sinclair brdcst 2 bak

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see main

no merri

see newspapers

SEE LOCAL TV mandatory segments pro GOP trump

1219

MMA 6 26

### Sinclair's national programs offer a Trump-friendly spin on his costly oil and gas prices, while local broadcasts show harm to Americans

06/15/26

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NOTE TOM SNYDER ON LOCAL MEDIA

an 11 25

Two powerful groups of media executives very friendly to President Donald Trump are currently embroiled in a fight that puts FCC chair Brendan Carr in an awkward position, reports Politico's John Hendel.

"The nation’s largest TV station owners want Carr’s Federal Communications Commission to loosen the rules that limit how many stations a single company can operate, a goal that many conservatives have been pressing for years," Hendel writes.

These owners, however, have a "formidable opponent in Trump confidant Chris Ruddy, the majority owner of Newsmax Media, who wants to keep the rules in place and now appears to be making headway with the president," he explains.

Trump took to Truth Social Sunday to demonstrate that headway, Hendel notes.

"NO EXPANSION OF THE FAKE NEWS NETWORKS,” Trump wrote, "echoing Ruddy’s argument that removing the ownership cap would hurt conservatives," Hendel explains.

“If anything, make them SMALLER!” Trump added.

Carr, Hendel writes, "has shown a knack for disruptive, MAGA-pleasing culture-war moves, like his public upbraiding of comedian Jimmy Kimmel and accusing '60 Minutes' of being unfriendly to conservatives," but now he's conflicted.

"Carr has signaled he may want to change the 21-year-old limit on TV station ownership, which was intended to prevent any one broadcaster from too much power over what Americans see on television," Hendel explains. "Loosening the ownership rule would allow right-leaning companies like Sinclair Broadcast Group to expand."

Large TV station owners are hitting a growth limit, Hendel writes, so "a larger cap would give more power to station owners — seen by many conservatives as an ideological counterweight to the mainstream national networks that control TV programming."

Newsmax's Ruddy, however, is standing in the way, Hendel says.

"Ruddy is trying to block any change, arguing that the cap — which limits a broadcaster’s reach to 39 percent of U.S. households — preserves the right market balance between TV broadcasters and cable outlets, and allows a greater mix of voices," he writes.

“It’s not going to work,” Ruddy tells Politico. "The president doesn’t want this, and so I have no doubt that he will not support the FCC going to extraordinary but potentially illegal lengths.”

Joining Ruddy is Charles Herring, president of the pro-Trump One America News Network (OANN) cable channel, who, Hendel writes, "shares a marketplace wariness of TV station owners gobbling up too much power."

“Independent [and] diverse voices will disappear,” wrote Herring in an X post.

Under Trump, this has turned "into a political tug-of-war and an influence battle between big names on the right," Hendel says.

Former Trump press secretary Sean Spicer recently wrote an op-ed in right-wing outlet The Daily Caller in which he argued that Carr should lift the cap.

“Conservatives who believe in free enterprise should not be vocally encouraging Big Brother to continue barring broadcast TV companies like Sinclair and Nexstar from competing in the free market,” argued Spicer, a contributor to Nexstar’s cable network NewsNation.

Nexstar, Hendel notes, is "trying to usher through a $6.2 billion deal to buy rival station owner Tegna, a merger that would only be possible if Carr relaxes the cap. The new company would operate 265 TV stations, reaching more than half the country."

Ruddy, however, says "that the FCC is working to go against the interests of the president and his supporters — and really against most consumers.”

“We have a history of big companies going in and giving conservative think tanks money to do reports and stand on issues,” Ruddy adds “And it’s not working.”

Through all this, Trump "is being pulled in both directions on an issue he cares a great deal about: what’s on television," he writes.

“If this would also allow the Radical Left Networks to ‘enlarge,’ I would not be happy,” Trump wrote.

"That will likely give broadcasters and their conservative allies room to try to counter Ruddy’s narrative — and some are already casting the issue accordingly," Hendel explains.

On Monday, Nexstar said that "Americans want more access to local news and a variety of voices without the filter of the coastal elites."

For now, the person truly stuck in the middle is Carr.

"Carr’s path to lifting the cap is uncertain, and his own staff say they’re likely to end up in court over the issue. Detractors don’t even believe the agency has the authority to unleash this consolidation at all, saying it’s a matter for Congress," Hendel says.

"We haven’t made a final decision there yet,” Carr told Politico on Nov. 18. “I continue to be very open minded.”

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--> FASCISM

an 9 25

In an article for Salonpublished Sunday, the outlet’s executive editor, Andrew O’Hehir, argues that Americans have been given a harsh reminder: Democracy isn’t guaranteed, and beyond merely consenting to be governed, citizens must take an active role to defend it.

He warned that many of the formal institutions, especially the U.S. Constitution, are showing signs of decay, undermined “from within” by what he sees as encroaching authoritarianism.

O'Hehir writes that the confrontation over late-night host Jimmy Kimmel’s show is presented not as just a media squabble, but a test case.

"Jimmy Kimmel’s cancellation is a test case, designed to measure the breadth and power of the accelerating authoritarian coup now underway in America," he said.

Late-night comedy and other cultural institutions become battlegrounds, in part because they sit at the intersection of public opinion, dissent, and broad reach, he noted.

IFrame Content

O’Hehir added that large media companies, many now under oligarchic ownership or dominated by finance capital and big tech, are becoming more reliant on those in power.

"The MAGA assault on late-night comedy — which is doubly vulnerable, as both a fading cultural institution and the veritable definition of First Amendment-protected speech — represents a kind of pincer movement, bringing together multiple overlapping fascist tendencies," he wrote.

"On one hand, we see the consolidation of mainstream media companies, now increasingly under the oligarchic control of Big Tech and finance capital, and increasingly dependent on the corrupt Trump regime to approve their corrupt cartel-building mergers and acquisitions. On the other, we see the regime’s undisguised campaign to restrict and punish dissent, and to redefine 'free speech' as a conditional benefit conferred only on its most loyal grovelers and forelock-tuggers, and subject to revocation at any time.

He cited Sinclair and Nexstar as examples of companies that pushed against Kimmel, seemingly aligning with Trump-friendly narratives.

The editor argued that many of the pillars of democracy — courts, civil service, justice departments, regulatory agencies — are weakened, co-opted, or acting as enforcers of the regime rather than checks upon it.

"The Supreme Court has given Trump free rein, the FBI and Justice Department have become his enforcers, the civil service has been co-opted and subverted, the public health agencies have been conquered by moonbats and Republican state legislatures are doing their best to rig the midterm elections. As [Bill] Curry puts it, leaders at white-shoe law firms, elite universities and major foundations have repeatedly surrendered without a shot, revealing themselves as 'traitors, cowards, rank opportunists or simply inept.'"

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an 9 25

see hayes on ellison tiktok fcc etc brendan carr on benny j nextstar

Jimmy Kimmel drew the wrath of Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Brendan Carr in response to the late-night host's comments on the murder of MAGA activist and Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk and the suspect in his shooting: 22-year-old Utah resident Tyler Robinson.

Kimmel argued that the suspect was part of the MAGA movement, not a leftist as President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance and others on the far right are saying. The late-night host never condoned the killing in any way, but rather, argued that the suspect had a MAGA ideology rather than a leftist ideology.

Disney, in response, suspended Kimmel's show indefinitely.

Now, according to Daily Beast reporter Cameron James, "America's largest ABC affiliate group," Sinclair, is saying that Kimmel must make a "meaningful personal donation" to Kirk's family.

"Media giant Sinclair also wants the comedian to 'issue a direct apology' to Kirk's family, claiming his suspension is not enough," James reports in an article published on September 18. "Kimmel has been suspended in a wave of MAGA anger, disguised as grief and decency, over comments made by the TV star about the murdered right-wing activist. Sinclair also announced they will air a tribute to Kirk in Kimmel’s Friday-night timeslot this week, and are offering the special to all ABC affiliates to air over the weekend."

IFrame Content

James adds, "Sinclair's Vice Chairman Jason Smith called Kimmel's comments on Kirk 'inappropriate and deeply insensitive at a critical moment for our country.'"

In an official statement released on September 17, Sinclair said it "will not lift the suspension of 'Jimmy Kimmel Live' on our stations until formal discussions are held with ABC regarding the network's commitment to professionalism and accountability."

*Read the full Daily Beast article at this link (subscription required).

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### Sinclair joins the Trump administration’s much-criticized attempt to link Tylenol use during pregnancy to autism

09/25/25 3:06 PM EDT

mma

Sinclair Broadcast Group’s The National Desk is spreading misinformation about immigration and the CBP One app

A Sinclair anchor reported that U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s CBP One app increased illegal immigration when the program does the complete opposite

Written by Chloe Simon & Pete Tsipis

Published 10/30/24

During an October 29 segment on The National Desk about the “number of illegal migrant crossings” during President Joe Biden’s administration, Sinclair Broadcast Group’s Jan Jeffcoat misleadingly reported that the migrants who used the CBP One app should be included in that number.

Previously, on October 25, apparently referring to encounters and apprehensions at the border, Jeffcoat claimed that “we're learning as many as 14 million illegal migrants entered the U.S. in the past four years,” mentioning that this number “excludes the 1.3 million migrants who used Biden-Harris parole programs,” of whom at least 420,000 used the CBP One app. Repeat guest Mark Morgan, a senior fellow with the extremist anti-immigration group Federation for American Immigration Reform, also appeared on The National Desk on October 15, claiming that the Biden administration had “unlawfully used an app” to “actually make it easier for individuals that should not enter the country to be able to enter the country.”

Sinclair’s attempts to correlate usage of the CBP One app with increased illegal immigration are not based in reality.

Since its launch in 2020, the CBP One app has been a tool for the Department of Homeland Security to identify and track asylum-seekers while allowing them to apply for humanitarian parole. The American Immigration Council describes the app as being for “migrants arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border seeking asylum at a port of entry,” as well as being for “Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans seeking to secure travel authorization.”

The app allows “noncitizens without appropriate documents for admission who seek to travel to the United States through certain southwest border land ports of entry (POEs) the ability to submit information through a module within the application instead of coming directly to wait at a POE”. Nevertheless, only a small portion of users have been admitted as asylum seekers into the U.S. While there have been over 64 million applications submitted through the app, only “813,000 individuals” had “successfully scheduled appointments to present at ports of entry” using CBP One, as of August 2024.

NBC News has reported that the app has been helpful to those on the border, quoting Texas pastor Abraham Barberi, who claimed the app has “contributed to the decline” in illegal entries. Barberi said, “I think now people think, ‘Well, I don’t have to go all the way to the border, I don’t have to cross the river illegally.'” Forbes also noted that immigration analysts have credited “the ability to use the CBP One app” in helping “reduce unlawful migration from Haiti.”

Video

CitationFrom the October 29, 2024, edition of Sinclair Broadcasting Group's The National Desk

JAN JEFFCOAT (ANCHOR): A new analysis found the number of illegal migrant crossings is 25% higher than what the Biden-Harris administration has said publicly. The Telegraph reporting data by Customs and Border Protection showing 7.15 million tried to enter the U.S. since Biden and Harris took office, but that does not include gotaways, which add another 1.8 million, bringing the total to roughly nine million. And that does not include, they say, the migrants who've used the CBP One app or parole programs. The Telegraph writing, "Critics accused the White House of attempting to 'launder' migration figures and deliberately misrepresent its record on border security."

Anti-immigration extremist continues to spread debunked lies on Sinclair's local TV stations

02/24/21

### Sinclair Broadcast Group is justifying Republicans' despicable migrant flights

09/27/22

### A year of misinformation on Sinclair's morning show The National Desk

01/19/22

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JUDD POP INFO YMAIL 7 24

Eugene Ramirez, the lead anchor of Sinclair's national evening news broadcast, resigned in January over concerns about the accuracy and right-wing bias of the content he was required to present on air, three sources told Popular Information. The sources — one current and two former Sinclair employees — spoke to Popular Information on the condition of anonymity, citing concerns about the potential professional repercussions of speaking out about Sinclair's editorial processes. Ramirez's show, which continues to air with a new host, appears on at least 70 of the hundreds of local television affiliates owned by Sinclair.

One of the primary issues that prompted Ramirez's resignation was the requirement to include at least three stories produced by Sinclair's Rapid Response Team (RRT) on a nightly basis. Sinclair's RRT is a group of four reporters who work out of Sinclair's national headquarters in Maryland. The group's output is prodigious. A Popular Information review found that between January 1 and July 4 this year, the RRT published at least 775 stories.

Most of the RRT's stories are short and aggregate information from other sources. Sinclair publicly claims that the RRT and other components of its national newsgathering operation, known as The National Desk, provide a "comprehensive, commentary-free look of the most impactful news of the day." But a look at the RRT's stories over the course of the year shows that the group frequently produces pieces that have more in common with right-wing agitprop than journalism.

Often, the articles summarize press releases or social media posts from Republican politicians or other right-wing groups. Recent headlines include:

53 parent groups confront Biden education secretary over new Title IX rules: 'Disgraceful'

GOP senator says Fetterman proves how 'radical' Dems have become on Israel: 'Nuts'

Trump PAC launches new ad hitting Democrats on border: 'Joe Biden does nothing'

Biden mocked by US Oil and Gas Association for touting gas price drops: 'You're welcome'

Elon Musk rips VP Harris for 'lying' about Trump's abortion stance

Through July 4, 2024, the RRT has produced 147 stories this year that portray Democrats in a negative light and just 7 stories that portray Democrats positively. Over that same time period, the RRT has produced 57 stories that portray Republicans positively and 22 that portray Republicans negatively.

Many of the pieces produced by the RRT that do not explicitly mention Republicans or Democrats (or do so only in passing) still promote a right-wing agenda, highlighting stories that portray immigrants or LGBTQ people negatively.

These are the stories that Ramirez was required to present each night. Sinclair's headquarters sent a list of four stories produced by the RRT to the team that produced the evening news broadcast. At least three had to be read on air. One current employee at Sinclair's headquarters described the RRT team as "the right-wing propaganda arm of the national digital operation."

The RRT is run by Julian Baron, a 2021 graduate of Syracuse University. Despite having little professional experience (and none outside of Sinclair), Baron's title is "Chief of Staff for News." In that role, Baron serves as the right-hand man for Scott Livingston, Sinclair's Senior Vice President for News.

According to a fourth source, who currently works at Sinclair's headquarters, Baron and the RRT are also responsible for creating the "Question of the Day," which around 200 Sinclair affiliates are required to include in their broadcasts. (The questions appear on Sinclair's website without a byline.) Recent questions include:

Are you concerned violent criminals are crossing the border?

Do you think former House Speaker Pelosi deserves some of the blame for Jan. 6 riot?

Do you think some of President Biden's family members broke the law in their business dealings?

Do you think the Veterans Administration should be involved in health care coverage for illegal immigrants?

Do you think the FBI is protecting the Biden family?

The reporters on the RRT team who work under Baron are Jackson Walker, Ray Lewis, and Kristina Watrobski. Walker was hired by Sinclair less than two months after graduating from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in May 2023. Walker spent his college years writing for The College Fix, a national right-wing student publication. On X, Walker frequently highlights when his stories are circulated by Libs of TikTok, an anti-LGBTQ activist. Walker retweeted a post by Libs of TikTok that highlighted one of his articles and described the LGBTQ community as a "child mutilation cult."

Lewis is a 2023 graduate of Rutgers University. Prior to joining Sinclair, he was an intern at the New York Post, a right-wing tabloid owned by Rupert Murdoch. Watrobski is a 2020 graduate of SUNY Plattsburgh and previously worked for a Sinclair affiliate in Albany.

Baron, according to three sources, has the authority to assign and publish RRT articles without any editorial oversight. In addition to appearing on the evening news broadcasts, RRT's articles are automatically syndicated to hundreds of local news outlets, where they are given the imprimatur of mainstream media brands, including NBC, ABC, and CBS. According to two of the sources who spoke to Popular Information, this frequently caused rancor among the news staff of Sinclair affiliates, who were concerned about the posting of biased or inaccurate content on their websites.

Sinclair defended Baron's work but acknowledged that local affiliates have objected to stories produced by the RRT on numerous occasions. "The Rapid Response Team has published several thousand stories," Sinclair spokesperson Jessica Bellucci told Popular Information. "On perhaps one or two dozen occasions we have gotten questions from a station about those stories and had a healthy dialogue – sometimes leading to the stories being changed."

Despite confirming the conflict between the RRT and local affiliates — and other aspects of Popular Information's reporting — Bellucci also told Popular Information that "the statements made in your email are flatly untrue." She suggested that Popular Information may be "misinforming us about having sources" and was only pursuing the story "in pursuit of your sixteenth minute of internet acclaim." Bellucci accused Popular Information of "attacking our reporters for doing their job, reporting on stories that may be unpopular."

The only specific statement Bellucci disputed was the characterization that Baron and the RRT work "outside of the normal editorial process." Bellucci did not dispute that the Baron and the RRT team operate independently. Asked to clarify what other aspects of Popular Information's reporting, if any, are "untrue," Bellucci did not respond.

Don't interrupt them

According to the sources who discussed Sinclair's editorial process on the condition of anonymity, reading stories produced by the RRT was not the only issue that made Ramirez's role in the evening broadcast untenable. Sinclair's national leadership frequently booked guests from far-right groups, including Moms for Liberty and the Heritage Foundation. When Ramirez challenged the dubious claims made by these guests, he was admonished and instructed not to interrupt them. Sinclair's leadership, including Livingston, emphasized that many of Sinclair's affiliates were not in big cities, and the content of the broadcast had to reflect the sensitivities of those viewers. Representatives of progressive groups were almost never booked as guests.

