A growing threat to local coverage of news
By now most have seen the video mash-up of scores of local TV news anchors from across the country reading a brief commentary appearing to express each station’s commitment to factual reporting.
Viewed separately, the spots could have been dismissed by viewers as innocuous and easily ignorable station promos. But in the video produced by the news and blog website Deadspin, which combined the commentaries from many of the 193 televisions stations owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, the segments become an increasingly eerie in-unison incantation that makes the anchors sound like the cybernetic Borg of “Star Trek” lore.
The script for the segment read by anchors — including Sinclair-owned KOMO-TV, Channel 4, in Seattle — varied little among all stations and was typically read by one or two anchors at each station. With the push from the Deadspin video, condemnation of the statement and how it was handled at each station was widespread across the media landscape and even among more than a few Sinclair employees, anonymously and publicly.
Mandated by Sinclair’s national ownership as “must-run” segments, local stations were not given a choice in broadcasting them and employees were not allowed to opt out of recording them. Even resignation was not a viable option for most employees, as a Bloomberg report showed: Most Sinclair employment contracts contain non-compete clauses and require hefty fees to compensate Sinclair for its investment in employees — up to 40 percent of an annual contract — in order to leave before the end of a contract.
Along with its heavy-handed approach with its employees, the content of the segments went beyond a simple statement reflecting commitment to accuracy, fairness and accountability; the segments dragged in the spectre of “fake news,” using a broad brush to vilify other unnamed media outlets for publishing “fake stories, stories that just aren’t true, without checking facts first.”
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