Monday, October 11, 2004

Scurrilous Shenanigans Action Alert

Update, 5:45PM, 10/11/04: I'm bumping this up from Saturday night. I just want to make sure that I'm sending you in the right direction for now, and I'll blog more about this later this evening. I can't stress enough the importance of your action on this topic. Here's the latest info from Kos:

Daily Kos :: Sinclair Advertiser DB up; Viacom

Saturday, 10/9/04, 9:30PM

I'm not even sure where to start this particular post. An eagle eye reader at DKos picked up the scent first - a conservative broadcast group that owns many TV stations in the U.S. (Sinclair) is planning to preempt all programming on October 31 to show an inflamatory anti-Kerry film produced by a right wing nutjob (Conrad Black, a Dubya kind of guy if there ever was one). Let's go with a bit of background first:

Conservative TV Group to Air Anti-Kerry Film

Quicker than pResident Blinky can say "it's hard work", a couple of enterprising folks got on the case and set up websites:

Boycott Sinclair Advertisers

Stop Sinclair

Both sites have multiple links to individual Sinclair Broadcast Group television stations around the U.S., to the FCC, the FEC, and a host of other contact points. The key action that's been proposed (for those of you in a Sinclair market; I'm not) is to contact local businesses that advertise on Sinclair and express your displeasure - a boycott, in other words. Other proposed actions are:

  1. Contact the local Sinclair stations in your market
  2. Contact the affiliate networks (ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox)
  3. Contact Sinclair group itself
  4. Threaten to divest yourself of any security holdings you may have in Sinclair (a link from on of the above sites even allows you to check your mutual fund holdings to see if Sinclair is part of the fund investment portfolio)
Don't forget that wingnut pressure on CBS forced CBS to cancel airing of The Reagans not too long ago. Play by the wingnut rules. I think it's safe to say that we progressives are getting better at making our feelings known to shyster outfits like Sinclair.

Take a few minutes and follow the links. I promise that you'll be as outraged as I am about this situation. And for those of you who need a little blowjob action to get you motivated, check out this post on Eschaton regarding Sinclair's holier-than-Swaggart CEO.

Crank up your email and fax programs tonight. Make the phone calls first thing Monday morning.

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