The evening broadcast was also required to include "packages" produced by Sinclair's Washington, D.C., bureau. Some of these packages had a strong right-wing bias or made unsubstantiated claims. Of particular concern were packages by Sinclair National Correspondent Kayla Gaskins. For example, after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank in March 2023, Gaskins produced a piece questioning whether the bank was "too 'woke' to function."

This package featured an interview with Bernie Marcus, the co-founder of Home Depot, who said the bank's downfall was the result of "[n]ot hiring the brightest people but hiring people based on what they look like or where they fall on the social register" and were too busy "playing the woke game" to head off problems. Marcus presented no evidence to support his claims.

The piece also featured Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R-FL) and Congressman James Comer (R-KY) making similarly unsubstantiated claims, clipped from Fox News, blaming the bank's collapse on "woke" politics or DEI initiatives. After featuring on-camera comments by Marcus, DeSantis, and Comer, Gaskin notes in the last five seconds of the piece that Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) blamed former President Donald Trump's deregulatory policies.

Another piece by Gaskin in April 2023 falsely claimed that "children in Washington state will soon not need their parents' permission to switch genders." But legislation, which became law in July 2023, is limited to homeless youth, and "doesn’t change the state’s medical consent laws." In Washington state, "those under age 18 don’t generally have the right to make medical decisions without parental consent."

The law deals exclusively with parental notification when a young person arrives at a homeless shelter. Previously, the shelter was generally required to notify parents within 72 hours. Under the new law, when a young person is seeking reproductive or gender-affirming care, the shelter has the option of instead contacting "the state Department of Children, Youth and Families, which could then attempt to reunify the family if feasible." The purpose of the law is to encourage vulnerable homeless youth, who may be estranged from their parents, to obtain shelter rather than living on the street.

Gaskin's piece uncritically quotes Landon Starbuck, president of the anti-LGBTQ group Freedom Forever, claiming the "state is stepping in and medically kidnapping kids from their parents." This echoed a false claim, circulated by Donald Trump Jr. and others online, that the law allowed "the state to TAKE CHILDREN AWAY FROM PARENTS that do not consent to their child’s gender transition surgeries."

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sinclair has 165? local stations, sends mandatory segments, also bALT SUN PAPER

### Nicolle Wallace and Angelo Carusone explain the “particularly insidious” way Sinclair spreads conservative talking points

06/12/24

### On Deadline White House, Angelo Carusone describes how Donald Trump is taking advantage of faulty local media coverage

06/12/24

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y 6 24

why Sinclair attacked me

JUDD LEGUM

JUN 21

Sinclair Broadcast Group is one of the most powerful media organizations in the country. It owns 193 local television affiliates that collectively reach 40% of American households. Over the last two weeks, Popular Information uncovered how Sinclair has exploited its power to push deceptive attacks about President Biden's mental fitness.

On June 11, Popular Information exposed how Sinclair injected specious attacks on Biden's age into dozens of local news broadcasts. Sinclair's piece repackaged a deeply flawed Wall Street Journal story claiming that Biden "shows signs of slipping" in private meetings. The only person quoted on the record to support that thesis was former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA). Popular Information's report included a six-minute video compilation featuring dozens of local Sinclair anchors reading from an identical script. Again and again, local Sinclair anchors are forced to say that concerns about Biden's mental acuity "could be an election decider."

On June 17, Popular Information revealed that Sinclair flooded a vast network of local news websites with misleading articles suggesting that President Biden is mentally unfit for office. The articles are based on specious social media posts by the Republican National Committee, which are then repackaged to resemble news reports. Several of Sinclair's articles promoted an absurd rumor that Biden soiled himself on stage while attending a D-Day celebration in Europe. These thinly disguised political attacks were then syndicated to dozens of local news websites owned by Sinclair, where they were given the imprimatur of mainstream media brands, including NBC, ABC, and CBS.

Popular Information's reporting reached millions of people through this newsletter, on social media, cable television, and numerous national media outlets. Sinclair was not pleased. The company issued a lengthy statement calling our reporting "outrageous and offensive."

We call it "accurate."

But despite Sinclair's protestations, the company appears to be making changes. This week, Sinclair paused its attacks on Biden and published a story acknowledging that Trump has "his own problems stumbling over words and mixing up dates."

===

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ymail 6 24

two outlets controlled by right-wing media tycoons are working in tandem to aggressively push specious claims about President Joe Biden's fitness for office to millions of Americans.

On June 4, the Wall Street Journal published a 3,000-word article questioning Biden's mental acuity. The Wall Street Journal is owned by News Corp, the media conglomerate founded by right-wing billionaire Rupert Murdoch. He stepped down as chairman of the company last year, assuming the role of chairman emeritus. At the time of his retirement, Murdoch promised to continue to be "engaged daily with news and ideas" at the company. (News Corp is now chaired by Rupert Murdoch's son, Lachlan.)

The Wall Street Journal article, headlined “Behind Closed Doors, Biden Shows Signs of Sipping,” boasts that it is based on "interviews with more than 45 people over several months." But only one person is quoted on the record supporting the thesis of the piece: Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA). “I used to meet with him when he was vice president. I’d go to his house,” McCarthy told the Wall Street Journal. “He’s not the same person.”

Relying on McCarthy as the lynchpin of the article is problematic. First, McCarthy is not a neutral observer. He is a partisan Republican interested in inflicting political damage on Biden. Further, what McCarthy told the Wall Street Journal about Biden is directly contradicted by comments that McCarthy said previously — both publicly and privately. In the article, McCarthy criticizes Biden's performance in debt ceiling negotiations in 2023. But in March 2023, while these negotiations were underway, the New York Times reported that "McCarthy has told allies that he has found Mr. Biden to be mentally sharp in meetings." McCarthy made similar comments about Biden in public, praising Biden as "[v]ery professional, very smart" and "[v]ery tough at the same time." In October, when McCarthy was ousted as House Speaker, Politico reported that McCarthy "mocked Biden’s age and mental acuity in public, while privately telling allies that he found the president sharp and substantive in their conversations."

The rest of the piece is based on anonymous Republican criticism of Biden. For example, "according to six people," during a meeting with current House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), Biden "said a recent policy change by his administration that jeopardizes some big energy projects was just a study." But the new policy, which involved a pause on new liquified natural gas terminals, involved a study of "the impacts of LNG exports on energy costs, America’s energy security, and our environment."

Other anonymous criticism from Republicans is even flimsier. For example, during a January 2024 meeting on Ukraine, unnamed Republicans criticized Biden for consulting notes, speaking softly, and taking ten minutes before the meeting started to personally greet attendees. Several Democrats provided the Wall Street Journal with on-the-record quotes about their impressions of Biden — including Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), Senator Jack Reed (D-RI), Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Senator Chris Coons (D-DE), and Governor Roy Cooper (D-NC) — but none of them were included in the piece.

[twt]

The Wall Street Journal piece was panned by independent media critics. CNN's Oliver Darcy said the Wall Street Journal piece had "glaring problems." In Poynter, Tom Jones wrote that it was not a "fairly reported story" because it relied exclusively on "quotes and opinions from those who don’t want to see Biden elected to a second term."

Nevertheless, the Wall Street Journal piece was repackaged by Sinclair Broadcast Group and beamed into the homes of millions of Americans. Sinclair, which is controlled by right-wing media mogul David Smith, owns or operates 185 local television stations across 86 markets.

Sinclair repackaged the Wall Street Journal story through its centralized news team, known as The National Desk. The segment was then pushed to dozens of local news stations owned by Sinclair. Local anchors introduced the piece by reading from a nearly identical script. Again and again, the anchors say that the Wall Street Journal is "out with new reporting calling into question the mental fitness of President Joe Biden," adding that the issue "could be an election decider." Watch:

[vid?]

The segment itself, by national correspondent Matthew Galka, describes the Wall Street Journal article as "damaging" and casts it as an authoritative look at Biden's mental capabilities. Galka also quotes Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI), who asserts that Biden is "mentally declining," adding that "[i]t’s sad to see that in any human being." (Galka also describes comments by Congressman Jim Costa (D-CA), who believes Biden is "sharp.")

A 2018 study published in the American Political Science Review found that stations purchased by Sinclair increase "coverage of national politics at the expense of local politics" and undergo "a significant rightward shift in the ideological slant of coverage."

Delivering right-wing attacks on Biden's mental fitness under the guise of "local news" is an extremely powerful tactic. While many Americans are distrustful of the national media, 71% believe that local news is accurate, including 78% of Democrats and 66% of Republicans.

[grf tabl]

This is not the first time Sinclair has exploited Americans' trust in local news to boost Republicans politically. In 2016, the Trump campaign provided Sinclair stations with extensive access to Trump in exchange for friendly coverage that did not include fact-checking. "We are here to deliver your message," Smith told Trump in a 2016 meeting. In 2017, Sinclair hired Boris Epshteyn, who previously served as a Trump advisor and surrogate, as its Chief Political Analyst. Sinclair stations were required to run Epshteyn's political commentary. "The American people demand change, and they demand action, and that’s exactly what they’ll get from this administration going forward," Epshteyn declared in one piece. In 2018, anchors at Sinclair affiliates were forced to read a script warning views about "fake stories" being published by other media outlets "to push their own personal bias and agenda." The argument mirrored then-president Donald Trump's criticism of the media.

In addition to running Sinclair, Smith has used his vast wealth to support a variety of far-right causes. The Baltimore Banner reports that since 2015, Smith, through his family foundation, has donated large sums to Young Americans for Liberty ($581,000), Project Veritas ($536,000), Turning Point USA ($150,000), and Moms for Liberty ($121,000).

Meanwhile, News Corp’s cable news properties, Fox News and Fox Business, also helped launder the Wall Street Journal’s attacks on Biden into the news cycle. According to transcript searches, the WSJ piece’s core claim that Biden is “slipping” was brought up at least 64 times on air on Fox News and Fox Business from when the article was published until yesterday afternoon. Online, the WSJ piece has been the focus of at least 15 articles on Fox News’ website, with many of them treating its dubious claims about Biden’s decline as a demonstrated fact.

The WSJ piece has also been a regular topic of conversation on CNN and MSNBC, where the claim about Biden “slipping” was discussed at least 28 times between the article’s publication and Monday afternoon. One of the article’s two authors, Siobhan Hughes, was interviewed on CNN on June 5. When pressed by anchor Boris Sanchez to explain McCarthy’s differing statements about Biden’s mental acuity, Hughes dismissed McCarthy’s praise for Biden as something he had to do “tactically because he had to get along with President Biden at a time when the country was at risk of a debt default.” But she wasn’t asked to address the likelihood that McCarthy is being equally tactical in denigrating Biden now that it’s politically advantageous for him.

aaron rupar

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jrnl fail punk shill

San Fransicko author Michael Shellenberger laid out a plan to attack the scientific consensus behind gender-affirming care. Some mainstream outlets took the bait.

04/03/24

4 24 mma

Newsweek, The Washington Post, and two of the largest TV station owners in the US fell prey to a PR campaign by anti-trans activists pushing to expand conservative states’ bans

Special PROGRAMSLGBTQ

WRITTEN BY MIA GINGERICH

PUBLISHED 04/03/24

Networks owned by the largest local TV station owners in the U.S., and mainstream outlets including The Washington Post and Newsweek, recently amplified a deeply flawed report by anti-trans activists. The outlets also failed to fact-check its misinformation or provide context for the extremists behind it.

The report was covered widely by anti-trans figures and outlets, and some Republican state legislators are already using the report to call for expanding restrictions on gender-affirming care.

On March 4, anti-woke blogger and former California gubernatorial candidate Michael Shellenberger announced the release of “The WPATH Files,” a collection of leaked forum posts from an internal message board for members of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health. The group is the leading body providing clinical guidance for medical professionals on gender-affirming care, and a frequent target of anti-trans activists.

The report included a loose collection of out-of-context clinical observations paired with inaccurate and editorialized commentary. An independent review from medical news outlet STAT described claims made in the report as false and oversimplified.

Specifically, as discussed by journalist and researcher Erin Reed, the report cites research that comes either from biased sources or is well over a decade old, with newer research refuting the claims. The report makes verifiably false claims about gender-affirming care and the commonality of detransition. Leaked material is inaccurately characterized throughout the report, and at other times, the content was presented without context, allowing readers to misinterpret what was said in the chat logs.

The report was of behind-the-scenes collaboration between Shellenberger and Genspect, an anti-trans activist group that promotes conversion therapy and bans on transition care for adults. The report’s analysis was written by Mia Hughes, who has an extensive history as an anti-trans writer and acted as a spokesperson for an organization that supports conversion therapy for trans youth.

“The WPATH Files” are a part of a larger strategy by anti-trans extremists to push for broad gender-affirming care bans in blue states

Genspect has shadowed WPATH’s annual conference for the past few years, running its own conference in conjunction and promoting its anti-trans rhetoric to WPATH membership.

Last year, Genspect’s conference featured talks from far-right extremists including James Lindsay — who helped popularize on social media the practice of falsely accusing LGBTQ people of “grooming” — alongside mainstay anti-trans activists like Colin Wright and Chloe Cole.

The conference also featured figures more closely associated with other fringe movements targeting established science, such as anti-vaccine activist Heather Heying and Shellenberger, best known for his skepticism and misinformation around climate science.

Shellenberger, whose most recent book San Fransicko targets progressive policy on homelessness with a similar reliance on misleading and inaccurate information, laid out his plan in a speech at that conference (which Genspect has since on YouTube).

“The name of my talk is ‘How WPATH ends,’” Shellenberger began, “and the idea here is that the obstacle is the opportunity, so when we think about the things that are getting in the way of us providing the care that people need rather than the care that they’re getting, let's think of that obstacle as the thing that's going to help us to achieve our goal.”

Shellenberger framed trans identity as one of a series of “foundational woke ideologies” alongside efforts to combat climate change and oppose racism. He also asserted repeatedly that trans identity is a mental illness, that gender-affirming care is comparable to lobotomies (a common right-wing trope), and that gender dysphoria is something that is being created and not “a natural thing.”

Shellenberger stated that he wants to end access to all gender-affirming surgeries and that he wants to use the report to target those “who are running for president, who are governors of major liberal states, because the conservatives, the Republican states, are just sort of — it’s happening,” seemingly referring to the sort of gender-affirming care bans in place in many conservative states.

Video

CitationFrom the first day of Genspect's "A Bigger Picture" conference held in Denver, Colorado, streamed on YouTube on November 4, 2023.

At the conference, Shellenberger also introduced the tool with which he hoped to accomplish these goals: the WPATH Files. He described the “obstacle” to which he alluded at the start of his talk, namely that WPATH’s credibility as a professional association replete with a peer-reviewed journal and scientific literature gave it enough authority for major medical organizations like the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics to follow its guidelines on supporting gender-affirming care.

“When WPATH ends,” Shellenberger said, “the basis for these medical mistreatments must come to an end as well.”

Shellenberger said he wants to use his report to earn coverage in news outlets “that think that everybody in this room [at the Genspect conference] is a transphobe,” which he said he hopes will help bring about the end of WPATH and access to gender-affirming care broadly, including by convincing Democrats that gender-affirming care is unscientific — an assertion that goes against a wealth of actual research.

The nation’s largest TV station owner gave the activists behind the report an uncritical platform to push misinformation

Shellenberger’s strategy of targeting outlets outside the far-right appeared to gain some traction, first with NewsNation, which ran an “exclusive” on the report.

NewsNation is the cable network for Nexstar, the largest owner of TV stations in the U.S., covering 68% of households. Launched in 2021, NewsNation billed itself as a supposedly centrist alternative to other cable networks, with Nexstar describing it as “the destination for fact-based, unbiased news.”

Prior to publishing the report on X, Shellenberger gave an interview to NewsNation’s *Elizabeth Vargas Reports

Video

CitationFrom the March 4, 2024, edition of NewsNation's Elizabeth Vargas Reports

During his interview, Shellenberger shifted from calling for an end to all gender-affirming care for trans youth to asserting that “the people that are getting these treatments must understand what’s happening to them,” claiming that “the files show very clearly that that’s not what’s happening.”

Video

CitationFrom the March 4, 2024, edition of NewsNation's Elizabeth Vargas Reports

The show also interviewed Mia Hughes, describing her simply as the “author of the report” but failing to disclose her long track record as an anti-trans writer and activist. Hughes characterized gender-affirming care as causing sterility, a piece of misinformation often repeated by anti-trans campaigners.

The outlet also interviewed Julia Mason, a pediatrician who belongs to the fringe Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine. Mason’s group is working to pass anti-trans legislation and its flawed research has been used to justify Texas’ order declaring gender-affirming care child abuse, but the network’s correspondent identified her simply as a “pediatrician in Oregon who has been sounding the alarm on medical transition of minors for years.”

Along with failing to disclose its guests’ background, NewsNation provided no pushback to the claims made in the report or by its authors. The only voice of dissent was a short quote from WPATH President Marci Bowers read by the correspondent at the end of the segment.

This is not the first time Elizabeth Vargas Reports has jumped on shaky claims from biased sources to target trans rights. The show aired similarly uncritical coverage of contested claims about gender-affirming care that were made against a St. Louis hospital last year.

As the report gained traction in other outlets outside the right, coverage failed to provide context or pushback to the Shellenberger’s report

Sinclair, the nation’s fourth largest TV network conglomerate, published an article uncritically quoting the report (with one quote from WPATH) and interviewing Shellenberger through its own program, The National Desk. Sinclair also used its immense roster of local news outlets to distribute the article to websites for local news stations, including affiliates of ABC, CBS, and NBC.

The article ends by focusing on changes WPATH made to its standards of care two years ago, which were widely mischaracterized by right-wing media to attack the organization.

Newsweek also reported on the report, publishing an article titled “Transgender Hormone Drugs Linked to Cancer” — a headline so misleading it prompted condemnation from the National LGBT Cancer Network.

