Confessions Of A Former Sinclair News Director

[RockaFowler]

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/opinion-weiss-sinclair-television-propaganda_us_5ac2c6d4e4b09712fec38b95?ncid=engmodushpmg00000003

I was a Sinclair news director. For a few months, at least.

In 2013, I was a young news director at a struggling small station in the Midwest, having worked my way up the ranks as a producer in larger markets. I’d uprooted my family the year before and moved from the West Coast to “earn my stripes” running a newsroom. I had a small team with a handful of veterans and eager new reporters I enjoyed mentoring.

That fall, Sinclair Broadcast Group bought the station. Sinclair was not a household name at the time, but it did have a reputation in the business for being heavy-handed in station operations and for having a conservative editorial lean. The company first made national headlines when it forced all its stations to run an anti-John Kerry documentary just before the Democratic nominee lost the 2004 presidential election.

Still, I went in with an open mind. As Sinclair prepared to purchase my station, I emailed a colleague to say, “From everything I’ve seen so far, it’s not the evil empire some people think.”

It took just a few months to realize how wrong I was.

That "Terrorism Alert Desk" thing is really trash. I feel bad for friends I have that work at the local Sinclair stations. They didn't sign up for this. They have been there for years before Sinclair even came into this area. Now Sinclair is using the fact that they have well-liked anchors who are now being forced to air such horrible crap

[Angry Dragon]

1. 11 recs and no replies

[Blecht]

2. 13 recs and 2 replies

[Roland99]

3. K&R

[PatSeg]

4. K&R

[Maven]

5. Conservatives have been running a 3-decades-long mass media mindf*ck operation on the public

They cannot win on their ideas and must use propaganda and brainwashing to control the public. And we haven't fought back in kind because liberals naturally find the idea of using mass media disinformation campaigns to manipulate voters to be abhorrent. We should have fought like hell when media consolidation rules were being gutted and the fairness doctrine was eliminated. And we need to fight like hell now for regulation of social media -- the new frontier.

This assumes that there's still time to save our country before it descends into chaos and violence.

[aggiesal]

7. " ... when media consolidation rules were being gutted ..."

happened when the "Telecommunications Act" was signed.
Check out who was president at the time.

[scarletwoman]

21. Well, if no one else is going to acknowledge it, I will say it right out:

it was Bill Clinton who signed it. Part of the whole "Third Way" thing that ended up sending the Democratic party into the wilderness of irrelevancy to the working class.

People need to realize, it isn't just the Republicans who've been working on destroying whatever remains of FDR's New Deal, there is a species of Democrat who've helped as well.

Thankfully, the shock of the Trump presidency seems to be bringing the Democratic party back to its earlier values.

[aggiesal]

28. Very Good! The exact point I was trying to make ...

[workinclasszero]

9. If we don't fight back on the right wing media takeover

it's just a matter of time till this country goes 100% fascist.

I hope its not to late already with Fox "news", Sinclair and hate radio running right wing republican propaganda lies 24/7/365.

[nolabear]

6. Inside KOMO in Seattle these days...

https://www.seattletimes.com/entertainment/tv/turmoil-inside-komo-news-as-conservative-owner-sinclair-mandates-talking-points/

[A2er]

12. Where are the rich Democrats?

Can't some of our progressive millionaires and billionaires come up with some money to buy these stations or start up competitors?

[calimary]

13. Welcome to DU, A2er!

Good Grief how often I've wondered about that myself?

WHERE IS OUR FIGHT? WHERE ARE OUR FIGHTERS? For that matter, WHERE IS OUR DEVIOUSNESS?

WHY the hell can't we fight like the bad guys do? Because the bad guys do it that way and WIN. And if our side thinks that we have to take the high ground and we can't be like them and we can't fight that way or that mean or that aggressively or as nasty and underhanded as they do, and we can't scheme and manipulate like they do (which gains them MORE WINS, btw), because we're somehow above all that, then we're just gonna keep getting rolled.

How many times have I wished we had some Roger Stones and kkkarl roves and lee atwaters and other dirty tricksters who can turn the tables from under the table? NO ONE can count that high. The best scientist or mathematician, even the late Stephen Hawking, can't count that high.

