22 ms·

Sinclair Made Dozens of Local News Anchors Recite the Same Script

393 points by aaronbrethorst 9y ago

morogop 9y ago
Next time they'll give them all slightly different scripts, so they'll know who to fire when it leaks.
Overtonwindow 9y ago
I'm not clear why this is a problem. A corporation asked its broadcasters to make a statement on fake news. This statement sounds similar to others made by other corporate owned networks. Viewers are invited to comment on the website.
- alistairSH 9y ago
  The problem is the corporation. Sinclair has it's own political agenda. Forcing anchors across the US to recite something is bad enough, but when that something is of questionable truth, and orchestrated to minimuze Sinclair's own propensity to push its right-ist agenda, it's downright scary.
  - robotrout 9y ago
    Local stations are the least of our problems. 232 executives control news to 277 million Americans (from 2012). This was what I hoped the article was about. http://www.businessinsider.com/these-6-corporations-control-90-of-the-media-in-america-2012-6 http://www.businessinsider.com/these-6-corporations-control-...
    - electricEmu 9y ago
      Ignoring local stations makes the situation worse.
  - ThbTs4wbXC9Qjv 9y ago
    I'm FAR more concerned about national stations like CNN than local Sinclair stations. Just anti-american agenda based news non-stop. Some of us happen to like the country we live in.
    - andybak 9y ago
      You can like your country and still be critical of behaviour done in it's name. In fact - I would say it's a duty. If you care about something, you care about it's well being and reputation. Would you call reporting on, say, The Mai Lai Massacre or the Kent State shootings "anti-american"? How about Monica Lewinsky or Watergate?
    - wyldfire 9y ago
      Can you clarify what you mean by "anti-american agenda"? Questioning authority is absolutely the most appropriate task for the free press. IMO at least this part is not "anti-american". Let's further the discussion -- take a look at http://lite.cnn.io/en http://lite.cnn.io/en -- there's about 40-50 stories there. Please pick the top five or ten and help illustrate which among those demonstrate the bias you refer to. Or if the problem is less widespread, please indicate which among the 40-50 there illustrate the bias.
  - 0x445442 9y ago
    Yeah, just about as scary as GE, Disney, Time Warner et al. pushing their left wing agendas via CNN, MSNBC/NBC and ABC. See, everyone can play this game in the Postmodernist world.
    - mozumder 9y ago
      OK but now you have to explain why pushing a "left wing agenda" is supposed to be scary. Was it voting rights? Is voting rights scary? Or perhaps universal health care? Is that scary? Or a public education? Wooow that's REALLY scary! Come on.. scare us! We liberals love a good scary story!
      - Consultant32452 9y ago
        It's easy if you just blindly accept the axioms of one of the groups. You accept the axioms of left wingers, so it doesn't seem scary to you. I'm not a right winger but they could just as easily say: murdering millions of unborn children, robbing us of our right to defend ourselves, denying the right to freedom of association, infringing on our freedom of speech, infringing on our freedom of religion, etc. Those are all pretty scary.
        mozumder 9y ago
        OK now you have to prove that Disney/CNN/etc. is pushing a pro-abortion agenda. Or that they're pushing government to limit your rights to free speech or religion. Where did Disney & CNN say government should limit your rights to free speech & religion?
        Consultant32452 9y ago
        I am not a conservative so I'm voicing what I understand to be someone else's opinion. The major media companies including CNN heavily toed the government line that religious groups do not have the right to avoid paying for child murder on religious grounds. Government funded public universities regularly hassle, cancel, and provide insufficient security for conservative speakers. This is government funded censorship and the media has carefully avoided putting it in those terms because they support the position of censoring conservatives.
- rambojazz 9y ago
  - people trust local media - a single corporation owns a fuckton of those local stations - the same corporation writes a script to broadcast on every station - media hosts or journalists can't say "no". Do the job or lose your job. They're not free to report news without bias - you don't know everything about everything, so you're inclined to trust the news because they're supposed to be neutral and report facts - ultimately you internalize a biased opinion that was poured down onto you by the will of a handful of shareholders Why can't you see the problem?
  - Consultant32452 9y ago
    Not the person you're replying to, but I also have a hard time seeing the problem. Or rather, I can see the problem, but this is how I would've expected news to have been done for decades. I grew up when there was only 4 TV channels and no internet. I would have assumed CBS (or its parent) would have controlled all the CBS affiliates in this way in the 80s. NBC would do the same, etc.
    - pwg 9y ago
      Actually, no, back in that day long ago, in a world far away, the local broadcaster wasn't 'owned' by the big three. The local broadcaster was independent, and they got their feed for first run programming, and the "world news" from their affiliation (more akin to the local purchasing the rights to broadcast) with one of the big three majors. There used to be actual regulations on the books that prevented this type of consolidation from happening. Then, sometime circa. the 1980's, those laws were tossed out, leading to today where one single corporate parent controls nearly 200 local broadcasters in a very direct way.
    - Bud 9y ago
      I guess you're completely ignorant of the Fairness Doctrine, then.
      - disgruntledphd2 9y ago
        A link, in case anyone is lazy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine
- steamer25 9y ago
  It's ironic (cue pedants) because they're denouncing one-sided presentations that advance a particular agenda while using a facade of ostensibly independent-minded locals that are actually mouthpieces for their remote overlords. It betrays that their indignation isn't so much over dangers to democracy as it is their loosening grip on the ability to frame the discussion of any given day. https://youtu.be/TRBppdC1h_Y https://youtu.be/TRBppdC1h_Y https://youtu.be/0ljI-isM0bg https://youtu.be/0ljI-isM0bg
  - pdx 9y ago
    Except they're not "mouth pieces". Local journalists are much more independent than national ones. This instance by Sinclair of attempting to combat the national news broadcasters was a David vs Goliath attempt, and they are coming out of it much worse than David did.
    - tangent128 9y ago
      "Independence" is incompatible with "being forced by corporate to grant your credibilty to their talking points". You can't say Sinclair is "combating the national news broadcasters"; they themselves are a national news broadcaster. They just happen to like branding themselves with local faces.
    - dguaraglia 9y ago
      Please explain how "independent" they are, in the context of them being forced to repeat a script from Sinclair news. I'm not even sure how you can miss the contradiction.
      - dguaraglia 9y ago
        Haha, nothing gets you downvoted faster in Hacker News than expressing an anti-current-administration opinion. This place is being closely brigaded.
- digitaltrees 9y ago
  Systematically destroying the trust in all other sources of truth so that you are the only source of truth is a dangerous tactic that is used to consolidate power in the minds of a population. This argument needs to be called out any time its used and by anyone that uses it. I am on the left, if any democrat used this argument to gain power I would call them out.
wu-ikkyu 9y ago