Additionally, Megan McArdle, a columnist for The Washington Post who previously used a biased anti-trans source to call for compromise between the rights of trans youth and the extremists targeting them, dedicated her March 8 column to Shellenberger’s report.

Following coverage of the report, WPATH’s website was the victim of a ransomware attack, and Shellenberger took the opportunity to announce “victory” and claim the organization had removed the latest standards of care from its website, suggesting his report was responsible. He removed his triumphant posts after his claims were shown to be false.

San Fransicko author Michael Shellenberger laid out a plan to attack the scientific consensus behind gender-affirming care. Some mainstream outlets took the bait.

04/03/24

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Major US newspapers and broadcast TV news outlets often failed to report on Jim Jordan’s role in undermining the 2020 election – and ignored the risk to certification in 2024 if he becomes speaker | Media Matters for America

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david D. Smith, the executive chairman of Sinclair Broadcast Group (Sinclair), purchased the Baltimore Sun — the largest newspaper in Maryland — for an undisclosed sum. The acquisition means another powerful media outlet will be under the control of a wealthy conservative businessman with a history of using local media outlets to push an ideological agenda.

Smith is the son of Sinclair founder Julian Sinclair Smith and, along with his brothers, controls the company. Sinclair, a publicly traded company, owns or operates 185 local television stations across 86 markets. A 2018 study published in the American Political Science Review found that stations purchased by Sinclair "coverage of national politics at the expense of local politics" and undergo "a significant rightward shift in the ideological slant of coverage."

Sinclair regularly requires its local affiliates to run segments pushing right-wing talking points. In 2018, Sinclair affiliates were required to have local anchors read a script warning views about "fake stories" being published by other media outlets "to push their own personal bias and agenda." The trend was described as "extremely dangerous to a democracy." The argument, which included no actual examples, matched then-president Donald Trump's rhetoric about the media.

When Sinclair faced criticism for puppeteering its local anchors, Trump defended the company. "So funny to watch Fake News Networks, among the most dishonest groups of people I have ever dealt with, criticize Sinclair Broadcasting for being biased," Trump said. "Sinclair is far superior to CNN and even more Fake NBC, which is a total joke."

Sinclair stations were also required to run political commentary from Boris Epshteyn, who previously served as a Trump advisor and surrogate. Sinclair hired Epshteyn as its chief political analyst. Epshteyn's segments for Sinclair were mostly indistinguishable from his work for the Trump campaign. "The American people demand change, and they demand action, and that’s exactly what they’ll get from this administration going forward," Epshteyn declared in one piece.

Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law and advisor, said that in 2016, the Trump campaign provided Sinclair stations with extensive access to Trump in exchange for friendly coverage that did not include fact-checking. "We are here to deliver your message," Smith told Trump in a 2016 meeting. Sinclair executives denied there was anything unusual or unethical about its dealings with the Trump campaign. Sinclair affiliates have also promoted right-wing conspiracy theories, including claims that DNC staffer Seth Rich was murdered by a hitman as payback for sharing sensitive emails to Wikileaks.

The history of using Sinclair-owned stations to push a right-wing agenda predates Trump. In 2004, "Sinclair ordered its stations to broadcast an hour-long documentary — preempting prime-time programming — titled Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal that blamed Democratic nominee John Kerry for the torture of American prisoners of war in Vietnam."

In an interview with the Baltimore Sun, Smith defended Sinclair's news coverage "as balanced and apolitical." According to Smith, Sinclair is "not perfect" but overall is "much better than a lot of folk."

Smith, not Sinclair, is purchasing the Baltimore Sun — although that may be a distinction without a difference. Smith said, "he envisions opportunities for partnerships between The Sun and Sinclair, such as promoting each other’s stories, and other synergies in the future."

The checkered history of Smith's right-hand man

Smith did not purchase the Baltimore Sun alone. He brought along one partner: Armstrong Williams, a right-wing pundit and operative.

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:{:{Williams has his own syndicated show on Sinclair stations. His social media accounts are full of incendiary statements about Democrats and liberals. "Each day Joe Biden has sat in office, we have gotten closer and closer to a fascist communist nation," Armstrong wrote on January 10. On January 5, he accused Biden of "destroy[ing] American democracy."}:

On December 19, Armstrong decried "the real time consequences of being infiltrated by radical left-wingers and the acceptance of their insane political agendas." (The issue was the Pope slightly softening his stance on same-sex marriages.) On December 6, Armstrong called Biden "a senile senior citizen" who "barely knows right from left." Armstrong also called the prosecutors pursuing cases against Trump as "terrorists" and promoted false narratives and conspiracy theories about the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.}:

Armstrong served as an advisor to former presidential candidate and Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson. He claims to have paid for Justice Clarence Thomas' wedding reception. In 2005, Armstrong lost his syndicated column after it was revealed that he had been paid $240,000 by the George W. Bush administration to promote their signature education initiative, No Child Left Behind.

Follow the money

Smith has used his vast wealth to support a variety of far-right causes. The Baltimore Banner reports that since 2015, Smith, through his family foundation, has donated large sums to Young Americans for Liberty ($581,000), Project Veritas ($536,000), Turning Point USA ($150,000), and Moms for Liberty ($121,000).

Smith does not support Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott (D), and has sought to recruit opponents to unseat him. Sinclair stations have provided highly favorable coverage to former Mayor Shelia Dixon (D), who is running against Scott this year. Armstrong conducted an interview with Dixon on a Sinclair affiliate last summer that consisted mostly of "praise for Dixon and criticism of current elected officials."

In 2022, Smith backed a successful ballot initiative to impose term limits on Baltimore's elected officials. Currently, Smith is "underwriting Renew Baltimore, a ballot drive to cap and lower the property tax rate."

Now, Smith has a new tool in his arsenal to shape Baltimore's politics: the city's paper of record.

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https://www.mediamatters.org/sinclair-broadcast-group/sinclair-owned-nashville-station-pushed-right-wing-narratives-response

https://www.mediamatters.org/sinclair-broadcast-group/sinclair-broadcast-group-justifying-republicans-despicable-migrant-flights

https://www.mediamatters.org/networks-and-outlets/sinclair-broadcast-group-inc

https://www.mediamatters.org/research/2018/07/13/comprehensive-guide-relationship-between-sinclair-broadcast-group-and-trump-administration/220646

https://www.commondreams.org/tag/sinclair-broadcasting

consistent vxr?

https://www.mediamatters.org/sinclair-broadcast-group/sinclair-broadcast-group-recklessly-allows-sen-ron-johnson-spread-more

https://www.mediamatters.org/sinclair-broadcast-group/sinclair-broadcast-group-report-people-act-whitewashed-gops-nationwide

https://www.mediamatters.org/sinclair-broadcast-group/sinclair-infrastructure-coverage-centers-corporate-front-groups-pushing

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Sinclair Broadcast Group has in recent days aired misleading criticism of President Joe Biden’s infrastructure proposals from organizations that are corporate front groups or push an anti-spending austerity agenda. But the facts and commentary from economists and other experts show that much of this criticism is disingenuous.

Sinclair sought commentary from pro-austerity organizations funded by corporations and right-wing donors

On March 30, Sinclair’s morning program The National Desk -- which airs on 68 Sinclair-owned or -operated local television stations -- interviewed Manhattan Institute senior fellow Brian Riedl, who opposed spending trillions of dollars on infrastructure and was critical of including spending to combat climate change. Anchor Jan Jeffcoat chose not to disclose the Manhattan Institute’s funding from the fossil fuel industry and other corporate interests.

Greenpeace has tallied more than $3 million in donations from Koch foundations to the Manhattan Institute between 1997 and 2017.
The Manhattan Institute received millions of dollars from oil interests, including at least $800,000 from ExxonMobil and $1.9 million from the Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation, which was one of the family foundations of the oil billionaire Koch brothers.
The Manhattan Institute employed a senior fellow named Robert Bryce who used his perch often to publicly question the reality of climate change.

Also on March 30, Sinclair chief political correspondent Scott Thuman included commentary in his report from Elaine Parker, chief communications officer of the Job Creators Network, which aired on dozens of Sinclair TV stationsbefore re-airing on The National Desk the next morning. Thuman failed to disclose that Job Creators Network is a conservative organization and a corporate front group for wealthy donors.

According to Sludge, a news outlet that reports on lobbying and money in politics, the Job Creators Network is “a front group for the interests of wealthy business executives. The nonprofit is linked to and funded by several wealthy corporate leaders who are also Republican political megadonors and oppose workers’ rights, including collective bargaining.”
Eyes on the Ties, which advocates for more transparency in how corporate power shapes policy, published in 2019 an article titled “The billionaire Trump donors behind the ‘Job Creators Network.’” It listed the right-wing Mercer family, Trump donor Bernie Marcus, and conservative billionaire Philip Anschutz as major donors to the organization. It also described the Job Creators Network as “part of a network of other astroturf groups that all fight tooth-and-nail to defend elite interests against progressive efforts to regulate corporate power.”

On April 1, Sinclair national correspondent James Rosen included commentary from Adam Posen of the Peterson Institute for International Economics in his report on Biden’s infrastructure plan, which also aired on dozens of Sinclair stations before re-airing on The National Desk. But Rosen failed to mention the pro-austerity nature of the organization and its namesake.

Peter G. Peterson, who founded the institute, had a long history of supporting austerity. In 2013, an editorial from The Nation explored Peterson’s Campaign to Fix the Debt, which it described as a “$60 million push to sell corporate America’s ruthless austerity agenda” and his “latest incarnation” of a “long campaign to get Congress and the White House to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid while providing tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy.”
As the Center for Media and Democracy’s PRWatch reported in 2013, economists employed by the institute authored an error-riddled study that was used by governments around the world to justify harmful spending cuts and high unemployment.

These pro-corporate Sinclair guests’ commentary on Biden’s infrastructure bill was misleading or lacked full context

The Manhattan Institute’s Brian Riedl claimed the price tag for Biden’s infrastructure plan is “just too big” to pay for and that Biden’s plan to rate the corporate tax rate from 21% to 28% “would return us to the highest corporate tax rate in the OECD,” referring to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. He also said: “The bill will simply not be paid for. Like a lot of what we’ve had with the stimulus, a lot of it's just going to go on the national credit card. So whether you think the infrastructure is helpful or not helpful, it’s probably going to be paid for mostly on the national debt if it’s enacted.” But Riedl’s comments are misleading at best and flat-out wrong at worst.

Biden’s planned increase of the corporate tax rate to 28% will keep the U.S. corporate tax rate below numerous other OECD countries, including Australia, France, and Portugal.
Federal revenue from corporations is near record lows according to data from the Tax Policy Center.
A new report from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy explained that “at least 55 of the largest corporations in America paid no federal corporate income taxes in their most recent fiscal year despite enjoying substantial pretax profits in the United States. This continues a decades-long trend of corporate tax avoidance by the biggest U.S. corporations.”
The White House said that the proposed corporate tax increases would, over the course of 15 years, fully pay for the proposed spending.
Even if the spending were fully deficit-financed, economists say that the current fiscal environment makes that acceptable. Jason Furman, former chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said: “Given that interest rates are still too low … $2T in *unpaid for* well-designed investments, some temporary, would be beneficial. As such I don't think this should all or even mostly be paid for.” Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman argued that in the fiscal environment the U.S. is facing, “sustained deficit spending on investment is actually good.”

Job Creators Network’s Elaine Parker hid the context of the business tax deduction she warned about removing when she said: “This is actually going to hit right at the heart of small businesses with that repeal of that 20% tax deduction. … That is the very tax deduction that helps the smallest of the small businesses, the heart of the middle class, and the employees who work for them.”

Parker didn’t specify what tax deduction she was talking about, but it appears to be one that didn’t exist until Trump’s tax cut, which mostly benefited corporations and the wealthy. CNBC’s reporting suggested many business owners were not even aware of the tax deduction until recently.
CNBC’s reporting also explained that tax deduction was temporary and is currently set to expire in 2025.

And the Peterson Institute’s Adam Posen left out necessary context when he warned: “This is the first truly credible inflation threat in decades.” But senior economists have pushed back against this kind of fearmongering over inflation.

As Business Insider reported, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said in a February speech that “inflation has been much lower and more stable over the past three decades than in earlier times.”
San Francisco Federal Reserve President Mary Daly told Axios that Biden’s infrastructure plan is unlikely to lead to what Axios termed “out-of-control price increases.”
Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz also told Axios he supported Biden’s infrastructure proposal. Axios summed up Sitglitz’s view as that the plan “could break the U.S. out of the low-growth, low-inflation environment that has existed for the past 20 years.”

Economists and other experts agree Biden’s infrastructure spending plan is needed and beneficial

The fact is, massive investments in infrastructure are badly needed. An April 2 New York Times article explained: “Roadways and bridges are still in use decades after the end of their projected life spans. Sewer and water systems are aged and decaying. And a changing climate threatens to worsen old vulnerabilities and expose new ones.”

Reuters reported that the American Society of Civil Engineers said that “surface transportation, water systems, and schools are the most in need of help,” and that the U.S. “needs to spend $2.59 trillion in the next 10 years to fix existing infrastructure.” Biden’s infrastructure plan includes money for both existing and new infrastructure, such as energy and housing.

Economists from financial analysis firms have predicted that Biden’s infrastructure plan will create millions of jobs over a period of several years. Axios reported that S&P Global “predicts Biden's infrastructure plan will create 2.3 million jobs by 2024” and “raise per-capita income by $2,400.” And as USA Today reported, Moody’s Analytics expects Biden’s infrastructure plan to be more beneficial in the long term:

Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics, says the projects won't begin in earnest until 2023. He expects the economy to grow just 1.3% from the fourth quarter of 2021 to the fourth quarter of 2022, with the Biden plan adding nothing to the gains.

…

Over a longer period, Biden’s plan would be a big positive, economists say. Zandi expects it to add about half a percentage point to growth in 2023 and 1.6 percentage points the following year. The blueprint, he reckons, would add about 1.4 million jobs in 2024 and 1 million jobs in 2025.

By 2030, the economy would be about $700 billion, or nearly 3%, larger than it would be without the upgrades and an additional 2.7 million Americans would be working, Moody's figures show.

https://www.mediamatters.org/sinclair-broadcast-group/sinclair-pushes-unlikely-claims-bidens-proposed-corporate-tax-increases

1/21 mma

As Biden takes climate action. Fox News and Sinclair respond with lies

Some of President Joe Biden's first actions were in response to climate change -- like rejoining the Paris accords and canceling the Keystone XL Pipeline once and for all. Fox News responded to Biden's executive actions by hosting climate deniers and climate "contrarians." One Fox host declaredthat climate activists just want to "fight the weather." Contrary to claims aired on Fox, taking action on climate change will create jobs.

It wasn't just Fox. Sinclair Broadcasting also aired claims on local news stations across the country that canceling the Keystone XL Pipeline would destroy jobs. Longtime readers will remember these accusations being debunked repeatedly, but they've again gained steam on the right in the early days of the Biden administration, with some inflating the number to tens of thousands of jobs. The actual number is a few hundred jobs to construct the pipeline, and a few dozen to maintain it after that; the number is dwarfed by the number of clean energy jobs that already exist, much less ones that could exist with further investment. Additionally, the jobs number doesn't take into account the risks of oil spills or threats to drinking water. For instance, the already-existing Keystone Pipeline (that is, the non-XL version) has already seen at least 21 oil spills and leaks.

https://www.mediamatters.org/sinclair-broadcast-group/sinclairs-new-commentary-free-national-news-program-broadcasts-dangerous

covid fail

Sinclair's Eric Bolling has promoted COVID-19 vaccine misinformation numerous times

01/08/21 9:42 AM EST

Sinclair Broadcast Group investigative reporter James Rosen

Sinclair gives pro-Trump insurrectionists a pass by broadcasting lie that “far-left infiltrators” attacked the Capitol

01/07/21 12:57 PM EST

Sinclair Broadcast Group's coverage of the coronavirus pandemic

How Sinclair Broadcast Group is spreading dangerous coronavirus misinformation to local television news audiences

07/27/20 2:12 PM EDT

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president posts 2-year-old supercut of Sinclair anchors 'parroting Trump talking points' to complain 'freedom of the press is gone'

https://www.mediamatters.org/sinclair-broadcast-group/sinclair-about-air-steve-bannon-peddling-discredited-voting-fraud-theory

Nearly two weeks after former Trump administration adviser Steve Bannon called for the beheadings of Dr. Anthony Fauci and FBI Director Christopher Wray, Sinclair’s Eric Bolling invited him on his program to peddle election conspiracy theories and a Trump campaign plot to discard the results of the 2020 presidential election. During the interview, Bolling failed to mention Bannon’s ghastly call for violence.

Bolling’s interview with Bannon has been available for streaming on the websites of multiple Sinclair-owned or -operated stations since Wednesday evening, and his program America This Week typically airs on several dozen Sinclair stations over the weekend. During this interview, which has not yet aired on Sinclair’s network of local TV stations, Bolling invited Bannon to elaborate on conspiracy theories related to Dominion Voting Systems, whose voting machines were used in several locations.

BOLLING (HOST): Dominion voting machines, it seems to be a big issue. We've had Sidney Powell on, who claims that she knows for a fact that there's a back door into the Dominion voting machines, and that it may be -- able to be not only hacked, but alter the outcome of already cast ballots. Do you know anything? What do you know?

STEVE BANNON (FORMER TRUMP CHIEF STRATEGIST): Well, here’s what I do know is the state of Texas has a report out where they rejected, on every level, the Dominion system. And they did that I think nine months ago. ThisDominion systems -- we talked to technology people, there are many questions about this, about the software, the interoperability, and about this back door having access to it.

So I think you are going to start to see -- now you got to be able to prove all that. It just can't be, you know, some sort of thing you're putting together. But I think Sidney Powelland other team of lawyers and technology people are working that right now. That's why I think you’re going to see many more lawsuits coming up about the way this was held, what systems they used, and about the anomalies in these numbers. So I think they're even -- the more intense lawsuits and the parties in those lawsuits are all about, are gonna be in the next couple of days.

