The Man Behind "Stolen Honor"

Who is Carlton Sherwood -- the film maker behind Sinclair Broadcast Group's "Stolen Honor?" The documentary is critical of Senator John Kerry's anti-war activities after he came home from Vietnam and features interviews with two people who've appeared in the anti-Kerry "Swift Boat Ads."

Sinclair and it's top honchos are big financial backers of President Bush and the Republican Party. They've ordered their 62 stations -- many in key battleground states -- to pre-empt prime time programming to air the documentary as "newsworthy."

That one word may be all it takes to make the documentary immune to political charges from the left.

Pulitizer, Peabody, and a Day in Court

So who is Carlton Sherwood? He's no Michael Moore. He has as many Purple Hearts as John Kerry and contributes to Veterans' causes. He even has a journalism award named after him.

The guy won a Pulitzer and a Peabody. And more journalism awards over his career than John Kerry could’ve won medals if he’d spent five months in Vietnam instead of just four.

But Sherwood also got charged with illegally recording a conversation back in 1983 -- the kind of thing that tripped up Linda Tripp. An indication he is willing to play fast and loose to get a story. But the charge is not necessarily a bad thing. Wiretap laws differ from state to state and can be loaded with technicalities. His market at the time had three different jusidistions with varying laws. And any state's can trip up even the best.

Running Into "The Wall"

But it was a series of reports for DC’s Channel 9 -- WDVM at the time, WUSA today -- that left a huge black mark against his otherwise impressive career. The incident is briefly mentioned (on page 3) in the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial Fund documents filed at the Library of Congress.

Sherwood did a series of reports for the station that led to a GAO audit of the fund’s finances -- and ended up leaving his station $50,000 poorer.

The four-part series began airing on WDVM in Washington, DC, November 7, 1983 and accused the Memorial Fund of mismanaging finances.

In 1983, it was hard to believe the simple, elegant, and solemn black stone monument would become the most popular one in a city of memorials and monuments. Back then, the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial was a favorite target of conservatives. They hated it. They saw it as a black mark against America.

A series of reports on bad finances fueled the fire conservatives hurled against "The Wall."

Archived articles at the Washington Post show Sen John Warner (R-VA) and then-Sen Charles Mathias (R-MD) requested a GAO probe of Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial Fund, Inc. in December, 1983, about a month after Sherwood's series aired in DC.

Sherwood's Vietnam

By May, 1984, the GAO reported that the Fund had handled it’s $9 million perfectly well.

Six months later, the station’s news director, Dave Pearce, issued an on-air apology for the story. In less than a year, the blockbuster expose had blown up in Sherwood's face and the station suffered collateral damage.

The Washington Post’s November 8, 1984 edition carried a story that started:

In what attorneys for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund yesterday called "an unprecedented retraction by a television station," Channel 9 aired an apology and a complete exoneration of the Fund, one year to the day after WDVM began broadcasting a controversial four-part series of reports that, in WDVM's words, "raised serious questions regarding the financial propriety" of the Fund.

After that, the station contributed $50,000 to the Memorial Fund.