Isn't this pretty much the case for all corporate media? The narrative is set from the top down, and if anyone strays too far outside the Overton Window, they're punished. Example: Phil Donahue getting fired from MSNBC for speaking against the war in Iraq. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Donahue#MSNBC_program https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Donahue#MSNBC_program
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- SanFranManDan 9y ago
  I think the point was that it was true for the national corporate media, but the local stations were somewhat protected until ajit pai allowed Sinclair to start sucking all of them up. Now the problems with MSNBC, Fox News, CNN, etc will pour into the local news stations as well. All local news and national news will be controlled by highly concentrated oligopolies. These past years we are seeing much more concentration of something that was already concentrated.
- SonicSoul 9y ago
  Phil Donahue was not a news anchor. What makes this case different is that this is scripted material posing as real local news as part of basic cable package. Most people will not treat this as crafted message from a corporation, but actual news.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - wu-ikkyu 9y ago
    Isn't most corporate cable news a scripted message read from a teleprompter?
    - maxerickson 9y ago
      National anchors clearly have a boss that they listen to, but they also pretty clearly have a pretty large amount of editorial control over their shows.
fwgwgwgch 9y ago
Isn't that the entire model since long of the owners of multiple local news channels? It's a running joke on reddit since so many years.
- portofcall 9y ago
  The problem is that they’re the single largest television broadcaster. Headquartered in Hunt Valley, Maryland, the company is the largest television station operator in the United States by number of stations, and largest by total coverage; owning or operating a total of 193 stations across the country (233 after all currently proposed sales are approved) in over 100 markets (covering 40% of American households), many of which are located in the South and Midwest.
  - yborg 9y ago
    With the shift to the various 21st century streaming platforms, broadcast TV in its traditional form is rapidly becoming the bastion of the elderly. The average traditional broadcast news viewer is 50+[1] so very soon Sinclair will be dominating retirement homes everywhere in America. It's a demographic that will literally die out from under them, and seems like a poor long-term investment. [1] http://www.journalism.org/2016/07/07/pathways-to-news/ http://www.journalism.org/2016/07/07/pathways-to-news/
    - portofcall 9y ago
      You may not be aware of this, but typically you don’t enter a nursing home at 50. Either way, Sinclair is also well into streaming services, which you could have discovered with even a cursory glance at their Wikipedia page. Of course, a huge number of people, especially people who vote, are in that same age bracket.
nimbius 9y ago
It is important to reinforce the wholesomeness, and trustworthiness, of your brand or product when that product faces the significant risk of potential legislative regulation in light of growing aversion to its decades-long embrace of lies, manipulation, and 'fake news' in the pursuit of ratings and shareholder value. Sinclair has taken up the mantle of PR Firm to engage in some preemptive damage control. 15 years ago all you had to say was "Fair and Balanced."
- vinhboy 9y ago
  You are way way way way too optimistic... It is clear by the current state of our politics that there is no repercussion for lying. The fact that Sinclair has been growing is evidence of that.
Ajedi32 9y ago
FYI, the article seems to be linking to a reupload of the original video for some reason. This is the original: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWLjYJ4BzvI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWLjYJ4BzvI
- mandelbulb 9y ago
  Nah, they've just linked to another upload -- if you want to know the account, the link under "social media" points to the same video as the embed one. Besides, the original is Deadspin's article[1]. The video was downloaded and posted on Youtube. The Reddit user said that oneself. Deadspin, of course, also got the idea and news elsewhere, e.g., the linked ThinkProgress video in the article. [1] https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/how-americas-largest-local-tv-owner-turned-its-news-anc-1824233490 https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/how-americas-largest-local...
nsxwolf 9y ago
This is extremely dangerous to our democracy.
- robotrout 9y ago
  I agree. 232 people control the news that 277 million americans are allowed to see. ([1] from 2012). Many of us have been pounding this drum for a long time, including Trump himself. I think it is this control at a national level that the Sinclair news anchors were being told to warn people about, but the NYT has flipped the narrative on them, and now they're the bad guys. Genius, but unfortunate. [1] http://www.businessinsider.com/these-6-corporations-control-90-of-the-media-in-america-2012-6 http://www.businessinsider.com/these-6-corporations-control-...
  - losteric 9y ago
    > Many of us have been pounding this drum for a long time, including Trump himself. Can you cite that? It sounds like prime material for Reddit's /r/TrumpCriticizesTrump/
    - robotrout 9y ago
      Cite it? Fake News has been his mantra for awhile. I think you'll find it.
      - losteric 9y ago
        I don't see how "fake news" relates to media monopolization. It's just a fallacious outright rejection of unpleasant news. In fact, Trump just stated he supports Sinclair's monopolization.
        mistermann 9y ago
        Monopolization is highly beneficial to facilitating fake news, you don't see that?
HugoDaniel 9y ago
They most likely had their speeches written by the same person/people/company. It goes like that in most countries: a big media outlet sells pre-made news/opinions to most newspapers which they then only adapt slightly and keep most of the taglines and significant phrasing.
- sp332 9y ago
  The script came from Sinclair Broadcast Group, the country’s largest broadcaster, which owns or operates 193 television stations. Last week, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer published a copy of the speech and reported that employees at a local news station there, KOMO, were unhappy about the script. CNN reported on it on March 7 and said Scott Livingston, the senior vice president of news for Sinclair, had read almost the exact same speech for a segment that was distributed to outlets a year ago.
- Someone1234 9y ago
  It was the same exact speech. The only variance was "we at [TV station name]."
- KirinDave 9y ago
  Hugo. Please, PLEASE read and watch the material before commenting here.
braderhart 9y ago
Here is an article talking about Trump's response on Twitter, which is basically saying that propaganda is okay because it is to fight all the other fake news: http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/381229-trump-defends-sinclair-its-funny-to-watch-fake-news-networks http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/381229-trump-defe...
fwgwgwgch 9y ago
Why is the part about Sinclair news reporting on "Islamic terror" and "Trump support" singled out. Do they not report on anything else at all? Or is reporting on both this stuff by default a wrong thing to do?
- losteric 9y ago
  Sinclair does not report on anything. Local TV stations do their own journalism, but Sinclair owns the station and can order the local broadcasters to read scripts. Those topics are likely the only ones with concrete evidence.
- FSharper 9y ago
  I’m sure glad we have Paul Graham and @dang to tell us this is wrong!
- ahoy 9y ago
  Sinclair are a media company that owns local news stations. For the past few years, they've been feeding "must run" content (in the form of pre-recorded segments or scripts for anchors to read) to those news stations to be presented along side news. Those segments are, overwhelmingly, right-wing talking points.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
rhacker 9y ago
Seems like we need to get more people cord-cut immediately...
- eligundry 9y ago