To be clear, these claims that Bolling and Bannon are commenting on are deranged, false, and were debunked approximately a week before the interview was streamed. A tweet from Trump expressing the conspiracy theory both in more detail and in all caps apparently spurred a response from the Election Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council Executive Committee and the Election Infrastructure Sector Coordinating Council, which said in a joint statement on November 12 that “there is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.” (In response, Trump fired the head of the Department of Homeland Security agency that had released the statement.) Fox News has also been pushing this false conspiracy theory, but Bolling still asked Bannon if the network is “moving away from President Trump.”

Besides that conspiracy theory, they also spent time discussing one of the Trump campaign’s strategies to steal the election by blocking enough state vote certifications so that Biden would fail to reach 270 electoral votes, forcing the House of Representatives to decide the election.

But something which Bolling failed to bring up was Bannon’s comments on November 5 calling for Dr. Anthony Fauci and FBI Director Christopher Wray to be beheaded and their heads to be put “on pikes … at the two corners of the White House as a warning to federal bureaucrats.” A teaser for the interview indirectly referenced Bannon's call for violence, but Bolling failed to mention it during the conversation.

After Bannon made his comments about Fauci, Twitter permanently banned him from the platform -- which Bannon complained about during the interview without mentioning why it happened. But it seems for Sinclair, such violent commentary bears no consequences and you can still get a platform to spread conspiracy theories to local TV stations.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/media-bias/

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It is an enduring belief that the vast majority of U.S. media are "liberal" or "leftist." This is a powerful myth, used by the political right to convince citizens that a secular, urban elite pushes a leftist agenda on the nation via television, newspapers and Internet. This notion wasn't invented by Trump. But Trump has, more than any other president, leveraged that pre-existing distrust and taken it to new depths. As we watch Trump openly fight democracy post-election, it is worth considering how this myth is perpetuated, even internationally.

As an American and an academic who studies the media, I have, of course, followed Swedish media coverage of the U.S. elections. And, as someone invited to comment on those elections in Swedish media, I was even part of that coverage. During my consumption and participation, it struck me that it was often taken as a fact by Swedish journalists that a large part of the U.S. media landscape is dominated by what is defined as a "liberal/left" media, and that a large portion of "mainstream media" in the U.S. were partisan in their opposition to Trump.

This is a misleading, decontextualized position.

The attempt by Trump to undermine the U.S. electoral system leans heavily upon convincing his supporters that media analyses of his attacks are "fake" because "The Media" are a biased, leftist monolith. Legitimizing this myth only serves the interests of those opposed to the critical analysis of current events in the United States. And, it undermines critical analysis of allforms of power, including when Democrats hold that power.

So, let's start with the elephant in the room. Fox News is the most popular news channel in the U.S.. Fox News isn't the rebel outsider. It is the mainstream. In 2019, Fox was the top-rated basic cable network in total viewers with 2.57 million: 50% higher than MSNBC and 2.5 times higher than CNN. In 2019, Fox had its highest-rated primetime in history, averaging 2.5 million viewers; and, the Fox News program Hannity was the top-rated program in cable news for the third year in a row.

But, if you think Fox is one response to an overwhelmingly liberal/left US media ecosystem, think again. In a 2019 study conducted by Pew, 16% of respondents said local TV news was the "most common" place for receiving political election news. (The percentage saying print was their most common source? 3%.) SinclairBroadcast Group, with 193 local channels reaching 40% of the population, is the second-largest local TV station owner in the U.S. (and the largest owner of FOX and ABC affiliate stations). Sinclair has earned a reputation for aggressively pushing right-wing content. From 2017–19, Sinclair forced its channels to air "must-run segments," including commentaries by former Trump senior advisor Boris Epshteyn, which stations were required to air 9 times a week. A 2019 study in the American Political Science Review on the impact of Sinclair purchasing local stations concluded that such purchases resulted in, "a significant rightward shift in the ideological slant of coverage" on those channels.

How about radio? Of the 15 most popular talk radio showsin the U.S., twelve have Conservative/Libertarian hosts, with top shows pulling up to 15 million listeners per week. Then there are social media platforms. A common complaint from the political right is that social media platforms "censor" conservative content. Yet, in October 2020, the month before the election, *Fox News* material on Facebook received 76 million "interactions" (reactions, shares, comments): more than the combinedtotal for CNN, NBC, the New York Times, NPR, MSNBC, the Washington Post and the New York Post. The far-right site Breitbart, recognized as a steady supplier of disinformation, received more interactions (45 million) than the total for CNN, the New York Times and Washington Post (38 million).

The liberal/leftist media as a myth is shown in more than just conservative ownership or content. CNN, for example, actively cheered the occupation and destruction of Iraq led by Republican George W. Bush. In an analysis conducted by Pew of the news content of 52 U.S. mainstream outlets between 2007–2012, coverage of poverty in the U.S. (a nation with tens of millions living in poverty) accounted for less than 1% of all news space. Multiple studies over the years have shown that local and national news has emphasized crimes committed by African-Americans, while downplaying white or police violence.

And, a 2017 study out of Harvard, analyzing the content of mainstream outlets before the 2016 elections, found that coverage of the Clinton e-mail "scandal" accounted for more sentences of coverage (65,000) than all of Trump's scandals combined (40,000). This, despite the fact that Trump had, for example, been accused of corruption within the Trump Foundation and Trump University, had made Islamophobic commentsand bragged about grabbing women by their genitalia.

By repeating the "liberal" U.S. media argument, journalists—including in Sweden–legitimize a myth upon which a great deal of division and disinformation is constructed. Many outside of the U.S. still see CNN, the New York Times, and the Washington Post as typical of U.S. media, with Fox News as the "outsider." That's a problem. Fox News is a powerhouse in U.S. news, while newspapers such as the New York Times and Washington Post—yes, agenda setters for the elite—have nowhere near the same influence among ordinary Americans. As I have addressed, conservative influence is found in a large portion of the U.S. news media that shape U.S. public opinion: cable television, local television, radio and online news. And, while newspapers may endorse Democratic candidates or critique Trump, their coverage of U.S. society over the decades has been a long way from progressive, and their influence a fraction of other media.

Ignoring this simply leads to shallow, decontextualized analysis of U.S. politics and society.

This piece is an English-language contribution to a rapid-response publication on the US elections by more than 70 academics working in Sweden. The collection, "Stjärnspäckat — reflektioner från amerikanska presidentvalet," edited by Niklas Bolin, Kajsa Falasca, Marie Grusell and Lars Nord, is open access and can be downloaded here.

Christian Christensen, American in Sweden, is Professor of Journalism at Stockholm University. Follow him on Twitter: @ChrChristensen

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

:{sinclair’s Trump town hall spread dangerous COVID-19 misinformation:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:

:{:(style="box-sizing:border-box;display:flex;height:1.5em;margin-right:1em;width:1.5em"):}:10/22/20 12:53 PM EDT

===

mma 1020

in the months leading up to the election, Sinclair’s James Rosen has pushed pro-Trump messaging in at least 18 national news segments

10/16/20

===

:{sinclair stations set to air Eric Bolling monologue claiming masks and lockdown precautions do not help slow the spread of COVID-19:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:

10/15/20 4:33 PM EDT

:{how Sinclair Broadcast Group is spreading dangerous coronavirus misinformation to local television news audiences:(style="box-sizing:border-box;font-weight:normal"):}:

07/27/20 2:12 PM EDT

https://www.mediamatters.org/voter-fraud-and-suppression/cbs-report-mail-voting-was-missing-key-details-making-it-easy-target

also sinclair

https://www.mediamatters.org/sinclair-broadcast-group/least-six-sinclair-national-segments-didnt-mention-trumps-sabotage-postal

https://www.mediamatters.org/sinclair-broadcast-group/sinclair-spread-trumps-lie-downplaying-harm-covid-19-states-record

720

:{Sinclair interviews Trump with softballs, gives him a platform to attack his presidential opponent with false claims:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:

07/02/20 3:27 PM EDT

oops not stay at home but

https://www.mediamatters.org/coronavirus-covid-19/downplaying-risk-death-sinclair-ran-national-segment-promoting

5/24/grab

https://www.mediamatters.org/

Coronavirus and Fox News:

Trump watching Fox News amid pandemic

Timeline: How Trump’s Fox News fixation shaped the federal coronavirus response

05/07/20 11:52 AM EDT

Fox & Friends advertises protests against social distancing 4/18/20

Promotion, praise, and a ton of coverage: How Fox News embraced protests against coronavirus safety measures

04/20/20 6:22 PM EDT

laura-ingraham-what-trump-needs-to-do-control-narrative-testing-04-21-2020.jpg

Fox News spins to “control the narrative” of Trump's failures on coronavirus testing

04/22/20 2:14 PM EDT

Hannity 4/9/20

Sean Hannity’s astounding coronavirus hypocrisy

04/10/20 2:22 PM EDT

Fox News interviews Arizona sheriff who won't enforce social distancing orders

Fox is cheering on rogue sheriffs linked to a pro-militia group

05/07/20 1:56 PM EDT

Sean Hannity

Six different polls show how Fox’s coronavirus coverage endangered its viewers

04/09/20 1:28 PM EDT

Sean Hannity defends Trump's outburst against reporter who asked him what he would say to frightened Americans

How Fox’s Sean Hannity has downplayed the coronavirus pandemic in America

04/01/20 1:17 PM EDT

Laura-Ingraham-Attack-Seth-Rich-Family.png

Laura Ingraham's coronavirus coverage has been a cesspool of misinformation — and a danger to public health

05/08/20 7:08 AM EDT

Ebola Trump

Fox News' coronavirus coverage stands in stark contrast to its coverage of Ebola in 2014

03/10/20 11:51 AM EDT

Coronavirus and right-wing media:

hugh-hewitt-mitchmcconnell-interview-states-bankruptcy-04-22-2020.jpg

Led by Hugh Hewitt, right-wing media cheer for states to file “bankruptcy” from coronavirus as a chance to cut public pensions

04/24/20 5:36 PM EDT

fake-news-radio-1.png

Across the country, right-wing talk radio hosts promote local protests against stay-at-home orders

04/24/20 10:27 AM EDT

rush-limbaugh-coronavirus-deaths-04-07-2020.jpg

Coronavirus deaths are being undercounted. Rush Limbaugh continues to allege the opposite.

04/07/20 5:18 PM EDT

Coronavirus social media

A Bill Gates coronavirus conspiracy theory spread on social media and to right-wing media figures

04/08/20 12:13 PM EDT

Dr. Anthony Fauci

Pro-Trump media have ramped up attacks against Dr. Anthony Fauci

03/24/20 2:21 PM EDT

Coronavirus COVID-19

Right-wing media figures spread “empty hospitals" theory to downplay the threat of coronavirus

03/30/20 2:58 PM EDT

Chanel Rion OAN

Pro-Trump OAN pushes wild conspiracy theory that novel coronavirus was created in a North Carolina lab

03/18/20 11:26 AM EDT

Bryan Fischer

American Family Association is lying about coronavirus on its evangelical radio network

03/25/20 4:48 PM EDT

Facebook

The Daily Wire and The Western Journal use Facebook page networks to spread right-wing spin about coronavirus

03/25/20 4:08 PM EDT

Coronavirus and mainstream media:

Sinclair Broadcast Group has a history of putting right-wing lies into local broadcasts. That's exactly what's happened with the novel coronavirus. Sinclair aired at least four segments in five days that pushed disinformation about the American COVID-19 response and failed to include important information. The lapses included reports leaving out warnings from health experts about states reopening too early, misrepresenting a discredited conservative author's organization as a “government watchdog,” and dishonestly defending President Donald Trump’s boasts about successful testing and America’s death toll, which has already surpassed the worst estimate Trump mentioned less than two weeks ago. These segments aired on dozens of stations in dozens of states.

Also: On his Sinclair show, former Fox host Eric Bolling has repeatedly pushed conspiracy theoriesabout the pandemic. During his Sinclair show on March 11, Bolling also repeatedly suggested that media outlets were exaggerating the potential dangers of coronavirus. During that show, Bolling scoffed at the possibility that 50,000 Americans could die from COVID-19. Bolling has also floated other conspiracy theories -- like that the virus could be a biological weapon meant to hurt the United States. Bolling has also floated conspiracy theories about the death count.

Diamond and Silk take the fall for Fox’s irresponsible coronavirus coverage...

oddly fired in middle of impeachment?!

Sinclair Broadcasting Group has dropped Boris Epshteyn as a commentator.

Over the past several years, Epshteyn has featured in right-wing propaganda “news” segments that Sinclair forced its local stations around the country to air.

Prior to working for Sinclair, Epsteyn was an aide to Donald Trump in the White House. Not surprisingly, Epshteyn used his segments to directly advocate for Republican policies, defend the president from attacks, and give softball interviews to officials in the Trump administration.

Since 2017, Media Matters’ Pamela Vogel has watched all of Epshteyn’s “must-run” segments and pointed out his worst moments, often prompting media coverage of the right-wing propaganda. We compiled some of the worst moments here.

Also: No one has tracked Sinclair more than Vogel. She examined what its propaganda will look like post-Epshteyn.

ref

https://www.mediamatters.org/boris-epshteyn/sinclairs-right-wing-propaganda-will-outlast-boris-epshteyn

After subjecting the American public to more than two years of near-daily pro-Trump commentary that ranged from morally appalling to just aggressively tepid, Sinclair Broadcast Group is reportedly relegating chief political commentator Boris Epshteyn to the sales department. As a researcher who’s tracked every one of his segments, I’m relieved -- but also worried about what's to come.

Epshteyn has been the deeply uncharismatic face of the right-wing local news giant since the spring of 2017, when he began regularly producing right-wing political commentary that Sinclair sent out as “must-run” segments to its local news stations across the country. But on December 11, NBC News reported that Sinclair was ending Epshteyn’s commentary segments, along with those from liberal commentator Ameshia Cross. Their final segments will air today, and Epshteyn will reportedly transition to a role in “sales.”

Since June 2017, I have been engaging in a task I would never wish on another human being: I have watched every single “Bottom Line with Boris” segment he’s ever narrated for Sinclair. (As of publishing, there have been at least 603 and one more to go.) I’ve written dozens of posts about this person and the horrifying things he’s said in defense of Trump.

And here is my bottom line: Epshteyn is a cheap knock-off with no charisma -- and, more important, he’s a bully.

Epshteyn joined Sinclair fresh off a stint in the Trump administration and, before that, on the presidential campaign. He was a Trump spokesperson who reportedly terrorized the nation’s green rooms off-camera, and he’s a personal friend of the president’s adult sons. A few months after Epshteyn started his new role at Sinclair, HBO’s John Oliver memorably him as “a rejected extra from The Sopranosin a J.C. Penney tie whose voice sounds like Sylvester Stallone with a mouthful of bees.”

Seventy-five percent of his segments were so utterly boring I couldn’t get through a single 90-second clip without accidentally zoning out and having to rewatch it. But the other 25% were completely depraved. He is most well-known to the general public as the talking head who defended the tear-gassing of migrants at the southern border, dismissed the cruelty of separating children from their parents and holding them in cages in camps, and implied that child rape is a major consequence of illegal immigration.

I’m elated to no longer have to watch him every day. And I’m significantly more elated that the millions of people who are just trying to catch the traffic report or some local sports updates aren’t going to have to see it anymore either.

But I’m also not optimistic at all -- because bullies stick together. And Sinclair is also a bully.

The company infamously cuts corners, in all senses of the word. It is known for abusing regulatory loopholes to buy up more and more local news stations, and then taking the stations over and cutting local anchors with close community relationships. Local journalists face a difficult choice if Sinclair takes control of their station: They can stay and fight through the corporate cuts and the “must-runs” or they can leave quietly and re-enter a market dominated by other Sinclair jobs. Some have been subjected to unusually restrictive contract clauses limiting their ability to find new work; some have even been sued by their former employer, which brings in more than $3 billion in annual revenue.

Its owners’ support for conservative causes didn’t begin with Epshteyn and won’t end with him, either. Sinclair has a long history of openly engaging with right-wing politics and, of course, it’s a giant corporation that would benefit from deregulatory policies supported by the right. And the Smiths -- the family that founded and owns Sinclair -- have thrown some of their financial support to particularly notorious Republicans, like racist criminal Joe Arpaio and Rep. Greg Gianforte (R-MT), who physically assaulted a reporter just days before receiving the donation.

In keeping with the myriad ways conservative politics overlap with xenophobia and racism, Sinclair has shown no signs of slowing down its anti-Muslim fearmongering “Terrorism Alert Desk” segments. Sinclair also suggested in its announcement about Epshteyn and Cross that the company will be making room for more local investigative reporting instead, like their Seattle station’s highly problematic special programming on homelessness in the city.

Sinclair also still employs other right-wing thugs: namely, former Trump adviser Sebastian Gorka and former Fox News host Eric Bolling. Bolling has been hosting a weekly political show for Sinclair since April, and he appears to be the new face of political analysis for the company. He was a host at Fox News until 2017, when he left amid reports he sent unsolicited images of genitalia to multiple co-workers. (When this was first reported, he threatened the reporter with a lawsuit, too, in a classic bullying move.)

On his Sinclair show, Bolling has given friendly interviews to seemingly every member of the Trump administration including the president himself, some more than once. He’s also hosted a gamut of right-wing grifters and conspiracy theorists, including his “friend” Alex Jones, who currently faces a lawsuit because of his claims that the deaths of 26 young children and school employees in the 2012 Sandy Hook mass shooting were a hoax.

