Here’s a follow-up

to last week’s controversy over the decision by ABC’s “Nightline” to read the names of American soldiers who’ve died in Iraq. The dispute was largely driven by officials from a right-wing-owned television network called Sinclair Broadcasting.

Sinclair, a Baltimore-based media company whose local stations reach 24 percent of American households, refused to run Friday’s nightline on its seven stations that are ABC affiliates. Company officials said “Nightline” and its host Ted Koppel weren’t so much trying to honor the fallen as to foment opposition to the war.

Sinclair spokesman and commentator Mark Hyman accused Koppel of attempting to “disguise political speech as news content” in an interview published Friday by the Baltimore Sun. He added, “There is no journalistic value here.”

However, it turns out that Sinclair officials don’t always practice the conservative, family values that they preach.

In 1996, the company’s outspoken CEO, David D. Smith, was arrested by Baltimore undercover officers and charged with a misdemeanor sex offense involving a female prostitute.

Smith was reportedly driving a company-owned Mercedes when he was arrested in an undercover sting at a downtown corner frequented by prostitutes. A 31-year-old woman told an undercover officer that “she had just seen her regular date driving in the area,” according to court documents. Police followed the car onto an expressway, where they said they witnessed the woman perform oral sex while Smith drove north.

Just a little ditty FYI