  Youtube recommends far more dangerous stuff.
  - CivilEngineer 9y ago
    This is a very good point. Anyone who gets "news" from what's big on YouTube would be severely lacking in diverse points of view.
- x220 9y ago
  So that they can be manipulated by internet media monopolies instead?
MrPresident 9y ago
Why is this news? Conan covered this years ago. https://mic.com/articles/77721/watch-conan-o-brien-bust-local-tv-news-stations-for-running-the-exact-same-story#.5rRTuSPfw https://mic.com/articles/77721/watch-conan-o-brien-bust-loca...
- Someone1234 9y ago
  Because Sinclair just purchased more TV stations, so many in fact that it was banned under previous administrations at the FCC. At the start of 2017, the FCC just rewrote the rules allowing Sinclair to own a large swath of the US's local news capacity. In many markets they're the sole source of local news. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-07/sinclair-said-close-to-buying-tribune-for-about-45-a-share https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-07/sinclair-...
  - jandrese 9y ago
    They're also the most likely candidate to pick up the pieces when iHeartRadio goes bankrupt. They're going to have the strongest propaganda outlet since the times of Hearst newspapers. This is an abject failure of the FCC.
    - pdx 9y ago
      I am delighted to hear on HN, somebody admit the possibility of propaganda in the USA without being downvoted. That you did it as an attack on non-left-leaning thought is fine. At least you get that it can happen. It's a start.
    - SauciestGNU 9y ago
      I'm not sure it's a failure so much as the desired outcome for the right. Controlling the information people have access to allows them to fight against those pesky "facts" and "science".
    - Bud 9y ago
      The FCC hasn't failed, here. They were intentionally hamstrung by the right wing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine
ilamont 9y ago
There are many threats to democracy, but this is not one of them. Audience numbers for local TV news (not to mention national TV news) is shrinking across the U.S. Younger people in particular will not sit down to watch a 30 minute talking-heads newscast stuffed to the gills with car, telecom, and insurance ads. See: https://www.poynter.org/news/new-pew-study-says-local-tv-news-viewing-dropping-fast https://www.poynter.org/news/new-pew-study-says-local-tv-new...
- ahoy 9y ago
  Old people watch more local news and vote at higher rates than any other demographic group.
  - mschuster91 9y ago
    > Old people [...] vote at higher rates than any other demographic group. Now that one is bound to change. Young people, both in the US and abroad, are discovering the powers of social media and organize to advance their causes. Trump with his backwards, racist and misogynistic rhetoric and his politics mostly serving the old, white, male population provides a perfect enemy figure to rally against. Somewhere on Reddit I have read that from now until the elections this fall there will be 4 million young people turning old enough to vote (sounds about right, given ~4M births per year in the US). That's a massive block of voters and most of them will either vote Democrat or some of the fringe parties.
    - maxerickson 9y ago
      It's pretty likely that most of them won't vote at all. The ones that vote will probably tend to vote as you indicate.
    - robotrout 9y ago
      I would flag your post if I could. Your provocative statements are not productive and are off-topic. You are obviously some sort of activist. This is not the place for it. From your bio: " You call it "alt-left", I proudly call it "Antifa".
WhompingWindows 9y ago
In my eyes, this is a clear set/spike play. A huge corporation, enabled by their corrupt allies in the FCC, buy up hundreds of "local" stations. They then use the local cred/reputation of these stations to suggest that fake news is rampant on other sources (not controlled by Sinclair). They then tilt the dialogue nation-wide. Meanwhile, the average citizen is unaware that their trusted local anchor is bought/sold, they lack education and resources to educate themselves, and they are pushed further towards whatever dialogue the Sinclair executives are paid to push them towards. Does anyone from either side of the aisle consider a national corporation owning local stations and forcing scripts down their throat a good thing for the marketplace of ideas?
- meri_dian 9y ago
  How is that any different from major news organizations like CNN with a national reach clearly pushing biased anti-Trump news constantly? It's funny: Trump attacks CNN for being fake, biased news, then CNN responds by focusing all of their negative reporting on Trump, becoming exactly what Trump says they are. People would have had much more respect for CNN if they had stuck to the middle path in the face of Trump's insults. We should not turn a blind eye towards some instances of bias in media simply because they reinforce our own values and beliefs.
  - nitrogen 9y ago
    Instead of derailing with "you too", can we focus on one thing at a time? National news programs are a separate issue from secretly biased local news.
    - meri_dian 9y ago
      CNN doesn't stand up and say "we're devoting our reporting resources to all things anti Trump, this is our bias, it's not secret". They simply report the news they choose to report. Just like Sinclair. People watch the news hoping to get an accurate depiction of reality. When only one side of a multifaceted situation is reported on, the depiction becomes distorted. It's never OK to do this, regardless of whose side you're on.
thaumaturgy 9y ago
Trump recently took DACA off the negotiating table, announcing it in a tweet, citing a Fox News & Friends segment on 'caravans' of inbound immigrants: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration/trump-says-daca-deal-for-young-immigrants-is-off-idUSKCN1H81C1 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration/trump-say... The President is watching this same garbage and making policy decisions based on it. Let that sink in for a moment.
- robotrout 9y ago
  If you watched the state of the union, you know that Trump made a proposal about DACA that was such a huge compromise to the left, that much of his base raised hell. The left refused that compromise, and refused again, when he asked for DACA and the wall to be addressed in the latest spending bill. Since he has twice been rebuffed on his compromises, he's going the other way. That seems reasonable to me.
  - meri_dian 9y ago
    It's sad that the congressional Democracts are so focused on damaging Trump politically that they are unwilling to compromise on border security funding to produce a permanent DACA solution. As you say, Trump gave it to them on a silver platter!
    - Bud 9y ago
      No, it is in fact not "sad" that Democrats will not allow Trump to spend billions of dollars to build an ineffectual and innately-offensive "wall" between us and one of our closest allies. There can be no "compromise" on proposals as offensive and wasteful as this.
      - bradleyankrom 9y ago
        also, Mexico was gonna pay for it, 'member?
        9y ago
nemild 9y ago
For anyone interested, I'm always open to PRs for the "Media Literacy for Engineers" doc I put together: https://github.com/nemild/hacking-engineers https://github.com/nemild/hacking-engineers Examples like this are what I include, about how third-parties can manipulate media sources for their own ends.
cirrus-clouds 9y ago
Charlie Brooker did an excellent spoof video of the way news is reported. The video is 8 years old (made in 2010) but it still rings true today: How to report the news: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHun58mz3vI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHun58mz3vI Every TV news report on the economy in one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HN2iVe8_Ato https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HN2iVe8_Ato
mattnewton 9y ago
What better way to drive home the point that news is bought to influence people, then to buy a bunch of local news channels and use it to tell people that? There is some beautiful symmetry here, even if it was unintentional.