Boris Epshteyn was merely one convenient indicator of the sum total of Sinclair’s toxic, bullying behavior. And I haven’t even mentioned the single most enraging aspect of it all, which won’t change one iota with the end of his commentary segments: Sinclair is bullying you. Sinclair is bullying us all.

From the start, what made the Sinclair beat most appealing to me at Media Matters was the layers of nefariousness. Much of its nationally produced news programming is as conservative as Fox News, but it’s also highly dishonest in a structural way, and with an arguably even more personal cost.

The whole reason this $3 billion company has grown and thrived for so long is because it flew under the radar. No one is tuning into their local news stations and seeing a Sinclair logo on the screen, and it’s even harder to trace the company to the dozens of stations it operates via legal agreements because it’s not technically allowed to own them at all. Like a lot of local news, what actually airs on many Sinclair-controlled stations is also a black box; it’s difficult to track the content of so many newscasts on smaller stations in any systematic way.

All of these factors swirl together to underpin Sinclair’s greatest bullying tactic of all: exploiting everyone’s trust in their local news. At least when you watch Fox or One America News or listen to Rush Limbaugh, you know what you’re signing up for. Sinclair, on the other hand, is banking on being able to surprise you by slipping in some conservative talking points between weather and community news, just as the local anchors you know and trust cut to commercial break. It’s fundamentally unethical behavior that damages media credibility as a whole, and it’s a cowardly and disrespectful way to treat your audience.

Sinclair leadership mandated these segments in the first place, of course, because they knew no one would voluntarily choose to hear Epshteyn’s garbage of the day. It’s scary because they clearly didn’t care about what they owe their viewers as stewards of our public airwaves.

But what scares me even more is what lessons they may have learned. Bullies don’t usually just give up randomly one day; sometimes their tactics just change. What if this time around, the propaganda becomes better, more charismatic, less clumsy -- easier to watch but harder to notice?

new

https://www.mediamatters.org/sinclair-broadcast-group/sinclairs-boris-epshteyn-fearmongers-about-undocumented-immigrants-raping

new

mma

Sinclair personalities push anti-impeachment propaganda

10/04/19 11:20 AM EDT

Right-wing media label impeachment inquiry a “coup” driven by Democrats

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/trumps-false-and-dangerous-coup-claim-comes-fox-news-and-conservative-talk-radio

619 bak

tag,?

The Trump Federal Communications Commission is under internal investigation for making rule changes to help Sinclair

In February, The New York Times reported that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) inspector general has opened an internal investigation into potential improper conduct by Trump-appointed FCC chair Ajit Pai and his aides in advocating for deregulatory measures that specifically benefited Sinclair. The investigation began after lawmakers called on the inspector general to investigate a “disturbing pattern of a three way quid-pro-quo,” which could include the following instances:

During the 2016 campaign, Sinclair chairman (and then-CEO) David Smith said he told Trump during a meeting, “We are here to deliver your message. Period.” Trump adviser andson-in-law Jared Kushner also bragged about making a deal with Sinclair, agreeing to give Sinclair more access to Trump as long as interviews were aired without commentary.
Weeks after the election, then-FCC Commissioner Pai met privately with Smith and spoke at a “gathering … of general managers from Sinclair stations.”
The day before Trump’s inauguration in January 2017, Smith, along with Sinclair President Christopher Ripley and Sinclair business partner Armstrong Williams,again met with Pai to discuss relaxing media rules. Pai was named chair of the commission by Trump several days later.
In February 2017, Pai relaxed a rule related to the FCC’s oversight of local TV sharing arrangements for facilities, employees, and services. This was the same rule he’d discussed with Sinclair executives weeks earlier, and Sinclair has a well-documented history of relying on these arrangements to skirt ownership caps.
In April 2017, the FCC reinstated an outdated media ownership rule known as the UHF discount, making room for a new level of local media consolidation at the hands of big media groups like Sinclair. Reinstating this rule means that Sinclair can count the stations it owns and operates in a misleading way so that it technically stays under the designated cap for the number of stations it can own nationwide, even though it far exceeds that cap in practice.
Weeks later, Sinclair announced it was proposing to acquire Tribune Media, a huge local-news merger that wouldn’t have been allowed without the UHF discount in place. The FCC and Trump’s Department of Justice are now the only agencies that need to approve the deal.
In October 2017, the FCC voted to eliminate a rule that required local news stations to maintain offices within the communities they serve, making it easier for Sinclair to consolidate and centralize local news resources as it buys up more stations.
In November 2017, the FCC rolled back rules that limit broadcast station and other media ownership in any given local media market, allowing for Sinclair to more easily own or operate multiple stations -- or merge stations -- in the same local area.

Sinclair’s “chief political analyst” is former Trump aide Boris Epshteyn

In April 2017, Sinclair announced that it had hired Boris Epshteyn to serve as its “chief political analyst,” producing frequent “must-run” commentary segments about political issues that Sinclair requires its local news stations to air. It upped the segments’ frequency months later.

Epshteyn had previously worked in the Trump White House on the communications team, after doing stints on the Trump inaugural committee and on the Trump campaign. Epshteyn also served as a Trump media surrogate throughout the campaign and first days of the Trump presidency. Epshteyn is personal friends with the president’s sons Eric and Donald Jr., and he has been spotted at Trump International Hotel multiple times, including with Don Jr. in June. Epshteyn has returned to the White House several times since his departure, seemingly to attend events as a member of the press. In May 2018, Sinclair hired another Trump campaign and White House alum, Kaelan Dorr, as Epshteyn’s executive political producer. In a June 14 Instagram post, Epshteyn wrote that he and Dorr shared a McDonald’s meal to celebrate Trump’s birthday.

Epshteyn has been producing regular commentary segments, called “Bottom Line With Boris,” for Sinclair for more than a year, and they’re basically pro-Trump propaganda. For a chief political analyst, his takes are notably unoriginal. At best, he regurgitates Trump talking points or touts some vague, imaginary bipartisan ideals that involve being nicer to Trump. At worst, he defends the most absurd, racist things Trump does. Here are some of the more notable arguments Epshteyn has made:

Media are against Trump .
The FBI is also extremely biased against Trump.
The Trump administration’s family separation and child detention policies were overblown by media.
Trump’s taunts to North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un about a “nuclear button” constitute good foreign policy.
Trump’s racist comment about “shithole countries” is mere “salty language” that the media are unnecessarily repeating.
GOP losses in state elections do not reflect poorly on Trump.
More Americans should be like actor Bryan Cranston, who remarked during an interview that people ought to hope Trump succeeds for the good of the country.

Armstrong Williams, a Sinclair-affiliated pundit and Sinclair business partner, has Trump administration ties

Conservative pundit Armstrong Williams hosts a weekly show that airs on the Sinclair-owned News Channel 8 in the D.C. area and is syndicated on other Sinclair local TV stations across the country. Williams also owns several local TV stations through his holding company, Howard Stirk Holdings, which in turn sends business back to Sinclair through operations agreements.
Recently, Politico reported that Sinclair offered to sell three stations to Williams for “just a fraction of the market price.” The stations must be sold in order for Sinclair to nominally comply with current FCC ownership rules. Sinclair will use various legal agreements to skirt the rules and continue operating the stations.
Williams is a close confidant of Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Ben Carson, even doing public relations work on Carson’s behalf while continuing to also work as a media figure. He also served as a Carson presidential campaign adviser while maintaining his weekly hosting duties.
Since 2016, Carson has at least twice on Williams’ TV show -- including for his first televised interview since becoming HUD secretary -- and at least twice on his radio show, which is not affiliated with Sinclair.
About two months after Williams joined Sinclair executives in a meeting with FCC chair Pai in the spring of 2017, Pai made a friendly appearance on Williams’ show.

Trump has given exclusive interviews to Sinclair reporters at least 16 times

During the campaign season, Trump reportedly gave 15 one-on-one interviews to Sinclair local stations or its national bureau, according to The Washington Post. Eleven took place in the final three months of the campaign, often with stations in swing states. Sinclair reporters also conducted 10 exclusive interviews with his running mate, Vice President Mike Pence, and 10 more with Trump surrogates, “primarily Ben Carson.”
Trump granted three of these exclusive interviews to Sharyl Attkisson for her weekly national Sinclair show Full Measure. Attkisson is a right-wing conspiracy theorist hired by Sinclair in 2015, and Trump was her first guest when the show premiered. Subsequent interviews aired in April, right before the Wisconsin primaries, and in September.
In November 2017, Trump again sat down for an interview with Attkisson. In it he made several demonstrably false claims without any challenge and again attacked “fake” media.

Six members of the Trump administration and Trump’s personal lawyer have all made friendly appearances on the Sinclair segment “Bottom Line With Boris”

Epshteyn’s “Bottom Line With Boris” segments have also been a frequent media safe space for the Trump inner circle. In addition to a softball interview with Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, Sinclair has aired embarrassingly friendly segments with at least six administration officials:

Trump, administration officials, and others in the Trump orbit have promoted Sinclair and its content

Several media figures affiliated with the Trump campaign, Trump administration, or Republican Party have promoted Epshteyn’s must-run content. This includes Trump campaign spokesperson Katrina Pierson, former Trump communications aide Jason Miller (several times), GOP Chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel, GOP spokesperson Kayleigh McEnany, former Speaker of the House (and Trump ally) Newt Gingrich, and former President George W. Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer.
In May, the White House compiled positive news clips touting the nomination of veteran torturer Gina Haspel as CIA director. The press clip list included a quote from Epshteyn’s “Bottom Line” segmentarguing Haspel was “as qualified as it gets.”
In April, Trump defended Sinclair amid criticism of its decision to mandate that local anchors read scripted promotional segments attacking the “irresponsible, one-sided stories plaguing our country.” The president tweeted that Sinclair was “far superior to CNN and even more Fake NBC.”

Are there Sinclair stations near you?

Media Matters has identified communities that will see competitive congressional midterm races and that have Sinclair-owned or -operated news stations. Many Sinclair stations are already airing national news programming with a conservative slant, and they will be ramping up coverage of their local races.

We’ve already tackled Nevada, Tennessee, New York, Florida, Virginia, and Ohio. Now, we’re taking a look at California.

Use Media Matters’ interactive map at FindSinclair.com to learn more.

https://www.alternet.org/watch-surreal-sinclair-broadcasting-town-hall-goes-rails-discussion-youth-and-morality

...Sinclair Broadcast Group station WJLA hosted a “town hall” discussion on "youth & morality" featuring morally bankrupt media personality Armstrong Williams, young conservative talking heads Charlie Kirk and Candace Owens, a campus carry activist, and a Daily Caller reporter (among others) -- and Sinclair wants you to believe it’s for the public good.

The town hall was branded as both an episode of Sinclair-linked commentator Armstrong Williams’ show and a part of Sinclair’s ongoing town hall discussion series. The town hall does not appear to have yet aired on WJLA and it’s not clear if it has aired or will air on the WJLA-operated local Washington, D.C., cable channel News Channel 8, but it’s posted in full on WJLA’s website.

Sinclair touts its “Your Voice, Your Future” local town halls as a public service and an opportunity to “alert, inform, empower and engage our audience.” Here’s a quick clip to give you an idea of how that wen

...

https://www.alternet.org/media/reporter-suri-crowe-told-truth-about-climate-change-so-right-wing-sinclair-broadcasting-showed

Buzzfeed has the story of Suri Crowe, a Virginia reporter who dared to tell the truth about the human cause behind climate change. After her report aired, Crowe was criticized by management and ordered to “balance” her reporting.

In one 2015 instance, the former news director of WSET-TV in Lynchburg, Virginia, Len Stevens, criticized reporter Suri Crowe because she “clearly laid out the argument that human activities cause global warming, but had nothing from the side that questions the science behind such claims and points to more natural causes for such warming.”

The truth is that the groups questioning the science behind such claims have no science to back them up. What they have is a network of “institutes” that consist of nothing but publicity offices funded by fossil fuel companies. Many of them from one single source.

Peabody Energy, America’s biggest coal mining company,has funded at least two dozen groups that cast doubt on man made climate change and oppose environment regulations, analysis by the Guardian reveals.

Crowe bravely, and correctly, replied that there was no need to provide balance by including false information in her reporting. Which resulted in a demand that she include the views of that notable expert, Donald Trump, who was not even the Republican nominee at that point.

Crowe told BuzzFeed News that before the October 2015 climate change segment aired, she was ordered by Stevens to include Donald Trump’s opinion on the matter.

Eventually, Crowe was forced to read the “balanced” view on-air, including the Trump-favored lies. And after that, she was fired.

Climate change wasn’t the only reporting done by Crowe were she ruffled the feathers at Sinclair. But in her mind, the story she reported was simply factual, with no reason to inject unsupported opinions.

A veteran reporter who has worked at news stations in Texas and Virginia, Crowe said she viewed the story as environmental — not two-sided or political. “I was always covering the flu. I don’t remember a time when for balance I went out to a group of 20 people who are nutjobs that say flu shots kill,” she told BuzzFeed News. The scientific consensus is that climate change is real and humans are largely to blame, but Crowe ultimately read the updated, “balanced” script on air. “That was the moment where I realized how things were going to go there,” she said.

But Crowe didn’t appreciate the level to which, in Trumplandia, there are no non-political reports. Even reports about the fluare political.Crowe’s real problem was that she wasn’t a beginner. While new reporters rolled over to SInclair’s demands and apparently didn’t know that management handing down edicts on how stories to be reported was unusual, Crowe had worked in multiple markets for several years and had the strange idea that her job was to report the truth.

Crowe, for her part, battled with her bosses over political and nonpolitical issues. Younger reporters counted Lynchburg as a “starter” market, but Crowe’s colleagues said she was an outspoken, experienced journalist who wanted to do nationally minded stories. She clashed with management, former employees said, particularly over what exactly constitutes balanced coverage.

Management came down on Crowe for correctly reporting polls showing that most people in Virginia favored more restrictions on gun sales. But had no objections to a story reporting on new pro-gun legislation. All of the “balance” Crowe was asked to do, involved moving stories to the right.

Because that is what Sinclair, and Fox, and Trump mean by balanced. It’s what used to be known as “skewed.”

Sinclair Watch: Impact on the midterms and a show is canceled

We've talked a lot about how pro-Trump media conglomerate Sinclair Broadcast Group is infiltrating local news. This week, we launched a series about how Sinclair is gearing up for the midterms. Pamela Vogel is going to look at key races across the country and look at how Sinclair could affect the outcomes. The first state is Nevada. Sinclair’s political action committee gave $1,500 to Republican Sen. Dean Heller’s re-election campaign. Heller for his part praised Sinclair for how they reacted to the passage of Trump's tax cut bill.

Media Matters also launched a Find Sinclair website this week, where you can use an interactive map to find a Sinclair station near you.

Also: In 2015, a Sinclair station replaced local news programs with a "nontraditional newscast" that consisted of conspiracy theories from a Sean Hannity-esque figure. This week, that show was canceled after the host threatened to sexually assault teenage Parkland shooting survivor David Hogg. And that wasn't the first instance of that host engaging in harassment, either.

Listen up: Vogel talked with FAIR's Janine Jackson about Sinclair and how they are spreading propaganda. Listen to the podcast or read the transcripT.

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2018/04/03/confessions-former-sinclair-news-director

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/04/04/internal-memo-shows-sinclair-threatening-employees-keep-mouths-shut-about-must-read

Sinclair Broadcast Group really doesn't want its employees talking to the press about the Trumpian "fake news" script it has recently been forcing local news anchors to recite.

This was made clear by a memo warning staff at the Sinclair-owned station KATU in Portland, Oregon that "giving statements to the media or sharing negative information about the company can have huge implications."

First obtained by FTV Liveand published on Tuesday, the memo was sent amid outrage over the right-wing media giant's efforts to force local anchors to read propaganda railing against "false" and "fake" media—outrage that grew exponentially after Deadspin published a compilation of anchors reading Sinclair's script in unison.

Read the full memo below:

As Deadspin's video of anchors reading Sinclair's script went viral, some local anchors began anonymously and openly criticizing the company's attempts to exert ideological control over smaller stations that many American households rely on for daily news.

"The new scripted 'fake news' segment caused a lot of anguish where I work," one Sinclair journalist told the Huffington Post, which published a report on Tuesday detailing how the company strictly monitors its employees' "editorial activities."

"Sinclair's employee handbook...states that the company 'may monitor, intercept, and review, without further notice, every employee's activities using company's electronic resources and communications systems,'" the Huffington Post reported. "The handbook goes on to state, 'To be very clear: you should not have any expectation of personal privacy in any communication using Company owned equipment.'"

Another employee anonymously told HuffPo that "everything Sinclair gives us or forces upon us is met with uproar, but we have no choice."

This is largely because the costs of quitting Sinclair can be extremely "steep," as Bloomberg has reported.

After reviewing two employment contracts, Bloomberg found that "some Sinclair employees were subject to a liquidated damages clause for leaving before the term of their agreement was up: one that requires they pay as much as 40 percent of their annual compensation to the company."

primer

https://kpfa.org/episode/talkies-april-4-2018/

https://www.democracynow.org/2018/4/3/media_giant_sinclair_under_fire_for

While Sinclair Broadcast Group is not a household name, it is one of the most powerful TV companies in the nation. It owns 173 local TV stations across the country, including affiliates of all the major networks. And it’s attempting to grow even larger by purchasing Tribune Media—a $3.9 billion deal currently under regulatory review. Sinclair has been widely criticized for its close ties to the White House. But Sinclair is facing new scrutiny after it ordered news anchors at scores of its affiliate stations to recite nearly identical “must-read” commentaries warning of the dangers of “fake news” in language that echoes President Trump’s rhetoric. The commentaries reached millions of viewers last month and drew widespread attention after the website Deadspin published a video over the weekend showing side-by-side comparisons of the broadcasts from 45 Sinclair-owned stations. We speak to Andy Kroll, senior reporter at Mother Jones magazine.

