if Democrats were to have their way, newspapers could never endorse candidates, journalists could never expose corruption and our fundamental right to criticize politicians would be endangered.
The basis of the Democrats' complaint, filed with the Federal Elections Commission, is that Sinclair Broadcasting's use of its television stations to air the anti-Kerry documentary is an illegal "in-kind contribution" to the Bush campaign. An in-kind contribution is a non-monetary contribution, such as supplies or services, an individual donates to political candidates and parties. Corporations such as Sinclair are prohibited from contributing, monetarily or otherwise, directly to candidates and parties.
For the Democrats' complaint to have even the slightest justification, they must assume the documentary's claims have no factual basis whatsoever. They must argue that this is purely a partisan hatchet job designed to help reelect Bush. Otherwise, the segment would be bona fide journalism. But what if there were a kernel of truth to the charges? After all, Kerry was far more articulate and less ambiguous as a young man than he is today. (He would never have said something like, "I was for the Vietnam War before I was against it.") What if his outspokenness really did demoralize the troops in Vietnam?
Shouldn't the American public know about a presidential candidate's war activities? Democrats certainly think so, as they've belittled Bush's National Guard service and, through various vicious documentaries like "Fahrenheit 9/11," his planning of war while president. Viewed in this light, Sinclair's documentary isn't solely a political contribution to Bush -- it's a contribution to our national political discourse.
Even if the charges in the Sinclair documentary were blatantly false, we should let the media police itself in order to preserve its journalistic independence. Networks that are shills for a single candidate or party will drive viewers to their more objective competitors.
As we saw with CBS News, when Dan Rather used blatantly forged documents to show Bush shirked his Guard duties, his rivals pounced. The pressure from even news organizations usually favoring Democrats was so great that CBS was forced to retract Rather's story. Because the media is a competitive market, and the profit motive is greater than any political ideology, business rivals will always expose each others' wrongdoing.
Being that free markets are as foreign to Democrats as the French are to Americans, their preferred approach is to bludgeon reporters with federal fines and sanctions even before news stories ever see the light of day. This would have a chilling effect on the press. While decidedly one-sided broadcasts like CBS's would be illegal, so would newspaper candidate endorsements. After all, those too would be "in-kind contributions" using a media outlet's resources to help specific candidates.
Also banned would be any news stories exposing corrupt politicians that benefit their rivals. For example, NBC's News 4 New York broadcast a stunning one-hour special in 2002, a month before Election Day, on former Sen. Bob Torricelli's, D-NJ, illegal activities. The broadcast helped push one of the most ethically challenged politicians out of office. NBC's broadcast was a public service, not a federal elections law violation. In fact, using the Democrats' logic, one of the greatest hallmarks in modern journalism, Watergate, which reporter Bob Woodward spoke about at the University recently; would also have been illegal.
Perhaps I am being paranoid in my fears that the Democrats' complaint will undercut free speech. Taken at face value, their position is petrifying. But the fact that they don't really mean it is patently obvious. After all, Democrats couldn't stop beaming when "Fahrenheit 9/11" came out. Admittedly, Michael Moore and his film's distributors profiteered like bandits while Sinclair is not striking it rich on its broadcast, thus making the latter seem more like a contribution. But the principle is the same: a media content distributor is using its resources to convey a message that helps a particular political candidate by denouncing his opponent.
When so much is at stake, the American public deserves to hear every side of the story and decide for themselves based on the best information. Democrats must let the media and markets do their jobs and stop playing politics with the freedom of the press; it is simply too precious to the freedom of our nation.
Eric Wang's column appears Wednesdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at ewang@cavalierdaily.com.
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