rhapsodic 9y ago
Those news anchors were either OK with the contents of the script they were ordered to read, or they were gutless cowards for not resigning or allowing themselves to be fired.
- macintux 9y ago
  The journalism job market ain't what it used to be. I find it hard to label people trying to keep their family fed and housed as "gutless cowards."
  - ModernMech 9y ago
    The problem is your excuse is used to justify any action all the way down to killing Jews in a gas chamber. "I was just doing as I was told" Sure no one is being gassed here, bit this seems pretty subversive. I have a family to feed too, we all do, but I also chose my line of work so that I'm comfortable saying "No" to the boss (and have had to quit because of this in the past).
    - macintux 9y ago
      Slippery slope is not a compelling argument.
      - iambateman 9y ago
        At least ModernMech made an argument, which you have chosen not to do. Dismissiveness is not a compelling argument. Journalists have a social duty to tell the truth, as they understand it. This duty in particular extends to keeping a check on government. Participating in the deployment of propaganda is not a slippery slope, it is a violation of trust. If our journalists are willing to participate, then we have a problem.
        macintux 9y ago
        > Participating in the deployment of propaganda is not a slippery slope, it is a violation of trust. If our journalists are willing to participate, then we have a problem. I agree, and my intent originally was not to downplay the core problem, but to point out that dismissing them as "gutless cowards" was not the ideal way to approach it.
analogmemory 9y ago
Last Week Tonight (John Oliver) dove into this last year. It's really frustrating that they can leverage so much political sway under the cover of "news reporting". Then forcing news stations to broadcast this garbage. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvtNyOzGogc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvtNyOzGogc
- ModernMech 9y ago
  He did a follow up last night with this new development.
- rlindgren 9y ago
  "👎" to the John Oliver reference. His "reporting" is as biased as it gets. His show is written in a style that convinces the subconscious to accept presented arguments without engaging any serious logical scrutiny. Just try to remember if at any point during any of his broadcasts you actually analyzed the subject of his monologues, rather than simply furthering the thought-process that he was laying out for you. Chances are that you never have because it's written to be persuasive (obviously) and only incidentally informative. Sadly, I know this is precisely what many people now believe "journalism" to be...
  - somebehemoth 9y ago
    John Oliver hosts a late night talk show and he is primarily a comedian. He is not a journalist so your commentary on journalism seems misplaced on this point.
    - akoncius 9y ago
      what are you trying to say? That given he is comedian, his reporting is less credible or audience should receive his stories less seriously or what? Given that he throws a joke from time to time, does it mean that it's less reporting and more comedy?
      - ModernMech 9y ago
philipodonnell 9y ago
It seems like the issue is a lack of competition, if I don't like what Sinclair is saying I can not watch it, but if they own all the stations then I don't have that choice. The FCC did all this while everyone was distracted with net neutrality, so even if it came up again there the FCC knows how to distract people already. I'm just not sure what I as a viewer/voter can do about except wait for the next election, and even then, there's no guarantee that the candidate who wins is going to do anything about it. But... looking at the list of stations Sinclair owns[0]... where are the markets that they control all the stations, defined as ABC+NBC+FOX+CBS? I honestly don't see any. Is this more of a concern if they do manage to get all of these, or if the merger with Tribune Media goes through? 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_stations_owned_or_operated_by_Sinclair_Broadcast_Group https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_stations_owned_or_oper...
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- creaghpatr 9y ago
  >or if the merger with Tribune Media goes through? That's the whole reason this is a story. The viral clip was assembled by far-left think tank ThinkProgress to attempt to torpedo the merger by stirring up public outcry. And of course, the mainstream media, who indirectly compete against these local stations, is happy to support these efforts.
  - trose 9y ago
    are we getting russian trolls in HN as well? I thought we were here to have intelligent discussions. Not political nonsense about "mainstream media"
    - creaghpatr 9y ago
      You are trying to dismiss my point of view by accusing me of being a Russian troll?
    - dang 9y ago
ChicagoDave 9y ago
I do see this as a bad thing, but I also know that everyone under 40 gets their news from the web. The target audience for these channels are older people who don't read news online or on mobile phones. In a way, Sinclair is becoming a TV streaming service. I sense the badness, but I also think they run the risk of spending a lot of money on a wasted effort. You can only influence people if they're dumb _and_ watching your news programs. Seems like a dwindling market if you ask me. People already have FOX News and they've reached their ceiling (35% of the population). Sinclair is going to run into the same demographic problem.
- x220 9y ago
  >You can only influence people if they're dumb _and_ watching your news programs. Seems like a dwindling market if you ask me. The amount of people watching TV is going down, but the proportion of people who think uncritically is skyrocketing.
- sitkack 9y ago
  Isn't the rate of voting much higher for 40+? As a method for controlling a large block of voters, this probably pretty effective. How many of these people are also going to see other sources of news? They probably have the TV on for comfort (fear), everything else is a side effect.
- anigbrowl 9y ago
  I have gotten my news from web for 25 years but I still watch local news 2 night s a week - to see coverage of some local issue, to check on the weather or see a bit of a baseball game, or just by default. And while people over 40 are generally in the second half of their lives and heading for the demographic exits, that doesn't mean they're politically irrelevant. They're far more likely to vote, more likely to be homeowners/property tax payers (with the political heft that that gives), and have greater financial and political heft than their younger counterparts. You're naive if you think they're just bumbling along without thinking of much of anything. Just because you find that demographic boring and personally irrelevant doesn't mean they can't exert political power over you int eh aggregate. Many such people are willing to have their opinions shaped or validated by broadcast media and act accordingly. Take Fox News; it's easy to make fun of their audience, because who int heir right mind would take people like Sean Hannity seriously? And yet millions do, and their existence and hostility cannot be wished away. Incidentally, just "getting your news from the web" is no guarantee of objectivity either. Come on, we live in a society where people in high places tweet links to Infowars or Qanon conspiracy theories non-ironically.
swerveonem 9y ago
How much would it cost to buy all that airtime?
AlphaWeaver 9y ago
The actual video they talked about is linked on this [1] page... It's mildly haunting to watch... [1]: https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/how-americas-largest-local-tv-owner-turned-its-news-anc-1824233490 https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/how-americas-largest-local...
shadowtree 9y ago
