ASSOCIATED PRESS
The Federal Communications Commission won’t intervene to stop a broadcast company’s plans to air a critical documentary about Sen. John Kerry’s anti-Vietnam War activities on dozens of TV stations, the agency’s chairman said yesterday.
“Don’t look to us to block the airing of a program,” Michael Powell said. “I don’t know of any precedent in which the commission could do that.”
Eighteen Democratic senators wrote to Mr. Powell this week and asked him to investigate Sinclair Broadcast Group’s plan to run the program, “Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal,” two weeks before the Nov. 2 election.
Mr. Powell said there are no federal rules that would allow the agency to prevent the broadcast. “I think that would be an absolute disservice to the First Amendment, and I think it would be unconstitutional if we attempted to do so,” he said.
He said he would consider the senators’ concerns but added that they may not amount to a formal complaint that would require an investigation. FCC rules require that a program air before a formal complaint can be considered.
Sinclair, based outside Baltimore, has asked its 62 television stations — many of them in competitive states in the presidential election — to pre-empt regular programming to run the documentary. It chronicles Mr. Kerry’s 1971 testimony before Congress and links him to activist and actress Jane Fonda. It includes interviews with former Vietnam prisoners of war and their wives, who say Mr. Kerry’s testimony had demeaned the prisoners and led their captors to hold them longer.
In the letter to Mr. Powell, the senators — led by Dianne Feinstein of California — asked the FCC to determine whether the airing of the anti-Kerry program is a “proper use of public airwaves” and to investigate whether it would violate rules requiring equal airtime for candidates.
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