Sinclair Plans 'News Special'

Sinclair Broadcast Group is proceeding with its plans to air a special program discussing John Kerry's Vietnam-era activities.

The broadcaster said Tuesday that 40 of its 62 TV stations would broadcast a one-hour news program entitled, "A POW Story: Politics, Pressure and the Media."

The announcement comes 10 days after the Los Angeles Times reported that the station group and its right-leaning executives were planning to pre-empt regular programming in the waning days of the presidentialcampaign to run an anti-Kerry documentary entitled, "Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal."

Critics of Sinclair protested that such a move was equivalent to bestowing free advertising time upon President Bush. Sinclair, meanwhile, denied that it ever planned to broadcast the documentary, issuing a statement that said, in part, "the program has not been videotaped and the exact format of this unscripted event has not been finalized."

In recent days, the controversy has threatened to cause economic damage to Sinclair and its shareholders, with activists organizing online to pressure Sinclair's advertisers into encouraging the company not to go ahead with what was expected to be anti-Kerry programming.

On Friday, Lehman Brothers issued a report cutting its price target on the company from $10 to $9 in a report that mentioned the fallout from the "Stolen Honor" episode.

Shares in the broadcaster, which have been falling all year, established a new 52-week low of $6.12 Tuesday, down 60% from the 52-week high.

Shares closed at $6.26 Tuesday -- down 11% from Friday's close -- but gained 8 cents after hours on Sinclair's latest announcement.

Sinclair says the newly announced "A POW Story" news special "will focus in part on the use of documentaries and other media to influence voting, which emerged during the 2004 political campaigns, as well as on the content of certain of these documentaries," according to a statement.

"The program will also examine the role of the media in filtering the information contained in these documentaries, allegations of media bias by media organizations that ignore or filter legitimate news and the attempts by candidates and other organizations to influence media coverage," says Sinclair.