The branding of those stations is the core problem, no? Says ABC/NBC/Fox - but actually that's just a logo. Why not have them clearly labeled as Sinclair, then consumer would know. And maybe still be fine with it. This way it's indeed shady.
rglover 9y ago
Nothing new. I worked in a newsroom as an intern and most major news stations rely (maybe, relied, it's been a few years) on a tool like ENPS. It's made by the Associated Press and has a "wire" feature where new stories come into. So, e.g., if there was a plane crash, that message would be pushed out to all newsrooms that rely on ENPS. The news producers were lazy, too. They'd literally take the script that ENPS pushes out, tweak a few words, and put it on air. I was working in a minor midwestern market (Toledo, Ohio). If you watched the evening broadcasts in the same market and nationally, you'd frequently see the same stories and similar verbiage popping up. Being surprised by a broadcast group like Sinclair was forcing a narrative is like being surprised that the sky is blue. The "news" is highly filtered and easily controlled. To think otherwise is deliberate ignorance. The broadcasting industry is corrupt and untrustworthy as all hell. My father worked in it at a high level (owning licenses and stations) and he'd frequently come home from trips either stone faced or frustrated beyond belief: https://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/22/business/media/22spectrum.html https://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/22/business/media/22spectrum... (he's the stately looking black fella throwing a fit in this piece). To trust anything the mass media tells you is to severely handicap your intelligence. Unfortunately, large swats of the general public do exactly that. /rant
- ptr_void 9y ago
  Where do you suggest people go to get their news instead ?
  - stronglikedan 9y ago
    One must try to find points of view from all "sides", and then apply critical thinking to everything that one reads/hears. Every source is very biased and full of a lot of (mostly, really) shit, but the facts can be discerned if personal biases give way to objective analysis.
    - beat 9y ago
      That's the logical failing of the moderate - to reduce everything to opinion and bias, and ignore the existence of fact. If one side says 2+2=4, and the other side said 2+2=6, the truth is not that 2+2=5 and everyone needs to stop being so partisan.
korethr 9y ago
So, this explains the creepy video I saw over the weekend, of numerous news stations reciting the same canned speech, verbatim. When I see one station doing it, or similar sentiment from multiple stations in their own words, that might slightly temper my cynicism about the (lack of) objectivity and truthfulness of the news. But when I see shit like this, it only serves to harden my cynicism.
- krapp 9y ago
  >So, this explains the creepy video I saw over the weekend, of numerous news stations reciting the same canned speech, verbatim. Local news stations receive packages and content with scripts pre-written from national networks and other sources all the time. It's not a conspiracy, and it shouldn't cast doubt on the truthfulness of a story. Television news is a scripted medium, and most stations don't have the time or talent to write a completely unique script for every newscast from scratch.
  - sjwright 9y ago
    When it's the introduction to a news package, fair enough. When it's a politically charged attack on competitors, it crosses a pretty uncomfortable line.
jessaustin 9y ago
After making it about halfway through the comments here, I flagged TFA. It is probably "hypocritical" for me to say this, since I also have political opinions. Here it is anyway: despite the widespread understanding that "mainstream" news media leans Democrat, the fact that USA president is controversial and drives increased viewership has added tens of millions of dollars to their bottom lines. This would make a thoughtful person wonder just how committed to the Democrats (or "the truth"?) they really are. Similar observations about other media firms are left as an exercise for the reader.
beat 9y ago
It's kind of sad to see a potentially important discussion here devolve into a: off-topic threads about policy (DACA), or partisan trolling about #fakenews to derail the subject away from Sinclair. That said, something I'm curious about... how many people still get their news primarily from local tv broadcast in this day and age? And what are the age ranges of those people? Lacking any actual data, I'd suggest by complete conjecture that it's not that many, and they skew much older than the general population. I'd be surprised if anyone under the age of 30 watches local tv news regularly at all. I know that personally, I watch so little local news that when I do, the cognitive dissonance is kind of jarring. And when do I watch it? Mostly, when visiting my Baby Boomer in-laws...
- HankB99 9y ago
  I watch morning news in the Chicago market for weather and traffic. I suppose I also get local news. And I get irked because I don't think cute Youtube videos are news but regardless of the station I can't seem to escape that. I'm getting tired of the transplant doctor that dresses up as a Star Wars character (the big furry thing) to deliver good news. Maybe I'm getting too old or just not enough of a Star Wars fan. (Wookie. That's the thing that the doctor impersonates.) I looked for Sinclair station ownership in this market and according to The Book of Knowledge (Wikipedia) there is none.
daodedickinson 9y ago
You've never seen these kind of videos before? Local news stations have been gutted for at least a decade and they get just about all their non-local content in this way.
cmurf 9y ago
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. Sinclair is far superior to CNN and even more Fake NBC, which is a total joke. https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/980799183425802240 https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/98079918342580224... I think it's reasonable to conclude that POTUS likes that Sinclair compels local news anchors to recite scripts that present a favorable impression of, support for, his policies or him personally. This is the American crony capitalism version of what Putin did with his state media in order to gain and retain control of the country, and destroy his adversaries. Trump won't have to have his adversaries poisoned. He's poisoning the ability for people to triangulate. And near as I can tell this is what people who support him want. They do not want contrary opinions. They want an autocrat.
CodeWriter23 9y ago
The interesting thing here is the groupthink believes this methodology is unique to Sinclair.
squozzer 9y ago
A certain conservative radio talk show host has a hobby of stringing together identical-sounding phrases from various sources in the establishment media, as if they all read from the same memo. It seemed certain someone had coordinated their talking points. Is the Sinclair issue that much different? Presumably the former example was performed by a group of like-minded individuals operating under some flavor of free will, who arrived at a consensus. But we can't be sure that was the process. They might have been coerced, or merely chose to parrot each other regardless of circumstance, because they found themselves so well aligned. Sinclair, on the other hand, assumed obedience by virtue of signing the checks. That said, I don't know if this situation is as scary as it used to be, now that we've had some experience with the power of more monolithic-appearing news sources such as FB and Google.
RickJWag 9y ago
Reminds me of when Trump won the Republican nomination-- a gob of stories ran with basically the same theme and spin. There's no such thing as straight news. It's all spin, one way or the other. Here's Politico's take on the Trump speech lockstep reaction: https://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/trump-convention-speech-media-226010 https://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/trump-convention-spee...
Fjolsvith 9y ago
This is a non issue for my household either way. We cut the cord a year ago and haven't missed the spin doctors and commercial breaks.

