How Sinclair Sneaks Right-Wing Spin Into Millions of Households

[Judi Lynn]

AUGUST 1, 2024

PETE TUCKER

With the presidential contest in full swing, the Sinclair Broadcast Group appears to be ramping up its right-wing propaganda again.

While millions of Americans are subjected to the TV network’s electioneering, few know it. That’s because, like a chameleon, Sinclair blends into the woodwork.

Turn on your local news and you may well be watching a Sinclair station, even though it appears on your screen under the imprimatur of a major network like CBS, NBC or Fox.

Here in the DC area, I occasionally tune into the local ABC affiliate, WJLA. Its newscasters are personable, and I like the weather forecasts. But then I remember that WJLA is owned by Sinclair.

I know this only because I’m a weirdo who follows Sinclair, not because there’s any obvious on-air sign the network owns WJLA—there isn’t. That’s why Sinclair’s propaganda is so hard to detect.

Hijacking trust

While trust in the media has cratered in recent years, there’s a notable exception. “Seventy-six percent of Americans say that they still trust their local news stations—more than the percentage professing to trust their family or friends,” the New Yorker (10/15/18) reported.

More:
https://fair.org/home/how-sinclair-sneaks-right-wing-spin-into-millions-of-households/

[Hermit-The-Prog]

1. The FCC and FTC were turned into GOP tools each time a Republican took the White House.

Most of the media 'consumed' by the American public now comes from a few conglomerates. Sinclair should never have been allowed to swallow up so many local systems.

[Oopsie Daisy]

2. I remember seeing a segment on John Oliver's show where he features "local news" clips from around the country *

* and made to appear as though it's "local reporting" ... but they ALL have the exact same script. To illustrate the point, the John Oliver segment would cut back and forth between the various news show showing how each one would repeat (word for word) the same lead-in to the story. It was really a good illustration that Sinclair (or whoever it was at the time) was force-feeding their take... disguised as local news.

[Pacifist Patriot]

5. I remember that! It was an unnerving light bulb moment.

[moniss]

7. It's like the takeover of local papers by

Gannett and then almost everything in the local paper became "USA Today".

[badhair77]

8. Yes, it's as if we have no local news.

That also means no oversight over school boards, townships, etc. We don’t know how money is spent, who is hired (as in nepotism), and what shenanigans are going on. It’s bad practice and encourages shady behavior.

[moniss]

10. Excellent point about the oversight issues and

it reminds me of a time back in the early 2000's in my area. The suburbs each had their own "Community Newspaper" to report on the schools, city council meetings, budgets etc. They were all owned by the one big metro daily paper. Things had been going reasonably OK until "new management" came in at the big paper. I knew the reporter who covered our little 'burb for "Community Paper". She would attend council meetings and school board meetings and would write a good synopsis of what went down. No slant just the nuts and bolts.

Like most small suburban city council meetings ours were lightly attended unless someone was aggravated about their sidewalk for example. I happened to be in the hallway when the reporter came up to me to say hello. I asked her how it was going and she pulled me aside and said she wanted to quit and go elsewhere. I asked her why and it turned out that her boss at the big paper had called her and her supervisor/editor at the little paper in to a meeting to "instruct her" about how she was to do the write-up for the council meetings going forward. The big paper guy said that from now on she was to take her story to the mayor's office and let him "review" it to make sure that she "got things written the right way". Thankfully for her she did leave. Sadly for my 'burb the guy who took her place went along with playing stenographer.

[badhair77]

11. Good example.

Sadly we no longer have a reporter. The “representatives of the people” are running loose. It’s like Camp Runamuck. Ethics be damned.

[orthoclad]

12. Sinclair is buying newspapers now

Hello? FCC? Antitrust laws?

Oh, I forgot. Billionaires are Special People.

[Tanuki]

3. Remember this mashup of local broadcasters

all reading from the same Sinclair script? Ironically, they were supposedly decrying "fake news"!

?si=5OeKIRSPUjyM1mF-

[JT45242]

4. Yep...local news showed a coup caucus critter in Iowa and zero fact checks

Then said the Harris campaign did not respond to our inquiries about what rethug from Iowa house if representative said about Harris.

They absolutely never push back on any lies from Grassley, Erntz. Or other rethugs in Iowa.

Just once. I want to see a local Sinclair station say...you just claimed to be the party of freedom and that Democrats are the extremists. Please explain how voting against a law that protected IVF and access to birth control is not an extreme view that will take away women's freedom?

Etc.

I know that none of these spineless pretty faces masquerading as journalist will ever do it.

[moniss]

6. A very timely post and just the other day

I was checking back on "Manufacturing Consent" by Chomsky and Herman. Which also sent me back to some old Walter Lippman material.

[Janeyre]

9. Lynchburg Virginia channel WSET is a Sinclair station

And it heavily ran the "Biden cognitive decline" lead every day for those awful weeks. Their "national" correspondents" reports are from Sinclair reporters with their definite spin and are designed to make you believe that they are ABC reporters. Very little
mention of Trumps foulups.