Mainstream journalists who have studied the anti-Kerry propaganda film, “Stolen Honor,” have yet to find that the film constitutes “news” by any standard. Even the Sinclair Broadcast Group that plans to air all or part of the film on 40 stations around the country, has backed off the idea that the film is news in and of itself. Now the news angle is a “discussion” of the film. Of course the project is irretrievably tainted, as many legitimate news organizations have determined.

Seems to me what is news is that the company is so determined to air the smear; company reputation and stockholder interests be damned.

Here are excerpts from two mainstream news examinations of the film.

Dana Stevens, a writer for Slate, exposes the propaganda techniques used in the film: “Stolen Honor is the kind of show you might come across at 2 a.m. as a paid infomercial on a local-access channel and leave on for a few minutes out of sheer fascinated disgust. It’s a sleazy little piece of work, a cunning act of libel-by-insinuation that introduces no facts that have not been public information for at least 30 years. The first 20 minutes consist of interviews with Vietnam POWs recounting their torture at the hands of the their Vietcong captors, with only one reference to John Kerry—a still photo of him testifying at the Winter Soldier hearings. Capitalizing on the moral revulsion provoked by these mental images of torture, the film spends the remainder of its 42 minutes trying to transmute that sense of outrage into a primal disgust with John Kerry himself. Its persuasive tactic is essentially one of brainwashing: By juxtaposing the occasional shot of Kerry’s face (at the hearings, at an antiwar rally also attended by Jane Fonda) with the gruesome torture stories of surviving Vietnam POWs, the filmmaker hopes to leave the impression that Kerry is responsible for their suffering.”

On Wednesday, The New York Times talked with mainstream historians and found no factual basis for the film’s charges against Kerry. “The accusations include that he singlehandedly prolonged the Vietnam war, worsened the torture of prisoners of war, and ultimately caused countless, needless deaths with his antiwar activism 30 years ago. The film is rife with out of context and incomplete quotations from Mr. Kerry and other antiwar veterans. Several historians said many accusations in it were not provable or stretched far beyond reality.”

Meanwhile, boycott activists are continuing to press advertisers to pull their ads from Sinclair-owned stations.