Next time they'll give them all slightly different scripts, so they'll know who to fire when it leaks.

I'm not clear why this is a problem. A corporation asked its broadcasters to make a statement on fake news. This statement sounds similar to others made by other corporate owned networks. Viewers are invited to comment on the website.

alistairSH 9y ago
The problem is the corporation. Sinclair has it's own political agenda. Forcing anchors across the US to recite something is bad enough, but when that something is of questionable truth, and orchestrated to minimuze Sinclair's own propensity to push its right-ist agenda, it's downright scary.
- robotrout 9y ago
  Local stations are the least of our problems. 232 executives control news to 277 million Americans (from 2012). This was what I hoped the article was about. http://www.businessinsider.com/these-6-corporations-control-90-of-the-media-in-america-2012-6 http://www.businessinsider.com/these-6-corporations-control-...
  - electricEmu 9y ago
    Ignoring local stations makes the situation worse.
- ThbTs4wbXC9Qjv 9y ago
  I'm FAR more concerned about national stations like CNN than local Sinclair stations. Just anti-american agenda based news non-stop. Some of us happen to like the country we live in.
  - andybak 9y ago
    You can like your country and still be critical of behaviour done in it's name. In fact - I would say it's a duty. If you care about something, you care about it's well being and reputation. Would you call reporting on, say, The Mai Lai Massacre or the Kent State shootings "anti-american"? How about Monica Lewinsky or Watergate?
  - wyldfire 9y ago
    Can you clarify what you mean by "anti-american agenda"? Questioning authority is absolutely the most appropriate task for the free press. IMO at least this part is not "anti-american". Let's further the discussion -- take a look at http://lite.cnn.io/en http://lite.cnn.io/en -- there's about 40-50 stories there. Please pick the top five or ten and help illustrate which among those demonstrate the bias you refer to. Or if the problem is less widespread, please indicate which among the 40-50 there illustrate the bias.
- 0x445442 9y ago
  Yeah, just about as scary as GE, Disney, Time Warner et al. pushing their left wing agendas via CNN, MSNBC/NBC and ABC. See, everyone can play this game in the Postmodernist world.
  - mozumder 9y ago
    OK but now you have to explain why pushing a "left wing agenda" is supposed to be scary. Was it voting rights? Is voting rights scary? Or perhaps universal health care? Is that scary? Or a public education? Wooow that's REALLY scary! Come on.. scare us! We liberals love a good scary story!
    - Consultant32452 9y ago
      It's easy if you just blindly accept the axioms of one of the groups. You accept the axioms of left wingers, so it doesn't seem scary to you. I'm not a right winger but they could just as easily say: murdering millions of unborn children, robbing us of our right to defend ourselves, denying the right to freedom of association, infringing on our freedom of speech, infringing on our freedom of religion, etc. Those are all pretty scary.
      - mozumder 9y ago
        OK now you have to prove that Disney/CNN/etc. is pushing a pro-abortion agenda. Or that they're pushing government to limit your rights to free speech or religion. Where did Disney & CNN say government should limit your rights to free speech & religion?
        Consultant32452 9y ago
        I am not a conservative so I'm voicing what I understand to be someone else's opinion. The major media companies including CNN heavily toed the government line that religious groups do not have the right to avoid paying for child murder on religious grounds. Government funded public universities regularly hassle, cancel, and provide insufficient security for conservative speakers. This is government funded censorship and the media has carefully avoided putting it in those terms because they support the position of censoring conservatives.
rambojazz 9y ago
- people trust local media - a single corporation owns a fuckton of those local stations - the same corporation writes a script to broadcast on every station - media hosts or journalists can't say "no". Do the job or lose your job. They're not free to report news without bias - you don't know everything about everything, so you're inclined to trust the news because they're supposed to be neutral and report facts - ultimately you internalize a biased opinion that was poured down onto you by the will of a handful of shareholders Why can't you see the problem?
- Consultant32452 9y ago
  Not the person you're replying to, but I also have a hard time seeing the problem. Or rather, I can see the problem, but this is how I would've expected news to have been done for decades. I grew up when there was only 4 TV channels and no internet. I would have assumed CBS (or its parent) would have controlled all the CBS affiliates in this way in the 80s. NBC would do the same, etc.
  - pwg 9y ago
    Actually, no, back in that day long ago, in a world far away, the local broadcaster wasn't 'owned' by the big three. The local broadcaster was independent, and they got their feed for first run programming, and the "world news" from their affiliation (more akin to the local purchasing the rights to broadcast) with one of the big three majors. There used to be actual regulations on the books that prevented this type of consolidation from happening. Then, sometime circa. the 1980's, those laws were tossed out, leading to today where one single corporate parent controls nearly 200 local broadcasters in a very direct way.
  - Bud 9y ago
    I guess you're completely ignorant of the Fairness Doctrine, then.
    - disgruntledphd2 9y ago
      A link, in case anyone is lazy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine
steamer25 9y ago
It's ironic (cue pedants) because they're denouncing one-sided presentations that advance a particular agenda while using a facade of ostensibly independent-minded locals that are actually mouthpieces for their remote overlords. It betrays that their indignation isn't so much over dangers to democracy as it is their loosening grip on the ability to frame the discussion of any given day. https://youtu.be/TRBppdC1h_Y https://youtu.be/TRBppdC1h_Y https://youtu.be/0ljI-isM0bg https://youtu.be/0ljI-isM0bg
- pdx 9y ago
  Except they're not "mouth pieces". Local journalists are much more independent than national ones. This instance by Sinclair of attempting to combat the national news broadcasters was a David vs Goliath attempt, and they are coming out of it much worse than David did.
  - tangent128 9y ago
    "Independence" is incompatible with "being forced by corporate to grant your credibilty to their talking points". You can't say Sinclair is "combating the national news broadcasters"; they themselves are a national news broadcaster. They just happen to like branding themselves with local faces.
  - dguaraglia 9y ago
    Please explain how "independent" they are, in the context of them being forced to repeat a script from Sinclair news. I'm not even sure how you can miss the contradiction.
    - dguaraglia 9y ago
      Haha, nothing gets you downvoted faster in Hacker News than expressing an anti-current-administration opinion. This place is being closely brigaded.
digitaltrees 9y ago
Systematically destroying the trust in all other sources of truth so that you are the only source of truth is a dangerous tactic that is used to consolidate power in the minds of a population. This argument needs to be called out any time its used and by anyone that uses it. I am on the left, if any democrat used this argument to gain power I would call them out.

