The blogsphere is awash with the news that Sinclair Broadcasting Group is telling its 62 TV stations to broadcast an anti-Kerry documentary, released by the newly-merged and renamed Swift Vets and POWs for Truth. Sinclair will show pre-empt regular night programming, including prime-time, and show the program commercial free.
Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo reports that former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt has expressed his “objection and concern” in the matter. Adam Thierer over at The Technology Liberation Front is taking the free-speech line, asking:
Where are the defenders of free speech and the First Amendment? This Sinclair episode should be about the easiest First Amendment case study in the world. Sinclair should be free to air whatever they want, whenever they want, however they want, regardless of what their intentions may be.
He ends with something of a platitude: Free speech for all. No exceptions.
If Sinclair was a website, movie producer, newspaper or even a cable channel I could accept his whole Free speech for all argument. But Sinclair is an over-the-air broadcaster, and thus has been granted a license for exclusive use of a public resource, namely a slice of spectrum, in exchange for providing a public interest, convenience or necessity.
Thierer can argue that it is not appropriate for a government to make such a bargain, and I’m sympathetic to that viewpoint myself. But since Sinclair has long benefited from this agreement and the resulting high barriers to entry for new competition, it’s hard to see the sense in his call for universal free speech — unless by “no exceptions” he means I can now set up my own unlicensed TV-broadcast tower without the FCC coming to shut me down. I find it hard to feel sorry for the lap-dog and all her restrictions, while the rest of us farm animals sit out in the rain.