"And some there be, which have no memorial who are perished,
as though they had never been, and are becomes as though they had never been born. . . ."
--Ecclesiasticus

The good news is that the Sinclair Broadcast Group is just as concerned with the deaths of U.S. service people in Iraq as the rest of us. That wasn't obvious a year ago. It is now. It was sad to think that a wealthy and powerful media conglomerate was not concerned about the loss of human life in Iraq and thought any attempt to put faces to the names of the dead was a ploy designed to help John Kerry become president of the United States. It started a year ago, almost to the day.

Ted Koppel announced that he intended to read the names of all the service personnel who had been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan during the preceding year on his news program Nightline. Conservatives became very upset. They thought drawing attention to the fact that service people were being killed in Iraq and Afghanistan might cause citizens to grieve and become disenchanted with the idea of war. They thought if that happened it might help John Kerry become elected president, a fate, so they thought, worse than the death of our service personnel unless, of course, one of the dead happened to be a member of one of their families. When Mr. Koppel announced his plans before Memorial Day in 2004 more than 500 military personnel had been killed.

Mr. Koppel did not intend to read the list of those who had been wounded. There were more than 5000 of them and time would not permit such a recital. ("Wound" is a word that doesn't adequately describe its victims. According to a report by Yaroslav Trofimov of the Wall Street Journal on October 29, 2003, medical personnel working with the wounded are appalled by the injuries they see on a daily basis. Describing surgery he had performed on one serviceman, an orthopedic surgeon said of his patient: "His nerves and blood vessels were just shredded. There wasn't anything to fix in his arm. He'll have to adjust to his new life." An assistant nurse said: "It's like a horror movie. I served in a trauma unit. I saw death in the face- but nothing like here. And those who live, you've got to wonder how they are going to make it back in the states." They wonder too.)

Sinclair Broadcast Group was sure that reading the names and showing the faces of the dead was an inappropriate thing to do on a day designed to remember and honor those who died in all wars. It said telling the people the names and showing the faces of the dead was an attempt to undermine the efforts of the United States in Iraq. Barry Faber, the general counsel for Sinclair who very likely spent no time being shot at in Baghdad told its ABC affiliates not to air the program. He said: "We find it to be contrary to public interest." Sinclair said ABC was politicizing the war by broadcasting the program. One year ago Sinclair preferred not to have people reminded of the fact that war kills. It would have been doubly upset had the program also described the wounded.

Commenting on Sinclair's action Senator John McCain, who knows more about war than people at Sinclair, said of its decision in 2004: "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."

2005 is a different year. Ted Koppel repeated the program on Memorial Day, 2005. He read the names of the more than 900 American military personnel killed in Iraq or Afghanistan in the past year. Sinclair did not order its stations to broadcast something else in its place. It said: "Sinclair Broadcast Group applauds 'Nightline' for paying tribute to those servicemen and women killed in Iraq and Afghanistan by reading their names on Memorial Day, a day set aside to honor our fallen heroes." It went on to explain that in 2004 Memorial Day coincided with the start of the May ratings sweeps" and therefore, one presumes, focusing on the dead was inappropriate.

It is good that Sinclair now believes that honoring the dead is appropriate for Memorial Day. The families of the 500 it chose to ignore last year will probably feel a little sorrow hearing the names and faces of the 900 Sinclair doesn't ignore this year. They needn't. They have greater sorrows to deal with. Sinclair must live with its demonstrated heartlessness. It doesn't have enough corporate feeling to care.

Christoper Brauchli can be reached at Brauchli.56@post.harvard.edu