Fact check: Sinclair's A POW Story contained errors, only some of which were rebutted

On October 22 at 8 p.m. ET, Sinclair Broadcast Group aired a program titled A POW Story: Politics, Pressure and the Media that consisted of more than thirty minutes focused on Senator John Kerry's Vietnam War record, followed by less than four minutes purporting to examine President George W. Bush's service during the Vietnam era, and a final segment on the media. Parts of the anti-Kerry film Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal, as well as segments from a pro-Kerry film titled Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry, were shown during the broadcast. Kerry attackers and the program's host, Jeff Barnd, made a number of factually false statements, some of which were rebutted by Kerry defenders while others were left uncorrected. The overwhelming evidence that Bush shirked his Texas Air National Guard duty was glossed over: Viewers were told only that questions remain about whether Bush completed his required service.

Sinclair opened and closed the broadcast with a patently false statement that was not rebutted: the assertion that the "news program" has generated enormous controversy. At the end of the program, Sinclair urged viewers to contact the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to express their view that it was appropriate for Sinclair to air this "news program." But it was not this program that generated such controversy. Rather, A POW Story apparently represented Sinclair's attempt to repair the damage wreaked on its stock price in the wake of an October 9 Los Angeles Times report that Sinclair was "ordering its stations to preempt regular programming just days before the Nov. 2 election to air a film [Stolen Honor] that attacks Sen. John F. Kerry's activism against the Vietnam War."

Following a massive grassroots advertiser boycott effort, threatened shareholder litigation, and numerous other actions taken to stop Sinclair from airing Stolen Honor, the company announced on October 19: "Contrary to numerous inaccurate political and press accounts, the Sinclair stations will not be airing the documentary 'Stolen Honor' in its entirety." Rather, the broadcast group, said, it would run A POW Story, "a news special [that] will focus in part on the use of documentaries and other media to influence voting, which emerged during the 2004 political campaigns, as well as on the content of certain of these documentaries."

Link to Fact Check Report...