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We begin today’s show looking at Sinclair Broadcast Group. While it’s not a household name, Sinclair is one of the most powerful TV companies in the nation. It owns 173 local TV stations across the country, including affiliates of all the major networks. And it’s attempting to grow even larger by purchasing Tribune Media—a $3.9 billion deal currently under regulatory review.

Sinclair has been widely criticized for its close ties to the White House. It’s chairman and former CEO, David Smith, is active in Republican politics and supported Donald Trump’s campaign. The network’s chief political analyst, Boris Epshteyn, served as a senior adviser to Trump’s presidential campaign. During the 2016 campaign, Sinclair reportedly struck a deal with the Trump campaign to give it better media coverage.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Sinclair is coming under new criticism after it ordered news anchors at scores of its affiliate stations around the country to recite nearly identical “must-read” commentaries warning of the dangers of “fake news” in language that echoed President Trump’s rhetoric. The commentaries reached millions of viewers last month and drew widespread attention after the website Deadspin published a video over the weekend showing side-by-side comparisons of the broadcasts from 45 Sinclair-owned stations.

...

https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/dan-rather-thoroughly-dismantles-sinclair-broadcastings-orwellian-propaganda

Rather has been very clear and adamant about the need for our country’s news sources to handle the current orange-topped, white supremacist threat to our democracy. Over the weekend, Deadspin released a mashup of the bizarre and deeply disturbing propaganda campaign (video below) by Sinclair Broadcasting to force their numerous media outlets to read an attack campaign against any and all media that doesn’t fall into line with Trump and his Republican stooges. Dan Rather isn’t having any of this. He penned a powerhouse response to Sinclair Broadcasting on his Facebook page.

Let's be clear, news anchors looking into camera and reading a script handed down by a corporate overlord, a script meant to obscure the truth not elucidate it, isn't journalism. It's propaganda. It's Orwellian. And it is on a slippery slope towards some of history's most destructive forces. These are the means by which despots wrest power, silence dissent, and oppress the masses.

To those who say this rhetoric is hyperbolic, I submit that attacking the press as honest brokers of information has been one of the constants of this Administration and all those who normalize it. But this is not normal. This is not how the freedoms enshrined in our Constitution, that beloved First Amendment, is supposed to operate.

Referencing the video, Rather says he can understand the broadcasters’ rationalizations, their desperations, and the need to feed their families. But the truth must win out. It must or we have nothing.

That is why it is incumbent for Americans of all political persuasions to say this is intolerable. Congress should hold hearings and call the executives of Sinclair to account, but one suspects that is highly unlikely in the current political environment. Will this spur citizens to elect representatives who recognize that this is a clear and present danger? Will enough people be outraged to bombard stations, and advertisors, with letters, phone calls, and tweets to suggest this is unacceptable?

For now, Sinclair is trying to explain away the controversy, and they have a powerful ally in the President. But as we saw with the advertisers bailing en masse from Laura Ingraham's Fox News show after she attacked a Parkland High School student activist in a Tweet, the voice of the people still matters. If enough people speak, they cannot be ignored.

Sinclair Broadcasting is fully backed by this country’s oligarchy right now, and along with Ajit Pai and telecoms, they plan on strengthening their control on what information people can and cannot have access to.

https://www.c-span.org/video/?441345-15/panel-discussion-trump-administration

MARCH 10, 2018

Panel Discussion on the Trump Administration A discussion on the Trump administration from the 10th annual Tucson Festival of Books that featured Joshua Green, Devil’s Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency; David Cay Johnston, It’s Even Worse Than You Think: What the Trump Administration is Doing to America; Katy Tur, Unbelievable: My Front-Row Seat to the Craziest Campaign in American HIstory, and John Nichols, Horsemen of the Trumpocalypse: A Field Guide to the Most Dangerous People in America

sinclair 19 min 2.2 mil households tribune media gp buying

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvtNyOzGogc

mark hyman sends op eds to affiliates, PC, snowflakes,

5% north carolina illegal voters, pants on fire, politico, math wrong BO boris; retractd CNN

circa sends scripts with pkg: was flynn victim of FBI vendetta?

must run mark, boris

aubrey shines bl pastor dems created slavery, so how can blk vote hillary?; fake balance less time, VO undercuts;

polls with leading answers; daily terror alert (must run?)

isis? cut 19 teens in 1/2 (Bbrt at least caveat), segment ends with burkini

https://www.democracynow.org/2017/10/26/fcc_eliminates_rules_preventing_media_consolidation

major decision by the Federal Communications Commission Tuesday eliminated a decades-old rule that ensures community residents can have a say in their local broadcast TV station. This comes as the FCCannounced plans Wednesday to abolish long-standing media ownership rules. Opponents say these changes will accelerate media consolidation, allowing massive corporate media companies, such as the right-wing Sinclair Broadcast Group, to buy up and control even more local stations. We speak with Andy Kroll, senior reporter at Mother Jones magazine, whose story in their new issue is titled “Ready for Trump TV? Inside Sinclair Broadcasting’s Plot to Take Over Your Local News.”

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major decision by the Federal Communications Commission that eliminates a decades-old rule that ensures community residents can have a say in their local broadcast TV station. The regulation is known as the “main studio rule,” and it requires broadcasters to have a physical studio near where they have a license to transmit.

This comes as the FCC also announced plans, at a hearing Wednesday, to abolish long-standing media-ownership rules, including limits on how many stations or newspapers one company can own in a single market. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai testified Wednesday during a congressional hearing.

AJIT PAI: If you believe, as I do, that the federal government has no business intervening in the news, then we must stop the federal government from intervening in the news business. And that is why, this afternoon, I shared with my fellow commissioners an order that will reform our media ownership rules and help pull the government, once and for all, out of the newsroom. We will vote on this order at our November 16th meeting.

The marketplace today is nothing like it was in 1975. Newspapers are shutting down. Many radio and TV stations are struggling, especially in smaller and rural markets. Online competition for the collection and distribution of news is even greater than it ever was. And just two internet companies claim 100 percent of recent online advertising growth. Indeed, their digital ad revenue alone this year will be greater than the market cap of the entire broadcasting industry. And yet the FCC’s rules still presume that the market is defined entirely by pulp and rabbit ears.

AMY GOODMAN: But opponents say these changes will accelerate media consolidation, allowing massive corporate media companies, such as the right-wing Sinclair Broadcast Group, to buy up and control even more local stations. Earlier this year, Trump’s FCC appointees revived a regulatory loophole that could allow Sinclair to buy 42 TV stations from Tribune Media Company, on top of the more than 170 stations it already owns. The deal means Sinclair stations would reach about 72 percent—almost three-quarters—of U.S. households.

This comes as former Fox News anchor Bill O’Reilly has reportedly been negotiating for a position with Sinclair Broadcast Group. O’Reilly secretly settled a sexual harassment claim for $32 million in January, the sixth and by far the largest such settlement during his tenure at Fox, from which he was fired.

For more, we’re joined in Washington, D.C., by Andy Kroll, senior reporter at Mother Jones magazine, where he’s written extensively about the FCC. His latest story in the current issue is headlined “Ready for Trump TV? Inside Sinclair Broadcasting’s Plot to Take Over Your Local News.”

Andy, welcome back to Democracy Now! You know, a lot of the meme going around is that Trump just can’t get anything done, but it sure doesn’t look that way at the FCC this week. Can you talk about what’s happened?

ANDY KROLL: Well, at the FCC this week, as you described, the commission voted along party lines—three Republicans voting in favor, two voting in opposition—to eliminate the main studio rule, this rule from about 80 years ago saying that a local TV or radio station needs to have its studio, its primary studio, in or near the community it serves. And that served a number of purposes, not only for the community to be able to interact with that station, but also tethering that station to the community in which it’s reporting the news and delivering some value to the people who watch it. That rule has been eliminated.

And then, as we saw in the clip that you just showed, the chairman of the FCC, Ajit Pai, a Republican, former staffer to Jeff Sessions, now the attorney general, has said that there is a whole bunch more deregulation in the works. This comes in a year, since President Trump’s inauguration in January, in which the FCC has consistently knocked down one barrier after another to enabling a massive deal frenzy, a consolidation in the broadcast business, which is exactly what companies like Sinclair want, going forward, so that they can gobble up as many TV stations around the country as they can, and basically dominate the local news business.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, Andy, before we get to Sinclair Broadcasting, I wanted to ask you about the context of this attempt—or, in fact, the overturning of the main studio rule. It’s been in effect, as you said, for several decades. Has any other administration attempted to overturn it?

ANDY KROLL: No. The rule has been tweaked over time, on several occasions, to, what they say, modernize it. But the substance of the rule, having that studio in the community where the viewers, where the people who depend on that TV or radio station is, that has not changed over time. And the supporters of the rule say there’s a very clear reason for that. Yes, it’s true that with email and with social media you can send a message to your TV station, but the rule also gave that sense of locality. It gave that connection in the newsgathering and in the—you know, just the connection to a community that is so vital to local news. And that has been a bedrock of broadcast television for nearly 80 years and has gone unchallenged under Republican administrations and under Democratic administrations. And now, under President Trump and with Commissioner Pai at the FCC, that rule is ancient history.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, Andy, before—could you explain, because—as a result of overturning this rule, all of these different stations, TV stations and radio stations, can be increasingly consolidated. Now, one of the companies under which these stations have been consolidated is Sinclair Broadcasting. But this media organization, very few people know about. So could you tell us about this broadcasting channel?

ANDY KROLL: Yeah. I like to say that Sinclair Broadcast Group is the most influential media organization that most Americans have never heard of. It owns nearly—owns or operates nearly 200 local TV stations around the country. It has a tremendous influence over the local news business.

And it marries that influence, that size, reaching into 40 percent of households right now, with a unabashed conservative and pro-Trump agenda. You see that in the kind of programming that Sinclair produces and sends out to its local stations. These are called “must-run segments.”They take, you know, basically, a shamelessly pro-Trump message, repeating talking points of the administration’s through its commentators, and putting that into the local news.

And as you mentioned earlier, Sinclair is eyeing a deal to acquire 42 new stations around the country, giving it a reach to almost three-quarters of American households. So this is a massive broadcast company, set to get even bigger. And it has a distinct conservative viewpoint that it is intent and bent on projecting out to the millions of people who watch its television channels.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain what you mean when you say “intent and bent on.” Your headline of your piece, “Ready for Trump TV? Inside Sinclair Broadcasting’s Plot to Take Over Your Local News.” What are the edicts being handed down?

ANDY KROLL: Well, Sinclair is a pioneer in what’s known as the “must-run segment.” This is a segment that is produced by Sinclair’s corporate headquarters here in the D.C. area and also in Maryland, that it produces, and then it sends out to its stations around the country—again, almost 200 of them—and says, “You are required to run this 90-second commentary or this two-minute editorial.” That content, that is being distributed out around the country, has a very clear, unequivocal conservative, partisan bent to it and, frankly, a pro-Trump bent to it.

You know, the lead political analyst, if you could call it that, atSinclair is a man named Boris Epshteyn, former Trump campaign aide and a former Trump White House aide, who left the administration and immediately went into this role at Sinclair. His segments are called “Bottom Line with Boris.” They are distributed, and they are required to run every day at Sinclair stations. And these are basically Trump talking points. And, I mean, you can go on YouTube, you can watch all of his clips in a row. They are 100 percent toeing the Trump line. And if they’re not that, they’re softball interviews with Trump administration officials.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I mean, of course, people might know who Boris Epshteyn is, because during the campaign he was one of his spokespeople, always interviewed on TV. This is one of Boris Epshteyn’s recent commentaries.

BORIS EPSHTEYN: It is important to note that voter fraud goes beyond stealing or miscounting ballots. Intentionally improper voter registration is absolutely a type of voter fraud. The Commission on Election Integrity has gotten to work. … The extent of voter fraud in our elections has been hotly debated between the left and the right. The president’s commission has been established to come up with a factual, impartial answer to that question. The states should do everything within their power to cooperate with the commission. And that’s the bottom line.

AMY GOODMAN: And that is required by every station to run, Andy Kroll?

ANDY KROLL: That’s correct. You are—

AMY GOODMAN: This is—

ANDY KROLL: Yes, that’s right.

AMY GOODMAN: This is another clip from a Sinclair station, featuring former Trump adviser Sebastian Gorka. The show was broadcast earlier this month.

SEBASTIAN GORKA: You do not make legislation out of outliers. Our big issue is black African gun crime against black Africans. It is a tragedy. Go to Chicago. Go to the cities run by Democrats for 40 years. Black young men are murdering each other by the bushel.

AMY GOODMAN: “By the bushel.” That’s former Trump adviser Sebastian Gorka referring to “black African [gun] crime” on “black [Africans],” saying black men are killing each other “by the bushel.” Andy Kroll?

ANDY KROLL: Sebastian Gorka, of course, another alumnus of the Trump White House, who, upon leaving, went immediately to Sinclair and is now a talking head at Sinclair. So you see this trend of Trump officials going to Sinclair Broadcast Group and then them being put on the airwaves and either pushing a completely crazy message, that Sebastian Gorka just did, on a segment that was supposed to be about guns in America—

AMY GOODMAN: I mean, I think “outright racist” is a very—

ANDY KROLL: Outright racist, yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: —more accurate way to describe it.

ANDY KROLL: Yeah, it’s hard to find the words to describe what that was. You have Boris Epshteyn, as well. His segment, that we just listened to, is basically advocacy for the Trump administration in its deeply flawed, inept supposed commission on investigating voter fraud, which, of course, in most cases, doesn’t exist.

So, you have this message, and you have stations around the country that, in a lot of cases, just want to do local news. But as they come under the Sinclair umbrella, they are being told by headquarters, “You will run these segments.” In Boris Epshteyn’s case, Sinclair doubled down and tripled the number of times that Boris Epshteyn was required to be run by its stations. And so, this is the progression we’re seeing this year. So we’re only seeing a more pro-Trump message, at the same time that Sinclair is looking to gobble up more stations and consolidate its control.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, could you talk, Andy, about the founder of Sinclair Broadcasting Group, David Smith?

ANDY KROLL: Yeah. David Smith is a media mogul with an incredible amount of sway over what goes on on the local airwaves. He’s not well known on the level of, say, a Rupert Murdoch, for instance, even though the two men would, I think, consider themselves contemporaries or competitors.

David Smith built a small family company that had three TV stations, starting in the mid-’80s. They were based out of Baltimore. And he—by finding ways around the law and taking advantage of ways that the law was changed—in this case, deregulated—in the past few decades, he has grown Sinclair into this conservative TV behemoth that it is today, and one that stands to get even bigger if the Tribune Media merger goes through.

David Smith, longtime donor to mostly Republicans, though Democrats, as well, who are in a position to help his company. And today, you know, he throws a party for a Supreme Court justice, Clarence Thomas. He travels in a, you know, elite, rarefied group of Republican supporters. He’s even bragged about dining at the White House with the president. So he is right at the top of a Republican-industry-donor pyramid, if you will. But he has managed to avoid the amount of attention that, say, a Rupert Murdoch or some other international media moguls that we do of have attracted.

AMY GOODMAN: And the merging of Sinclair and Tribune? I mean, these are the smaller local stations that dot the United States, you know, crisscross the United States.

ANDY KROLL: That’s right. The deal would give, again, 42 television stations from Sinclair—or from Tribune into Sinclair. It would add more of those dots on the map, as you mentioned. Right now, Sinclair has no presence in Colorado. This would give it a major presence in Colorado. But it would also bring stations in the three largest media markets in the country into the Sinclair company: New York, WPIX; KTLA in Los Angeles; and WGN, one of the most famous broadcast companies in America, in Chicago. So this would really seal Sinclair’s position as the sort of dominant broadcast company—and, of course, given that many more tens of millions of people who would be potentially seeing Boris Epshteyn, Sebastian Gorka, potentially Bill O’Reilly.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, when we were talking about Sebastian Gorka, just to understand, as he’s talking about black African violence here in the United States, who he is, the whole controversy around him wearing that pin at the inauguration, of the Vitézi Rend, the newspaper The Forward reporting members of the Vitézi Rend elite order confirmed Gorka took a lifelong oath of loyalty to the Hungarian far-right-wing group, listed by the U.S. State Department as having been under the direction of the Nazi government of Germany during World War II. I mean, just the significance of what is being required by these local stations to run all over the country?

ANDY KROLL: Yeah. And Gorka is—if you watch that clip, or the roundtable that that clip comes from, which is available on Sinclair’s website, I mean, Sebastian Gorka is more or less given an open mic to say what he thinks about, in this case, quote-unquote, “guns in America.” We see where he took that theme. But he was a foreign policy aide in the Trump White House. He was not a domestic policy expert. He was not someone working on the issue of guns, for all that we know. And yet he is just given this platform, as he has been on several other occasions with Sinclair.

The company seems to have no qualms, given the background that you describe, the fantastic reporting that The Forward has done on his past. They seem to have no problem giving him that platform, just as they reportedly seem to be considering an arrangement with Bill O’Reilly, someone who, as you mentioned, has settled sexual harassment claims for tens of millions of dollars when he was at Fox News, to the point that Fox fired him.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, explain that last part. What do you understand is the state of these negotiations? And have they been stopped by this latest news of his $32 million settlement with a Fox host for sexual harassment?

ANDY KROLL: What I’ve heard and what I’ve seen reported in the past week is that there are negotiations underway between Sinclair and O’Reilly around either—whether it would be bringing him in as a host or a commentator or some kind of arrangement or partnership between O’Reilly having his own—potentially his own program, his own platform, and Sinclair as the megaphone, if you will, projecting that program, projecting O’Reilly out, using its empire of stations. Now, Sinclair has denied that it is talking with O’Reilly, and has repeatedly done that, though the reporting, that doesn’t go for the official comment from Sinclair, would suggest otherwise.