wu-ikkyu 9y ago

Isn't this pretty much the case for all corporate media? The narrative is set from the top down, and if anyone strays too far outside the Overton Window, they're punished. Example: Phil Donahue getting fired from MSNBC for speaking against the war in Iraq. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Donahue#MSNBC_program https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Donahue#MSNBC_program

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SanFranManDan 9y ago
I think the point was that it was true for the national corporate media, but the local stations were somewhat protected until ajit pai allowed Sinclair to start sucking all of them up. Now the problems with MSNBC, Fox News, CNN, etc will pour into the local news stations as well. All local news and national news will be controlled by highly concentrated oligopolies. These past years we are seeing much more concentration of something that was already concentrated.
SonicSoul 9y ago
Phil Donahue was not a news anchor. What makes this case different is that this is scripted material posing as real local news as part of basic cable package. Most people will not treat this as crafted message from a corporation, but actual news.
- deleted 9y ago
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- wu-ikkyu 9y ago
  Isn't most corporate cable news a scripted message read from a teleprompter?
  - maxerickson 9y ago
    National anchors clearly have a boss that they listen to, but they also pretty clearly have a pretty large amount of editorial control over their shows.

fwgwgwgch 9y ago

Isn't that the entire model since long of the owners of multiple local news channels? It's a running joke on reddit since so many years.

portofcall 9y ago
The problem is that they’re the single largest television broadcaster. Headquartered in Hunt Valley, Maryland, the company is the largest television station operator in the United States by number of stations, and largest by total coverage; owning or operating a total of 193 stations across the country (233 after all currently proposed sales are approved) in over 100 markets (covering 40% of American households), many of which are located in the South and Midwest.
- yborg 9y ago
  With the shift to the various 21st century streaming platforms, broadcast TV in its traditional form is rapidly becoming the bastion of the elderly. The average traditional broadcast news viewer is 50+[1] so very soon Sinclair will be dominating retirement homes everywhere in America. It's a demographic that will literally die out from under them, and seems like a poor long-term investment. [1] http://www.journalism.org/2016/07/07/pathways-to-news/ http://www.journalism.org/2016/07/07/pathways-to-news/
  - portofcall 9y ago
    You may not be aware of this, but typically you don’t enter a nursing home at 50. Either way, Sinclair is also well into streaming services, which you could have discovered with even a cursory glance at their Wikipedia page. Of course, a huge number of people, especially people who vote, are in that same age bracket.

nimbius 9y ago

It is important to reinforce the wholesomeness, and trustworthiness, of your brand or product when that product faces the significant risk of potential legislative regulation in light of growing aversion to its decades-long embrace of lies, manipulation, and 'fake news' in the pursuit of ratings and shareholder value. Sinclair has taken up the mantle of PR Firm to engage in some preemptive damage control. 15 years ago all you had to say was "Fair and Balanced."

vinhboy 9y ago
You are way way way way too optimistic... It is clear by the current state of our politics that there is no repercussion for lying. The fact that Sinclair has been growing is evidence of that.

Ajedi32 9y ago

FYI, the article seems to be linking to a reupload of the original video for some reason. This is the original: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWLjYJ4BzvI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWLjYJ4BzvI

mandelbulb 9y ago
Nah, they've just linked to another upload -- if you want to know the account, the link under "social media" points to the same video as the embed one. Besides, the original is Deadspin's article[1]. The video was downloaded and posted on Youtube. The Reddit user said that oneself. Deadspin, of course, also got the idea and news elsewhere, e.g., the linked ThinkProgress video in the article. [1] https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/how-americas-largest-local-tv-owner-turned-its-news-anc-1824233490 https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/how-americas-largest-local...

nsxwolf 9y ago

This is extremely dangerous to our democracy.

robotrout 9y ago
I agree. 232 people control the news that 277 million americans are allowed to see. ([1] from 2012). Many of us have been pounding this drum for a long time, including Trump himself. I think it is this control at a national level that the Sinclair news anchors were being told to warn people about, but the NYT has flipped the narrative on them, and now they're the bad guys. Genius, but unfortunate. [1] http://www.businessinsider.com/these-6-corporations-control-90-of-the-media-in-america-2012-6 http://www.businessinsider.com/these-6-corporations-control-...
- losteric 9y ago
  > Many of us have been pounding this drum for a long time, including Trump himself. Can you cite that? It sounds like prime material for Reddit's /r/TrumpCriticizesTrump/
  - robotrout 9y ago
    Cite it? Fake News has been his mantra for awhile. I think you'll find it.
    - losteric 9y ago
      I don't see how "fake news" relates to media monopolization. It's just a fallacious outright rejection of unpleasant news. In fact, Trump just stated he supports Sinclair's monopolization.
      - mistermann 9y ago
        Monopolization is highly beneficial to facilitating fake news, you don't see that?

HugoDaniel 9y ago

They most likely had their speeches written by the same person/people/company. It goes like that in most countries: a big media outlet sells pre-made news/opinions to most newspapers which they then only adapt slightly and keep most of the taglines and significant phrasing.

sp332 9y ago
The script came from Sinclair Broadcast Group, the country’s largest broadcaster, which owns or operates 193 television stations. Last week, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer published a copy of the speech and reported that employees at a local news station there, KOMO, were unhappy about the script. CNN reported on it on March 7 and said Scott Livingston, the senior vice president of news for Sinclair, had read almost the exact same speech for a segment that was distributed to outlets a year ago.
Someone1234 9y ago
It was the same exact speech. The only variance was "we at [TV station name]."
KirinDave 9y ago
Hugo. Please, PLEASE read and watch the material before commenting here.

braderhart 9y ago

Here is an article talking about Trump's response on Twitter, which is basically saying that propaganda is okay because it is to fight all the other fake news: http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/381229-trump-defends-sinclair-its-funny-to-watch-fake-news-networks http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/381229-trump-defe...

fwgwgwgch 9y ago

Why is the part about Sinclair news reporting on "Islamic terror" and "Trump support" singled out. Do they not report on anything else at all? Or is reporting on both this stuff by default a wrong thing to do?

losteric 9y ago
Sinclair does not report on anything. Local TV stations do their own journalism, but Sinclair owns the station and can order the local broadcasters to read scripts. Those topics are likely the only ones with concrete evidence.
FSharper 9y ago
I’m sure glad we have Paul Graham and @dang to tell us this is wrong!
ahoy 9y ago
Sinclair are a media company that owns local news stations. For the past few years, they've been feeding "must run" content (in the form of pre-recorded segments or scripts for anchors to read) to those news stations to be presented along side news. Those segments are, overwhelmingly, right-wing talking points.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

rhacker 9y ago

Seems like we need to get more people cord-cut immediately...

eligundry 9y ago
Youtube recommends far more dangerous stuff.
- CivilEngineer 9y ago
  This is a very good point. Anyone who gets "news" from what's big on YouTube would be severely lacking in diverse points of view.
x220 9y ago
So that they can be manipulated by internet media monopolies instead?

