CBS and Sinclair
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

News that the Columbia Broadcasting System was planning to air the story of the explosives missing in Iraq on the eve of the election is a choice example of the liberal hypocrisy. The Los Angeles Times reported that the executive producer of the Sunday edition of “60 Minutes” was planning to air the story on Sunday, October 31, which the Drudge Report interpreted as reflecting the hope that the last-minute broadcast would knock the Bush administration into a crisis. The scheme came a cropper when it became clear, the Los Angeles paper reported, that the story wouldn’t hold, and the New York Times Company ran out the story.
There is starting now to be widespread grumbling about the role of CBS and the New York Times in the story. Funny, though, how no one has threatened to file a shareholder suit against CBS or to round up a boycott of their advertisers. Talking Points Memo has fallen silent.
Yet what is the difference between what CBS was plotting to do and what Sinclair Broadcasting had in mind in respect of “Stolen Honor,” the documentary that interviews American veterans who had been held captive by the North Vietnamese communists while Senator Kerry was mounting his protests against the Vietnam War?
By our lights, both networks were well within their rights and the devil take the hindmost.