time provision. However, former FCC chairman, Reed Hundt, contended that Powell was offering "tacit and plain encouragement of the use of the Sinclair airwaves to pursue a smear campaign." A spokesperson for Sinclair said that the airing would be followed by a panel discussion, which Kerry would be asked to join. The Kerry campaign declined the invitation. Sinclair did not accept an offer from Michael Moore for free a broadcast of his documentary Fahrenheit 9/11. Sinclair's then Washington bureau chief, Jon Lieberman, publicly condemned the expected broadcast in an interview in The Baltimore Sun: It's biased political propaganda, with clear intentions to sway this election. For me, it's not about right or left—it's about what's right or wrong in news coverage this close to an election. Shortly after making this statement to the newspaper, Lieberman was fired. Sinclair Vice President Mark Hyman said, "Everyone is entitled to their personal opinion, including Jon Leiberman. We are disappointed that Jon's political views caused him to speak to the press about company business." Lieberman said of the company that made the film, "It's propaganda. It's meant to sway the election — we've been told that by people inside the company." According to Rolling Stone reporters, many Sinclair employees said privately that they agreed with Leiberman: "I was glad that someone finally had the guts to say something. Everyone who works there feels the same way and says it in private, but it doesn't leave the building." Reception Mark Nevins, a spokesman for the Kerry presidential campaign, stated: "This group is the poor, distant cousin of the Swift Boat Veterans for Bush. It's people with questionable backgrounds whose sole mission in life is to smear John Kerry." (Nevins was making a derisive reference to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, an anti-Kerry organization.) According to conservative commentator Deroy Murdock, "It presents POWs who argue that John Kerry's fallacious spring 1971 claims that U.S. atrocities occurred "on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command" amplified their agony under America's North Vietnamese enemies." Reacting to reports that Sinclair was to air Stolen Honor shortly before the election, members of the United States Congress asked the FCC to consider the legality of the planned broadcast. The Democratic National Committee filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission. As this controversy made the news, with a number of Sinclair advertisers pulling their