I will say that I, you know, have talked to people in and around Sinclair, and among the rank and file, if you will, there is kind of shock and disgust that—in light of O’Reilly’s sexual harassment settlements and all the allegations at Fox, that Sinclair would be thinking about considering a partnership with him has a lot of people there upset, concerned about their futures, whether they want to work there if Bill O’Reilly joins the company in some capacity.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Andy Kroll, we want to thank you for being with us. We’ll certainly link to your piece. Andy Kroll, senior reporter at Mother Jones magazine, where he has written extensively about the FCC and Sinclair Broadcasting. His piece published this week, we’ll link to, “Ready for Trump TV? Inside Sinclair Broadcasting’s Plot to Take Over Your Local News.”

ref

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/10/ready-for-trump-tv-inside-sinclair-broadcastings-plot-to-take-over-your-local-news/

out of order:

“The most important force shaping public opinion continues to be local, over-the-air television,” says Andrew Jay Schwartzman, a senior attorney at Georgetown’s Communications and Technology Law Clinic. “That’s the underlying premise of the FCC continuing to regulate broadcast ownership.”

But under the leadership of Ajit Pai, a Republican who joined the commission in 2012 and whom Trump elevated to chairman, the FCC has seemingly gone out of its way to grease the wheels for the Sinclair-Tribune merger, reinstating a rule from the Reagan era that could help the company avoid limits on media consolidation. “The FCC is gaming the rules to directly benefit Sinclair,” says Craig Aaron, the president of the public interest group Free Press.

...

The FCC’s scrutiny caused Smith and his brothers to see the value of friends in Washington. Between 1997 and 2002, the Smith brothers donated nearly $200,000 to Republican candidates and committees in Maryland and at the federal level. The Smiths were also generous with Democrats, when they were in a position to help: One former Sinclair executive told me the company’s political giving “was primarily FCC-driven. Who could be friendly? Who could help them with the FCC?”

Bob Ehrlich, a Republican congressman whose district was home to Sinclair’s headquarters north of Baltimore, received tens of thousands of dollars in campaign donations. The congressman sat on a subcommittee overseeing the commission and sent sharply worded letters to the FCC in 2001 asking after the status of the proposed 1998 acquisitions. The commission ultimately approved every deal but one in Sinclair’s favor.

“The management of WBFF Fox 45 stands behind the president,” the anchor said, “and our nation’s leaders in the vow that terrorism must be stopped. If you agree, make your voice heard.” It was days after the attacks of September 11, 2001, and soon all 62 of Sinclair’s stations would deliver messages like this, to millions of viewers around the country.

But the company followed up with more—and more strident—political content. As the major networks rushed to fill airtime with retired generals after the attacks, Sinclair found its own pundit in Mark Hyman. A former Navy intelligence officer who had worked as a Sinclair lobbyist, Hyman went on WBFF in the weeks after the attacks to cheer on President George W. Bush and scold other media for their unfair and unpatriotic coverage. Sinclair soon elevated Hyman to be its chief commentator and designated his editorials, titled “The Point,” as must-runs. Hyman’s segments were taped near Baltimore and distributed nationwide to Sinclair’s stations, which were required to knit them into their local news broadcasts. For the viewer, the effect could be jarring: one minute, traffic and sports. The next, a centrally recorded, straight-to-camera clip of, say, Hyman visiting Iraq after the 2003 US invasion in search of “good news,” or a Hyman commentary claiming that “terrorist leaders would dearly love to see President Bush replaced with Senator Kerry.”The attacks brought politics into the company’s newsrooms in a new way. “It was a great place to work until 9/11,” says Kirk Clyatt, a former anchor and weather reporter at WBFF in Baltimore. “It was almost like you could feel the wind change.” The on-air editorials were unprecedented for Sinclair. While scripts noted that the messages represented the views of “station management,” there was unrest in Sinclair’s newsrooms among a generation of journalists trained to be neutral and nonpartisan. That wasn’t how Sinclair executives saw it: If they were guilty of anything, one executive said, it was “being patriotic during a time of tragedy.”

Hyman and David Smith both argued that the national networks’ news operations and cable giants like CNN were too liberal, and that Sinclair could balance out the negative, anti-war, anti-Bush bias of its competitors. (Meanwhile, Sinclair pursued buying affiliates of those same networks.) During a deposition in a colleague’s contract dispute, Stuart Zang, a former producer for Hyman, said he was told to read three books of right-wing media criticism after he was hired: Slander by Ann Coulter, Bias by Bernard Goldberg, and a tome called Coloringthe News: How Crusading forDiversityHas Corrupted American Journalism.

That year, Sinclair created a national news desk to produce segments for stations’ local newscasts, and in 2003 it followed up with a Washington bureau. Sinclair’s political leanings gained more widespread attention in 2004 when Ted Koppel planned to spend an episode of Nightline reading the names of soldiers killed in Iraq. Sinclair ordered its ABC affiliates not to run the show, saying it was “motivated by a political agenda.” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) called Sinclair’s move “unpatriotic.” During that year’s presidential campaign, Sinclair sparked a national uproar when it planned to air Stolen Honor, a controversial documentary widely seen as a hit piece on then-Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), the Democratic nominee. Amid the backlash, Mark Hyman compared news networks that refused to report Stolen Honor‘s allegations about Kerry’s anti-Vietnam War activism to Holocaust deniers. After Sinclair’s DC bureau chief described the documentary to a Baltimore Sun reporter as “biased political propaganda with clear intentions to sway this election,” the company fired him and sued him for breach of contract.In 2002, Ehrlich, Sinclair’s congressman, took on Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, the state’s Democratic lieutenant governor, in the Maryland governor’s race. As former WBFF political reporter Jon Leiberman later told *GQ*, newsroom staffers at Sinclair’s flagship station were tasked with taking down Townsend. “All of our resources were used to go after her,” he recalled. After she lost the election, the Baltimore Sunreported that Ehrlich had failed to report a series of discounted flights he received during the campaign from a helicopter company controlled by J. Duncan Smith, a potential violation of campaign finance laws. The scandal was dubbed Choppergate, and Ehrlich voluntarily repaid $26,600.

...

But when he stopped the use of the sidecar agreements that Sinclair had pioneered to operate multiple stations in the same market—”a pure scam,” he put it, echoing statements in FCC documents—he ran up against the company’s allies in Congress. One of Maryland’s US senators, Barbara Mikulski, a recipient of almost $20,000 in Smith family donations and a stalwart liberal who was then the chair of the Appropriations Committee, barred the commission from spending any money to enforce Wheeler’s ruling, according to a person familiar with the move.

Sinclair enthusiastically embraced the chance to influence the 2016 election and perhaps sway its viewers to select a president likely to install commissioners favorable to the company’s agenda. “Sinclair sees news first and foremost as a profit center and second as a vehicle for promoting its interests,” warns Schwartzman. “And its political interests promote its business interests.”

The company’s first choice was not Donald Trump, but Dr. Ben Carson, the retired Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon. Carson was something of a celebrity in Baltimore and had appeared at Sinclair-sponsored town hall events in the region. A precampaign hourlong biographical infomercial about Carson was carried on multiple Sinclair stations, and WJLA, the Sinclair station in DC, ran an ad promoting it.

The infomercial was the work of Armstrong Williams, a close friend and political consultant to Carson who was also a broadcaster and a Sinclair business partner. A gadfly of sorts in Republican circles, Williams hosted a talk show in the 2000s carried by Sinclair and interviewed Bush administration officials. Williams later admitted he had received more than $180,000 from Bush’s Education Department to promote its policies—a disclosure he never made on air or in his syndicated columns. The Government Accountability Office eventually concluded that the arrangement violated a federal ban on “covert propaganda.” (Williams admitted no wrongdoing but paid back $34,000.) The scandal did nothing to tarnish Williams in the eyes of Sinclair CEO David Smith—former Sinclair employees who worked with Smith and Williams describe the two as good friends. In 2015, Sinclair sold three stations in cities where it ran the risk of violating the duopoly rule to a company owned by Williams, while inking local management agreements to continue their operations.

...

In August 2015, the company bought the name and technology from the remains of a failed San Francisco startup, Circa News. The new venture’s announcementpromised an “independent digital news site” for readers who “value raw content, differing perspectives, and personalization.” Circa would produce stories for the web and video segments for Sinclair’s stations.

Sinclair’s pick to run Circa was a former Washington Times editor named John Solomon, who has a conservative slant and a history of writing stories damaging to Democratic politicians. Ten current and former Circa staffers told me that Solomon pitched the new venture as a down-the-middle, nonpartisan news organization: “BuzzFeed with a brain,” is how one remembers Solomon putting it. But as the presidential campaign ramped up, staffers, who asked to remain anonymous because they signed nondisclosure agreements or fear retribution, say Circa adopted a notable rightward tilt and an increasingly hostile stance toward Clinton. Solomon hired a former Republican National Committee spokesman named Raffi Williams to be a political reporter, though he previously had little formal journalism experience. Williams, the son of former NPR reporter turned Fox News pundit Juan Williams, is now a spokesman at Secretary Ben Carson’s Department of Housing and Urban Development.

...

Weeks away from the election, Solomon told staffers he had landed a major scoop, one that—as he breathlessly wrote in a draft script—”will make you forever question how politics works.” The scoop, it turned out, came from James O’Keefe, the conservative provocateur best known for undercover sting videosthat toppled the progressive activist group ACORN. (He was later sentenced to three years of probation and 100 hours of community service for entering a US senator’s office under false pretenses.)

O’Keefe had spent six months running a hidden-camera investigation into Scott Foval and Robert Creamer, both Democratic operatives. Solomon brokered a deal to edit O’Keefe’s raw footage into a multipart documentary. An early version of a script Solomon wrote reads like a bad political thriller. “Politics in Washington has always had its dirty trick operatives, both on the Republican and Democratic sides, though none have been chronicled with the level of detail that the undercover journalists captured,” the script says. “It’s the sort of stuff you’d expect to hear from the diabolical Frank Underwood’s mouth during an episode of House of Cards, except this is real life.”

After Creamer learned he’d been targeted by O’Keefe and that Circa was involved, his lawyers warned Sinclair that they believed O’Keefe and his team faced legal liability for the tactics used to infiltrate his firm, and that Circa could be liable for coordinating with O’Keefe. After legal discussions, the Circa series never ran.

O’Keefe eventually released some edited footage on his own site, purportedly showing Foval and Creamer discussing hypothetical ways to stir up violence at Trump rallies. Creamer, then a contractor at the Democratic National Committee, told me he pulled out of the contract to avoid causing any harm to the Clinton campaign. (Foval was laid off.) In June, Creamer and his firm suedO’Keefe and his team, alleging violations of local and federal wiretap laws, among other claims. O’Keefe says the lawsuit is “frivolous.” When I spoke to Creamer in September, he told me his lawyers had been unable to serve one of the defendants, Allison Maass, who had created a fake identity to get an internship and shoot undercover footage at Creamer’s firm. Maass’ Twitter bio doesn’t list her residence, but it does list her current employer: Circa.

David Smith was fired up. On the day after Trump’s election, he spoke at a media conference at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in Manhattan. Trump’s victory, Smith told the audience, was “a really serious opportunity to seek complete deregulation” of broadcasting. “If Donald Trump is as deregulatory as he suggests he is,” he said, “we’re going to be the first industry in line.”

On the day before Trump’s inauguration, Smith, Armstrong Williams, and Sinclair’s new CEO, Chris Ripley, had a meeting in Washington with FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai. In his five years on the commission, the 44-year-old Pai, an ex-Verizon lawyer and staffer to former Sen. Jeff Sessions, developed a reputation as a sharp and well-spoken advocate for the industry, fighting Wheeler’s steps to limit concentration.

When Trump took office, he elevated Pai to serve as chairman. Since then the commission has made one move after another that has benefited Sinclair. Two weeks into the administration, the FCC tossed out what remained of Wheeler’s policy clamping down on sidecar agreements. Then, in April, the FCC voted to bring back the ultra high frequency discount, setting the groundwork for Sinclair’s purchase of Tribune Media’s 42 stations. Without the discount, the combined company is estimated to reach 72 percent of households—far above the 39 percent limit. Sinclair officials note that the new FCC changes benefit many companies, not just Sinclair. At an industry luncheon, Ripley praised the chairman’s work to cut regulation: “Thankfully, we’ve got Chairman Pai.”Pai was no stranger to Sinclair. Just two months before, he had spoken at the company’s annual meeting for general managers at the Four Seasons in Baltimore, taking a short private meeting with Smith afterward. (What he told the managers is unclear: Sinclair declined to comment for this article, and Pai’s office said it couldn’t locate any remarks or notes for the event in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.) In the January meeting, Smith, Williams, and Ripley argued that the sidecar agreements utilized by Sinclair were vital to the industry, and to a minority broadcaster like Williams. (In March, after opening with a brief disclaimer that he owned TV stations regulated by the FCC, Williams hosted Pai for a friendly interview on his show The Right Side, which airs on Sinclair stations.)

...

buy low sell high

https://www.alternet.org/right-wing/sinclair-broadcasting-wants-save-bill-oreilly

Disgraced former Fox News anchor Bill O'Reilly could wind up in 72 percent of American households if he inks a reported deal with Sinclair Broadcast Group.

The right-wing media conglomerate is currently in talks with O'Reilly despite the recent news that O'Reilly received a contract extension from Fox News after he paid $32 million to settle a sexual harassment allegation, according to NBC News.

Sinclair, a conservative news organization that is the largest television-station owner in the country, told NBC that the network had not completed any negotiations with the disgraced former Fox News host.

But sources told NBC that the two parties were "about midway" through their talks, and a second source "explained that Sinclair is considering putting O’Reilly on its local stations."

The former anchor's history, and the recent allegation that he had issued a massive payout for sexual harassment only to be rewarded with a contract extension, apparently didn't play a factor into Sinclair's willingness to court him.

"They took a pause but it didn't really change anything for them," a source told NBC.

O'Reilly has refused to admit any wrongdoing or misconduct and has denied all allegations. Instead, he has said the entire ordeal was a "hit job" and "politically and financially motivated."

On the latest episode of his web series, O'Reilly blamed God for his troubles.

“You know, am I mad at God? Yeah, I’m mad at him.” O’Reilly said. “I wish I had more protection. I wish this stuff didn’t happen. I can’t explain it to you. Yeah, I’m mad at him.”

The news of potential salvation from Sinclair comes as O'Reilly was dropped by United Talent Agency following the news of his $32 million payout. The agency informed him that he would no longer be represented by the company after his agreement with them expires at the end of the year, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

O'Reilly's representative, Mark Fabiani, said the former anchor "has already lined up new representation," THR reported.

While O'Reilly hasn't disappeared entirely, including weekly appearances on Glenn Beck's radio show, a job with Sinclair would almost certainly thrust him into the mainstream, perhaps more than ever before.

Sinclair has also had its fair share of controversy in its news segments and efforts to consolidate newsrooms under a corporate structure. The broadcaster is currently in the process of acquiring Tribune Media for $3.9 billion, largely snubbing the Federal Communication Commission in the process. If the merger goes through, both O'Reilly and Sinclair would fill television screens in 72 percent of American households.

http://www.alternet.org/media/173-tv-station-networks-are-defending-trumps-indefensible-statements-race-and-nazism-are-they

Former aide to President Donald Trump and current administration media shill Boris Epshteyn is now using local television news spots across the country to back Trump in his disgraceful “both sides” treatment of violent neo-Nazism and white supremacy in Charlottesville, VA.

Epshteyn is the chief political analyst of Sinclair Broadcast Group, a conservative local TV giant that currently owns and operates 173 stations in 33 states and the District of Columbia. He produces several 90-second commentary videos each week, which Sinclair dictates must be aired on all its stations nationwide. There is apparently no required disclosure Epshteyn must make in the segments he produces to inform viewers across the country that they’re hearing commentary from a former Trump staffer, even as his defenses of Trump’s most indefensible moments grow increasingly embarrassing.

Epshteyn may have reached a new low last night with his take on Trump’s chilling defenses of neo-Nazis and white supremacists who rallied in Charlottesville last weekend.

On August 11, a white supremacist "Unite the Right" rally kicked off with a tiki torch-wielding mob chanting"Jews will not replace us" on the University of Virginia campus in defense of a Confederate statue. The next day, the large gathering turned violent, when a neo-Nazi drove a car into the crowd of ralliers and counter-protesters, murdering anti-racism activist Heather Heyer. On Saturday, Trump issued a short statement refusing to specifically call out the white supremacists and neo-Nazis behind the rally, instead pointing to blame "on many sides." Following two days of intense criticism, Trump issued a low-energy statement Monday nominally condemning the KKK and white supremacists, then completely undermined that statement in an unhinged Tuesday press conference where he returned to pinning blame on "both sides," and claimed that there were "very fine people" included among the white supremacists.

And yet, Epshteyn’s segment begins, “The sky is blue. Does the president have to repeat that fact day-in and day-out for us to believe it? No, he does not.”

The “Bottom Line with Boris” segment completely ignores Trump’s statements on Charlottesville aside from his Teleprompter-dependent, hostage video from the White House on Monday afternoon in which he finally specifically condemned neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups. Epshteyn did not acknowledge Trump’s initial comments about the rally, in which he referred to violence “on many sides,” nor did he acknowledge Trump’s Tuesday press conference in which he gave “white supremacists an unequivocal boost.”

Epshteyn ends the segment with a personal note, explaining that he is Jewish and thus knows that Trump is not anti-Semitic. This analysis, however, does not account for years of Trump’s public footsie with prominent white nationalists and anti-Semites, including former KKK grand wizard David Duke.

Sinclair’s other two right-wing “must-run” commentary segments -- “Behind the Headlines” with Mark Hyman and the “Terrorism Alert Desk” -- have yet to address the terror in Charlottesville. (Here are the “Terrorism Alert Desk” segments that ran on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday on Sinclair-owned Virginia station WSET.)