Taking the high road sounds awfully nice and uplifting and moral and all that. But in politics, taking the high road takes you straight over a cliff.

[rainin]

27. Your comment reminds me of what dems did to Al Franken and makes me sad. What good did that high

ground do?

[calimary]

29. Answer? Not much.

His replacement so far hasn't done much to make noise or rattle cages, certainly not in the way Al Franken did. I hope Kirsten Gillilbrand doesn't think she can run for president. I'll have an awfully hard time supporting her. If we wind up being stuck with her as the nominee, then fine, she'll have my vote because I WILL NOT vote for a spoiler and I WILL NOT EVER-EVER-EVER vote for an "R". But I will do so VERY reluctantly and unenthusiastically. And I won't ever forget how she drove him out of town, either.

[Tatiana]

19. Well Bezos did pick up the WaPo.

And it's improved greatly since his purchase.

But we do need a lot more to help counter this brainwashing of America.

[backtoblue]

8. Kick and rec

I don't even know how to respond.

[magicarpet]

10. We better do something....

.... we are currently barely balanced on the edge and about ready to fall or be pushed into the abyss.

The Ministry of Information - supported by the Fascist segments of our government are about to take over total access to our airwaves, communications, and media systems.

[pandr32]

11. Using the good reputation news anchors have built

...to shovel conservative propaganda to their unwitting local viewers is part of a coup d'etat in progress. The purpose is to force a political change in order to control our government and the journalists become hostages in the plan.

How can this be legal? This is a First Amendment take-down.

Already we have tRump and his mouthpieces constantly attacking the legit national news outlets as "fake news". Together with Sinclair taking over local news outlets, our national news sources will likely find themselves facing trouble.

[mwooldri]

14. Sadly it is perfectly legal.

Sinclair Broadcast Group owns the stations. The owners can say whatever they want. The on air talent don't have 1A rights while at work. They probably have nasty contracts with penalties if they quit.

If you read the article in the OP, it seems to indicate SBG are having a hiring problem. It would appear that working at a Fox owned and operated Fox affiliate (not Fox Noise Channel) would be preferable to working for SBG. That's saying something.

While I don't watch much TV (don't have time) fortunately our local SBG stations do not have their own news. Spectrum Cable (former Time Warner Cable) produces a special news cast for them, using personalities on their 24 hour local cable news station.

[sharedvalues]

17. Its legal because the GOP has purchased the FCC!!!!!

We used to have a Fairness Doctrine.
The right rolled it back.

We used to care about media ownership.
The right rolled back rules on who could own media.


This is absolutely a construction of right wing billionaires who wish to push propaganda.


We better fix our media. Our democracy is at stake.

[Cha]

15. this is like fucking russia. Where the fuck

will this end?

Thank you, RockaFowler

[ProudLib72]

18. We used to have laws against such things as controlling half the media in the country

But under tRump, I believe this will end when either SBG is bought out by RT or RT is bought out by SBG.

[oasis]

16. K and R

[defacto7]

20. K&R

[UTUSN]

22. Getting to the nitty-gritty, WHO is at the *bottom* of "Sinclair" - here's Wiki:

***********QUOTE******

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_Broadcast_Group

.... Sinclair Broadcast Group is a publicly traded American telecommunications company that is controlled by the family of company founder Julian Sinclair Smith. Headquartered in Hunt Valley, Maryland, the company is the largest television station operator in the United States by number of stations, and largest by total coverage; owning or operating a total of 193 stations across the country (233 after all currently proposed sales are approved) in over 100 markets (covering 40% of American households), many of which are located in the South and Midwest. Sinclair also owns four digital multicast networks (Comet, Charge!, Stadium, and TBD) and one cable network (Tennis Channel), and owns or operates four radio stations in the Pacific Northwest. Among other non-broadcast properties, Sinclair also owns the professional wrestling promotion Ring of Honor and its streaming service Honor Club.

