Deep Inside Sinclair:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/media/july-dec03/newscentral_12-11.html More local newscasts are increasingly broadcast from the same location in Hunt Valley, Md. Terence Smith goes inside the studios of Sinclair Broadcast Group, which has been criticized for its consolidation that has taken the local out of local news.
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http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=15718 <snip>Tune into the evening news on Madison, Wisconsin's Fox TV affiliate and behold the future of local news. In the program's concluding segment, "The Point," Mark Hyman rants against peace activists ("wack-jobs"), the French ("cheese-eating surrender monkeys"), progressives ("loony left") and the so-called liberal media, usually referred to as the "hate-America crowd" or the "Axis of Drivel." Colorful, if creatively anemic, this is TV's version of talk radio, with the precisely tanned Hyman playing a second-string Limbaugh.
Fox 47's right-wing rants may be the future of hometown news, but – believe it or not – it's not the program's blatant ideological bias that is most worrisome. Here's the real problem: Hyman isn't the station manager, a local crank, or even a journalist. He is the Vice President of Corporate Communications for the station's owner, the Sinclair Broadcast Group. And this segment of the local news isn't exactly local. Hyman's commentary is piped in from the home office in Baltimore, MD, and mixed in with locally-produced news. Sinclair aptly calls its innovative strategy "NewsCentral" - it is very likely to spell the demise of local news as we know it. "
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http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/04080/288764.stm She's not a reporter -- she just plays one on TV
Saturday, March 20, 2004
By Dennis Roddy
Karen Ryan was happy to hear my voice.
"At least you called to ask if I'm a real person," she said. After a week of being called everything from an actress to a hooker, a little self-doubt was inevitable.
snip....
She ended each report with, "In Washington, this is Karen Ryan reporting." That's how she closed a spot touting the Bush administration's new Medicare prescription package, commissioned by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. But this is an election year. Someone noticed the self-promotional spot and, in no time, the General Accounting Office opened an investigation and the public howled indignantly.
The focus of public fury is, as usual, the least blameworthy target. Ryan has been called a phony. One newspaper editorial told people that, if they see her, don't believe her. Chris Matthews, onetime chief of staff for Tip O'Neill, used the term "hooker." When Tip O'Neill's fixer calls you a hooker, that's got to hurt.
snip...
On KMAX in Sacramento, she told viewers of the 9 p.m. show about how frequent flier miles were becoming easier to use, and interviewed a spokesman from Capital One, a credit card vendor, to show how. In Atlanta, WAGA aired her report on the new Medicare prescription benefits program. Viewers in Tampa turned to WTSP and learned why money spent now on seeing a doctor saves money later. In Pittsburgh, WPGH, the Sinclair Broadcasting station that fired much of its news staff in favor of feeds from a centralized newsroom in Baltimore, offered Karen Ryan on Aug. 16.
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SINCLAIR AIRS FAKE NEWS BROADCASTS PRODUCED BY BUSH ADMINISTRATION: In March, it was discovered that the Bush Administration was producing "television news stories, written and paid for by the government, which have the appearance of legitimate news segments delivered by independent reporters," and distributing them to local newscasts as a way of promoting administration policies – including its ill-conceived Medicare prescription drug law. On the broadcasts, a public relations professional named Karen Ryan pretended to be a reporter. Among the stations which aired the administration propaganda as news: WPGH in Pittsburgh "the Sinclair Broadcasting station that fired much of its news staff in favor of feeds from a centralized newsroom in Baltimore."
SINCLAIR REQUIRES JOURNALISTS TO READ PRO-BUSH STATEMENTS: In September 2001, Sinclair Broadcasting required its affiliates to air messages "conveying full support" for the Bush administration. At a Baltimore affiliate, WBFF "officials required news and sports anchors, even a weather forecaster, to read the messages, "which included statements such as " wants you to know that we stand 100% behind our President." Several WBFF staffers objected on the grounds that reading the statements would "erode their reputations as objective journalists" because it made them appear to be "endorsing specific government actions."
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Sinclair's Gasbag
http://www.pnionline.com/dnblog/extra/archives/000857.html You may have heard of Sinclair Broadcast Group recently. They're the right-wing TV station owners who refused to air ABC's "Nightline" when it showed the images of American soldiers killed in Iraq. (Their CEO, David Smith, also has an odd way of showing his support for family values, but that's not really relevant, is it?)
Now Smith's hatchet man, Mark Hyman, is the source of the newest far-right attack against John Kerry's record in Vietnam. Get this: Hyman is attacking Kerry because he had the termerity to shoot and kill a Viet Cong guerrilla who'd been firing on the young lieutenant's fellow American troops.
Defend American lives -- how dare he! The fact that Kerry's military superiors saw fit to award him one of our highest medals, the Silver Star, isn't important. Nor is the fact that -- as the after-action report on the February 1969 incident clearly states -- Kerry's boat was under heavy small arms fire and nearly stuck by a rocket.
Never mind that at the very moment Kerry was under a deadly assault, a young George W. Bush was half the world away, training for the coveted National Guard gig he got with the help of his congressman Daddy's rich friends.
..more...
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List Of Political Donations of Sinclair Board and Staff
(major donations to the Republican party)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=1498443&mesg_id=1498443&page=------------------
employee list and compensation info
http://www.edgar-online.com/lycos/quotecom/people/companypeople.asp?cik=912752------------------
The Directors and Officers of Sinclair Broadcast Group
and, other misc. background info
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/912752/000110465904009785/a04-4166_1def14a.htm#Proposal1 
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