Squaring off over ‘Nightline’

U.S. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and David Smith, president and chief executive of Sinclair Broadcast Group, both supporters of the war in Iraq, exchanged barbed criticism Friday over how the media should cover the growing number of American casualties.

At issue was Friday night’s “Nightline” roll call tribute to the U.S. troops killed in Iraq that Sinclair pulled from its seven ABC stations on the grounds that the broadcast was politically motivated to undermine support for the war.

In a letter to Smith that was released to the press, McCain called the ban “a very misguided attempt to prevent your viewers from completely appreciating the extraordinary sacrifices made on their behalf by Americans serving in Iraq.

“War is an awful, but sometimes necessary business,” said McCain, who spent more than five years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam and retired as a captain in the U.S. Navy with several military honors, including the Purple Heart and the Distinguished Flying Cross.

“Your decision to deny your viewers an opportunity to be reminded of war’s terrible costs, in all their heartbreaking detail, is a gross disservice to the public, and to the men and women of the United States Armed Forces. It is, in short, sir, unpatriotic. I hope it meets with the public opprobrium it most certainly deserves.”

Smith fired off a letter to McCain that appeared on Sinclair’s website insisting the ban, rather than a disservice to the troops, was actually “based on a desire to stop the misuse of their sacrifice to support an anti-war position with which most, if not all, of these soldiers would not have agreed.”

Smith said Sinclair would replace “Nightline” with a “balanced report addressing both sides of this controversy.”