Sinclair Broadcast Group: Flip-Floppers?

Back in late April, the Sinclair Broadcast Group ordered its seven ABC stations not to broadcast an episode of Nightline that honored America's then-under-600 killed troops in Iraq.

In a statement online, the Sinclair group said the "Nightline" program "appears to be motivated by a political agenda designed to undermine the efforts of the United States in Iraq."

So, showing pictures and saying the names of dead soldiers is a political statement. Fair enough.

Fast forward to nowish. The Sinclair Broadcast Group is ordering its network affiliates -- including "all six of the major broadcast networks in the swing states of Florida, Ohio, Wisconsin, Nevada, and Pennsylvania" -- to pre-empt primetime broadcasting in favor of an anti-Kerry documentary, Stolen Honor. They will be running the documentary commercial-free and categorizing it as a news item (and not, for example, free political advertising).

Sounds like an in-kind contribution to the Bush campaign. This one's going to be hard to defend -- or is it?

Sinclair Group's Vice President for Corporate Relations on CNN:

However, the accusations coming from Terry McAuliffe and others, is it because they are some elements of this that may reflect poorly on John Kerry? That it's somehow an in-kind contribution of George Bush?

If you use that logic and reasoning, that means every car bomb in Iraq would be an in-kind contribution to John Kerry[...]And that's just nonsense.

This is news. I can't change the fact that these people decided to come forward today.

So it seems that reporting on dead people in Iraq either is, or isn't, an in-kind contribution to the Kerry campaign, depending on what action the Sinclair Group is defending that month.