Sinclair Broadcasting-Whoremongers and Titty Bars

[LiviaOlivia]

from: http://www.dcmediagirl.com/index.php?entry=entry20051122-213634
DCMediagirl

Never mind that (David) Smith’s own behavior had almost nothing in common with (Sinclair’s vice president of corporate relations, Mark) Hyman’s moralistic segments. According to several sources close to Smith, the principal owner of Sinclair has never been the paragon of personal virtue that his stations preach and his political allies champion. Having launched his career selling pornographic videos in Baltimore’s red-light district during the 1970s, Smith has apparently spent the past thirty years refining that passion. After he was caught by police in 1996 getting a blow job from a prostitute while driving a company Mercedes, his sexual adventures became a matter of public record, but according to his friends, that incident only begins to tell the story.

"That was the time he got caught," says one. "He’s a whoremonger. A real whoremonger. He loves the titty bars. The only people he likes go to the titty bars with him. Those are the only people he trusts. He also goes out to Vegas all the time. He goes to the high-end titty bars. He’s always getting the private upstairs rooms, champagne, the works."

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In April 2004, the company forbade all of its ABC stations to air a segment of Nightline in which Ted Koppel read the names of American casualties in Iraq, which Sinclair’s management considered "motivated by a political agenda designed to undermine the efforts of the United States." Six months later, Sinclair executives launched a political effort of their own, instructing all their news stations to broadcast a documentary on John Kerry called Stolen Honor, which accused the candidate of treason during the Vietnam War. In the buzz that followed, Sinclair’s vice president of corporate relations, Mark Hyman, stoked the fire even further by announcing that any network that refused to air the anti-Kerry documentary were “acting like Holocaust deniers” and that even if the documentary was a gift to Bush, the effect was balanced by the existence of suicide bombers in the Middle East, since after all, "Every car bomb in Iraq would be considered an in-kind contribution to John Kerry." Nearly three months later, the company was back in the hot seat, this time forced to admit that one of its most visible reporters, Armstrong Williams, had not only spent recent years landing exclusive interviews with men like Dick Cheney and Tom DeLay but was also getting paid handsomely by the Bush administration, having struck a deal with the White House to receive $240,000 in exchange for "favorable commentaries."

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