Local TV news viewers from Maine to Utah -- including some in Charlottesville’s backyard -- may have seen this segment last night or this morning as they turned to their local station for the news of the day. Folks in other cities and states across the country are also watching, waiting to hear if Sinclair will soon own their local TV station and extend the reach of its Trump apologism to Chicago or New Orleans, too.

http://www.alternet.org/right-wing/forget-breitbart-white-house-has-new-favorite-right-wing-media-outlet

Fox News has such an influence on Donald Trump that US journalists now react to the president’s proclamations on Twitter by searching for the Fox and Friends segment that inspired them.

This intimate feedback loop between the Fox morning show and the president has made it “the most powerful TV show in America”, in the words of a New York Times critic. For Rupert Murdoch, a ruthless player in conservative politics across continents, such influence is striking. But it’s not new.

Liberal critics of the administration, however, are now turning the spotlight on what they see as a troubling new pro-Trump outlet. It’s not Fox News, with its angry anchors and aging audience. It’s Circa, a colorful digital media site aimed at viewers in their teens and 20s.

Circa is owned by the Sinclair Media Broadcast Group, which owns or operates more than 170 television stations across the country and calls itself America’s “leading local news provider”. As Sinclair expands, it has faced speculation that it could become a conservative challenger to Fox News.

For months, Circa has attracted special attention from other news outlets for a series of scoops on the progress of the Russian investigation that many saw as shoring up the administration’s narrative.

The latest scoop came on Thursday, when Circa reported that a high-ranking FBI official, general counsel James A Baker, was “the top suspect in an ongoing leak investigation”, having allegedly leaked “classified national security information to the media”.

The report cited “multiple government officials close to the probe” who spoke “on the condition of anonymity”, and said an FBI spokeswoman declined to comment.

The scoop came at the end of a bruising week for the attorney general, Jeff Sessions, who faced pressure from the president over his decision to recuse himself from the Russia investigation, a move Sessions defended as the only lawful choice. On Twitter, Trump criticized Sessions’ “VERY weak position” on leaks. A day before the Circa scoop, Fox News reported that Sessions would soon announce an investigation into intelligence leaks.

On Thursday night, the MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow examined the way the story played into the administration’s “counter narrative”. Calling Circa a “pro-Trump conservative media outlet”, she said Sinclair was “emerging as kind of a successor to Breitbart News”.

Before he was fired, Maddow said, the former FBI director James Comey shared information about troubling interactions with the president with a small group of senior FBI officials, including Baker and now acting director Andrew McCabe. The latter has been publicly smeared by the president multiple times, over political donations his wife received from an ally of Hillary Clinton.

Maddow questioned why three FBI officials who might serve as witnesses in any inquiry about whether the president improperly interfered with the Russia investigation when he fired Comey had now either been fired or were coming under public attack.

“Of the six potential witnesses agains the president … three of them are now in the barrel,” she said.

The Circa story was concerning, Maddow said, “whether it’s just a pro-Trump conservative media threat or whether it’s a true report of a real criminal investigation launched by Sessions and the justice department”.

In March, he told the Hill: “We have no point of view and you won’t find any opinion pieces on our website.Sinclair and Circa did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Maddow’s segment. But Circa’s chief operations officer, John Solomon, formerly a reporter at the Associated Press and the Washington Post, has defended the company’s journalistic integrity.

“I think labeling media outlets is not beneficial. There are people at outlets with conservative editorial boards doing great work and reporters at outlets with a liberal bent doing the same.”

The justice department did not immediately respond for a request for comment.

The controversy over Circa’s politics puts it in a spotlight that media observers might once have assumed would be focused on Breitbart, the aggressive, gleefully offensive, misogynistic and occasionally race-baiting far-right site which was once led by Trump adviser Steve Bannon.

Breitbart has had a tempestuous time since Trump’s election win, reflecting infighting between Bannon’s populist, nationalist faction and more centrist Republican advisers. The site has sometimes come out directly against the president, as it did in defending Sessions this week, arguing that his failure to prosecute Clinton was more a sign of weakness on Trump’s part than on Sessions’.

In attacking Sessions, whose justice department has pursued an anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ, tough-on-crime agenda, Trump was attacking his own base, Breitbart said.

After new White House communications chief Anthony Scaramucci slammed Bannon in an interview with the New Yorker – accusing him, in the polite translation of one news outlet, of “burnishing his own reputation” – Breitbart attacked Scaramucci too.

Lois Beckett is a ProPublica reporter covering politics, big data and information privacy issues.

http://fair.org/home/trump-uses-power-of-fcc-to-pay-back-friends-at-sinclair-broadcasting/

This morning Sinclair Broadcast Group, the conservative media behemoth thatowns more local news stations than any other company in the country, just got even bigger. It announced it was buying Tribune Media for $3.9 billion, creating what Bloomberg (5/8/17) calls a “TV goliath.”

The purchase, which gives Sinclair a staggering reach of nearly 69 percent of the US population (Free Press, 5/8/17), would’ve been in violation of ownership restrictions just weeks ago. But last month, the Trump-appointed FCC chair, Ajit Pai, reinstated the “UHF discount,” an outdated loophole that allowed media conglomerates to exceed the nation’s 39 percent cap on ownership (New York Post,4/20/17). Sinclair made a $420 million deal to buy Bonten Media Group (Baltimore Sun,4/21/17) the very next day.

This sequence of events “sure looks like a quid pro quo,” as Craig Aaron of the media advocacy group Free Press has noted (5/8/17). Months ago, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner told business executives, according to Politico (12/16/16), that “Trump’s campaign struck a deal with Sinclair Broadcast Group during the campaign to try and secure better coverage.” The deal, Politico reported, was that Sinclair would give Trump more (uncritical) coverage (Washington Post, 12/22/16) in exchange for more “access to Trump and the campaign.”

Now, Trump appears to be using the considerable power of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) as his own personal ATM for political currency—and his Big Media allies at Sinclair are now seeing the return on their investment.

Free Press’ Aaron said in a statement this morning (5/8/17):

It’s a scandal. Sinclair—the Trump-favoring broadcast mega-chain—gets some FCC rules changed and expects others to be erased. All so that Sinclair can air its cookie-cutter newscasts to nearly 70 percent of the country’s population in local markets across the country.

Pai had been meeting with Sinclair executives at Baltimore’s Four Season Hotel in the months preceding these FCC-enabled media buys (Bloomberg, 3/27/17). “The gleaming harbor-front hotel, home to fare including a $32 crab cake sandwich and a $15 ‘Ulterior Motive’ cocktail, offered a memorable perch for impressing Pai,” Bloomberg reported.

Sinclair also recently hired a former Trump spokesperson (CNN,4/17/17), adding to the cozy relationship between company and president. In the press release, they touted the new hire’s former role as “a surrogate and senior advisor to the Trump campaign.”Shareholders for Sinclair, and other broadcasters, had already been profiting from the Trump presidency. “Despite President Donald Trump’s numerous gripes about media coverage of his campaign and presidency, the sector has been on a roll since the New York real estate baron was inaugurated on January 20,” reported The Street (4/26/17):

TV station owners have led the way with Tribune Media, the subject of takeover speculation at the very top with a 27 percent gain. Next in line was Sinclair Broadcasting, known as much for its conservative pro-Republican politics as for owning for more local TV stations than any other US company, having added 25 percent.

The profits are not slowing. Sinclair’s first-quarter profits, released May 3, increased 137 percent compared to a year earlier (Baltimore Business Journal, 5/3/17).

Media Concentration and Local News :{

Media consolidation has long been a detriment to media and democracy with fewer, and increasingly powerful, conglomerates—with vested interests that have nothing to do with the public good—owning the large majority of mass media outlets (FAIR Action Alert, 3/9/03; Truthout, 2/11/16). In recent years, Sinclair has been “emerging as a major broadcasting player,” according to USA Today (9/19/13). In 2003, the station owned 62 television stations (FAIR Action Alert, 10/12/04); today the number of Sinclair-owned channels has escalated rapidly, as the company “owns or helps operate 173 stations” (Bloomberg, 3/29/17).

In some ways, Sinclair offers a unique threat, both in its right-wing bias and its increasing share of the market. Unlike Fox News, which has a brand well-known for its conservative tilt, Sinclair has a more subtle influence. The average person watching a local Sinclair affiliate probably does not think of it as a haven for pro-Trump/right-wing content, but just another local station.

But local news is extremely influential. “Local TV news still manages to reach 9 in 10 American adults, 46 percent of whom watch it ‘often,’” noted a Mother Jones article (4/04/14) about the increasing consolidation of local broadcasting:

Broadcast television still serves as Americans’ main source of news and information. Which is why it matters that hundreds of local TV news stations have been swept up in a massive new wave of media consolidation.

Sinclair is even legally allowed to own numerous channels in the same market, Mother Jones noted, “which is why you’ll see a story on your local station about some awful crime you didn’t need to know about that took place far away.” It’s a textbook illustration of the perils of media concentration at the local level, and it is about to get worse—thanks to the militant opposition to ownership restrictions of the new leaders at the FCC (Truthout, 2/10/17; New York Times, 4/19/17).

Sinclair’s Conservative Ideology

Bad enough that viewers of local news increasingly have to rely on the same companies for media content. It gets worse when that conglomerate, as The Street (4/26/17) noted, is widely known for peddling a right-wing agenda. The Washington Post (10/26/04), citing Sinclair’s ownership of 67 local channels at the time (a fraction of their current reach), described the controversy as having “stoked debate about the ability of large media companies to influence public affairs.”

:{:(style="box-sizing:border-box;margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;font-weight:600 !important"):}::{This has been the case for years. In 2004, as a FAIR Action Alert (:(style="font-style:inherit;font-variant-ligatures:inherit;font-variant-caps:inherit;font-weight:inherit;text-align:center"):}:[10/12/04:{) documented,}::{ }::{Sinclair}::{ }::{“ordered its 62 television stations to preempt regular prime-time broadcasting to air the anti-John Kerry documentary}::{ }::{Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal}::{ }::{just two weeks before the election.” This movie was a clear political advertisement and a piece of (dubiously sourced) opposition research (}::{New York}::{ }::{Times}::{,}::{ }:10/21/04:{) clearly designed to help tilt the 2004 election to George W. Bush—the same election cycle where, FAIR noted, “97 percent of contributions made by}::{ }::{Sinclair}::{ }::{executives went to Republicans.”]}:

The reputation has persisted long past the 2004 election. When the company purchased several channels in Washington state, the Seattle Times (4/12/13) wrote an article warning of its “conservative tilt.”

“The track record of Sinclair suggests that Seattle is about to get a Fox News equivalent in a local television channel,” David Domke, chair of the University of Washington’s Department of Communication, told the paper.

This reaction was mirrored closely in Washington, DC, when the Sinclair empire reached that market. “Under the direction of its ambitious corporate parent, the station’s [WJLA-TV] news operations have taken a subtle but noticeable turn to the right,” the Post reported (9/16/17):

Critiques—which range from warning about the cost of Obamacare to advocating the abolition of the Transportation Security Administration—will be a regular feature on WJLA, just as they are on dozens of stations owned by the Sinclair Broadcast Group, the new owner of ABC 7.

Sinclair’s history of right-wing bias makes its alliance with Trump a natural development: Sinclair just had to advance the right-wing agenda it had promoted for years. Among other rewards, Sinclair got an exclusive interview with the candidate (9/2/16), during an election when Trump coverage caused ratings to skyrocket.

The relationship, it seems, continues to this day. While the Trump administration avoids more traditional media outlets in favor of “friendly” ones (Politico, 2/13/17 ; FAIR.org, 3/31/17), Sinclair has been given plum opportunities for questions. When the president held a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, only the second presser of his presidency, a Sinclair affiliate was one of three outlets—all conservative—that got a chance to ask a question.

It is a win/win: Trump and Sinclair both benefited from the deal they made. The only losers are the American public, who depend on a free, diverse and adversarial press for a functioning democracy.

Donald Trump’s campaign made a deal with Sinclair Broadcasting Group for more favorable media coverage during the election, adding to the growing lists of conflicts between Trump and the media.

President-elect Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, a key member of his transition team, “struck a deal with Sinclair Broadcast Group during the campaign to try and secure better media coverage” for Trump in exchange for “more access to Trump and the campaign,” according to Politico.

On December 16 Politico reported Sinclair Broadcast Group promised Kushner they “would broadcast their Trump interviews across the country without commentary” using their “television stations across the country in many swing states.” Scott Livingston, vice president of news at Sinclair, claimed the deal was aimed at “hear[ing] more directly from candidate on the issue instead of hearing all the spin and all the rhetoric”:

Donald Trump's campaign struck a deal with Sinclair Broadcast Group during the campaign to try and secure better media coverage, his son-in-law Jared Kushner told business executives Friday in Manhattan.

Kushner said the agreement with Sinclair, which owns television stations across the country in many swing states and often packages news for their affiliates to run, gave them more access to Trump and the campaign, according to six people who heard his remarks.

In exchange, Sinclair would broadcast their Trump interviews across the country without commentary, Kushner said. Kushner highlighted that Sinclair, in states like Ohio, reaches a much wider audience — around 250,000 listeners — than networks like CNN, which reach somewhere around 30,000.

[...]

“Our promise was to give all candidates an opportunity to voice their position share their position with our viewers. Certainly we presented an opportunity so that Mr. Trump could clearly state his position on the key issues,” Livingston said. “Our commitment to our viewers is to go beyond podium, beyond the rhetoric. We’re all about tracking the truth and telling the truth and that’s typically missing in most political coverage.”

A Trump spokesman said the deal included the interviews running across every affiliate but that no money was exchanged between the network and the campaign. The spokesman said the campaign also worked with other media outlets that had affiliates, like Hearst, to try and spread their message.

“It was a standard package, but an extended package, extended story where you’d hear more directly from candidate on the issue instead of hearing all the spin and all the rhetoric,” Livingston said.

[...]

Sinclair, a Maryland based company, has been labeled in some reports as a conservative leaning local news network. Local stations in the past have been directed to air “must run” stories produced by Sinclair’s Washington bureau that were generally critical of the Barack Obama administration and offered perspectives primarily from conservative think tanks, the Washington Post reported in 2014.

During the campaign, Donald Trump’s campaign treated the press with unprecedented hostility. As president-elect, he is using media allies like Fox’s Sean Hannity to build support for keeping the mainstream press outof Trump’s way.

Kushner’s deal with Sinclair Broadcasting Group, an organization with proven right-wing leanings, reveals yet another way the Trump campaign manipulated national and local media to stem the tide of disastrous coverage from Trump’s myriad scandals.

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2016/12/16/trump-campaign-made-deal-media-organization-straighter-coverage-during-election/214853

The Sinclair Broadcast Group, Inc. (SBG) is a media company and the single largest operator of 57 local television stations in the United States. According to the company's webpage, Sinclair's television group includes 19 FOX, 17 My Network TV, 8 CW, 8 ABC, 2 CBS, 1 NBC affiliates and reaches approximately 24 percent of all U.S. television households. [1] The company is based in Hunt Valley, Maryland.

SBG has been compared to the radio conglomerate Clear Channel Communications, and programming produced by the group is considered to have a right-wing slant. For example, in April 2004, the company refused to broadcast a special "Nightline" broadcast, produced by the ABC television network, that was devoted to reading the names of soldiers who had died in Operation Iraqi Freedom.

In contrast, SBG directed its stations to air an anti-Kerry program ahead of the 2004 Presidential election. Protests against the directive and the film resulted in a more balanced news program being aired.

Concerns about SBG's conservative bias has led to anti-Sinclair campaigns, including a boycott against advertisers and the ongoing "SinclairAction.com" campaign (see "Activism against Sinclair," below).

[hide]

http://media.eriposte.com/5-3.htm#5_3_9

sinclair brdcst 2 bak

Sinclair Broadcast Group’s The National Desk is spreading misinformation about immigration and the CBP One app

Don't interrupt them

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The nation’s largest TV station owner gave the activists behind the report an uncritical platform to push misinformation

As the report gained traction in other outlets outside the right, coverage failed to provide context or pushback to the Shellenberger’s report

The checkered history of Smith's right-hand man

Follow the money

Sinclair sought commentary from pro-austerity organizations funded by corporations and right-wing donors

These pro-corporate Sinclair guests’ commentary on Biden’s infrastructure bill was misleading or lacked full context

Economists and other experts agree Biden’s infrastructure spending plan is needed and beneficial

president posts 2-year-old supercut of Sinclair anchors 'parroting Trump talking points' to complain 'freedom of the press is gone'

:{sinclair’s Trump town hall spread dangerous COVID-19 misinformation:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:

:{sinclair stations set to air Eric Bolling monologue claiming masks and lockdown precautions do not help slow the spread of COVID-19:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:

:{how Sinclair Broadcast Group is spreading dangerous coronavirus misinformation to local television news audiences:(style="box-sizing:border-box;font-weight:normal"):}:

:{Sinclair interviews Trump with softballs, gives him a platform to attack his presidential opponent with false claims:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:

The Trump Federal Communications Commission is under internal investigation for making rule changes to help Sinclair

Sinclair’s “chief political analyst” is former Trump aide Boris Epshteyn

Armstrong Williams, a Sinclair-affiliated pundit and Sinclair business partner, has Trump administration ties

Trump has given exclusive interviews to Sinclair reporters at least 16 times

Six members of the Trump administration and Trump’s personal lawyer have all made friendly appearances on the Sinclair segment “Bottom Line With Boris”

Trump, administration officials, and others in the Trump orbit have promoted Sinclair and its content

Are there Sinclair stations near you?

Transcript

Media Concentration and Local News :{

Sinclair’s Conservative Ideology

Contents