Sinclair has faced scrutiny from media critics, as well as some of its station employees, for the conservative slant of their stations' news reporting and other programming decisions, and how the company's rapid growth has aided its dissemination of content that appeal to these views.[2][3][4] Sinclair has also faced criticism over business practices that circumvent concentration of media ownership regulations, particularly the use of local marketing agreements, and accusations that the company had been currying favor with the Trump administration in order to loosen these rules. ....

Smith's son David D. Smith began taking a more active role in the company in the 1980s. In 1985, the Chesapeake Television Corporation changed its name to the Sinclair Broadcast Group. In 1990, David Smith and his three brothers bought their parents' remaining stock and went on a buying spree that eventually made it one of the largest station owners in the country, through the purchases of groups such as Act III Broadcasting (in 1995) and River City Broadcasting (in 1996). ....

Sinclair had experimented with using a centralized news organization called News Central that provided prepackaged news segments for distribution to several of the group's stations. These segments were integrated into programming during local news broadcasts. Mark E. Hyman, a high-ranking executive at Sinclair, also created "The Point", a series of conservative editorial segments that were broadcast on stations operated by the group that maintain news departments. ....

Cunningham Broadcasting
Cunningham Broadcasting (formerly known as Glencairn Ltd.) is a station holding company affiliated with Sinclair Broadcast Group via a relationship with the company's owners. Per a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Cunningham is owned by the estate of Carolyn C. Smith, the estate of Sinclair's controlling shareholders' parent, and trusts for the children of Sinclair's controlling shareholders. All six Cunningham stations have local marketing agreements with Sinclair-owned/managed stations. Based on these arrangements, Glencairn/Cunningham has served merely as a shell corporation with the sole purpose of evading FCC ownership rules.

********UNQUOTE**********

[benld74]

23. Interesting to know the state he was in

[marlakay]

24. Tonight I turned on my local news

with the knowledge of which one was Sinclair. Normally I get my news online for politics and only watch local news for weather and something local.

So tonight I watched the political part of it and sure enough the Sinclair station had republican talking points and tried to make excuses for why Trump was doing things while the other channel was in the middle talking about what was happening in a factual way without opinion on it.

The scary part is that people trust their local guys especially if they have seen them for years so could be swayed by them.

I am new to the area so don't know any of them.

[misanthrope]

25. I feel for some of their reporters

Despite what we're seeing with the NYTimes and Washington Post over the last 14 months, journalism is still fighting a rapid decline in this nation. Print journalism has become nearly non-profitable. Beat reporters are a fading relic and the loss of the insight, expertise and resources they carried with them has decimated accuracy and insight.

TV is another tale. While it was never as incisive as print media, it's become even more insidious these days. Big news networks pander to sensationalism and personality conflicts, with warring punditry the order of the day. Local news is even worse. Its reporting is often light on facts, heavy on visuals. It has little depth.

And the public doesn't care. They don't want news anyway. They want confirmation bias. They want echo chambers.

What was outlined in Neil Postman's prescient 1985 book "Amusing Ourselves to Death" has come to pass, less George Orwell, more Aldous Huxley. As he wrote in one passage:

"What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture."

So here we are. Our journalism is like this because it's what the citizens want. One effect is those who want to do good, solid journalism are left with fewer ways and places to do so.

In the small-to-medium city where I live, two of the four local news stations are Sinclair stations. The remaining two are a FOX affiliate and a CBS affiliate that has always been known for its "hometown" slant that reinforces "old-fashioned Southern values."

If you're a reporter at any of these stations, you just do your job, keep your head down and try to look for something else. It's not getting any better.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

30. the truth ... drowned in a sea of irrelevance

That's what it feels like when checking "Latest Threads" lately. A couple hundred "OMG tweeeeet!" threads and all of them about TrumPutin, while the GOPers explode and erode everything not in the limelight. Takes a lot of time to sort through.

[DeminPennswoods]

26. TV and radio stations operate under licenses

These are not permanent and come up for renewal. The public can legally object to license renewal, but they rarely do. You don't have to sit back and bemoan how things are, this is something you can do and organize others to do.

[misanthrope]

31. People barely vote in elections

They aren't going to give a damn about FCC licenses.