MrPresident 9y ago

Why is this news? Conan covered this years ago. https://mic.com/articles/77721/watch-conan-o-brien-bust-local-tv-news-stations-for-running-the-exact-same-story#.5rRTuSPfw https://mic.com/articles/77721/watch-conan-o-brien-bust-loca...

Someone1234 9y ago
Because Sinclair just purchased more TV stations, so many in fact that it was banned under previous administrations at the FCC. At the start of 2017, the FCC just rewrote the rules allowing Sinclair to own a large swath of the US's local news capacity. In many markets they're the sole source of local news. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-07/sinclair-said-close-to-buying-tribune-for-about-45-a-share https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-07/sinclair-...
- jandrese 9y ago
  They're also the most likely candidate to pick up the pieces when iHeartRadio goes bankrupt. They're going to have the strongest propaganda outlet since the times of Hearst newspapers. This is an abject failure of the FCC.
  - pdx 9y ago
    I am delighted to hear on HN, somebody admit the possibility of propaganda in the USA without being downvoted. That you did it as an attack on non-left-leaning thought is fine. At least you get that it can happen. It's a start.
  - SauciestGNU 9y ago
    I'm not sure it's a failure so much as the desired outcome for the right. Controlling the information people have access to allows them to fight against those pesky "facts" and "science".
  - Bud 9y ago
    The FCC hasn't failed, here. They were intentionally hamstrung by the right wing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine

ilamont 9y ago

There are many threats to democracy, but this is not one of them. Audience numbers for local TV news (not to mention national TV news) is shrinking across the U.S. Younger people in particular will not sit down to watch a 30 minute talking-heads newscast stuffed to the gills with car, telecom, and insurance ads. See: https://www.poynter.org/news/new-pew-study-says-local-tv-news-viewing-dropping-fast https://www.poynter.org/news/new-pew-study-says-local-tv-new...

ahoy 9y ago
Old people watch more local news and vote at higher rates than any other demographic group.
- mschuster91 9y ago
  > Old people [...] vote at higher rates than any other demographic group. Now that one is bound to change. Young people, both in the US and abroad, are discovering the powers of social media and organize to advance their causes. Trump with his backwards, racist and misogynistic rhetoric and his politics mostly serving the old, white, male population provides a perfect enemy figure to rally against. Somewhere on Reddit I have read that from now until the elections this fall there will be 4 million young people turning old enough to vote (sounds about right, given ~4M births per year in the US). That's a massive block of voters and most of them will either vote Democrat or some of the fringe parties.
  - maxerickson 9y ago
    It's pretty likely that most of them won't vote at all. The ones that vote will probably tend to vote as you indicate.
  - robotrout 9y ago
    I would flag your post if I could. Your provocative statements are not productive and are off-topic. You are obviously some sort of activist. This is not the place for it. From your bio: " You call it "alt-left", I proudly call it "Antifa".

WhompingWindows 9y ago

In my eyes, this is a clear set/spike play. A huge corporation, enabled by their corrupt allies in the FCC, buy up hundreds of "local" stations. They then use the local cred/reputation of these stations to suggest that fake news is rampant on other sources (not controlled by Sinclair). They then tilt the dialogue nation-wide. Meanwhile, the average citizen is unaware that their trusted local anchor is bought/sold, they lack education and resources to educate themselves, and they are pushed further towards whatever dialogue the Sinclair executives are paid to push them towards. Does anyone from either side of the aisle consider a national corporation owning local stations and forcing scripts down their throat a good thing for the marketplace of ideas?

meri_dian 9y ago
How is that any different from major news organizations like CNN with a national reach clearly pushing biased anti-Trump news constantly? It's funny: Trump attacks CNN for being fake, biased news, then CNN responds by focusing all of their negative reporting on Trump, becoming exactly what Trump says they are. People would have had much more respect for CNN if they had stuck to the middle path in the face of Trump's insults. We should not turn a blind eye towards some instances of bias in media simply because they reinforce our own values and beliefs.
- nitrogen 9y ago
  Instead of derailing with "you too", can we focus on one thing at a time? National news programs are a separate issue from secretly biased local news.
  - meri_dian 9y ago
    CNN doesn't stand up and say "we're devoting our reporting resources to all things anti Trump, this is our bias, it's not secret". They simply report the news they choose to report. Just like Sinclair. People watch the news hoping to get an accurate depiction of reality. When only one side of a multifaceted situation is reported on, the depiction becomes distorted. It's never OK to do this, regardless of whose side you're on.

thaumaturgy 9y ago

Trump recently took DACA off the negotiating table, announcing it in a tweet, citing a Fox News & Friends segment on 'caravans' of inbound immigrants: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration/trump-says-daca-deal-for-young-immigrants-is-off-idUSKCN1H81C1 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration/trump-say... The President is watching this same garbage and making policy decisions based on it. Let that sink in for a moment.

robotrout 9y ago
If you watched the state of the union, you know that Trump made a proposal about DACA that was such a huge compromise to the left, that much of his base raised hell. The left refused that compromise, and refused again, when he asked for DACA and the wall to be addressed in the latest spending bill. Since he has twice been rebuffed on his compromises, he's going the other way. That seems reasonable to me.
- meri_dian 9y ago
  It's sad that the congressional Democracts are so focused on damaging Trump politically that they are unwilling to compromise on border security funding to produce a permanent DACA solution. As you say, Trump gave it to them on a silver platter!
  - Bud 9y ago
    No, it is in fact not "sad" that Democrats will not allow Trump to spend billions of dollars to build an ineffectual and innately-offensive "wall" between us and one of our closest allies. There can be no "compromise" on proposals as offensive and wasteful as this.
    - bradleyankrom 9y ago
      also, Mexico was gonna pay for it, 'member?
      - 9y ago

nemild 9y ago

For anyone interested, I'm always open to PRs for the "Media Literacy for Engineers" doc I put together: https://github.com/nemild/hacking-engineers https://github.com/nemild/hacking-engineers Examples like this are what I include, about how third-parties can manipulate media sources for their own ends.

cirrus-clouds 9y ago

Charlie Brooker did an excellent spoof video of the way news is reported. The video is 8 years old (made in 2010) but it still rings true today: How to report the news: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHun58mz3vI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHun58mz3vI Every TV news report on the economy in one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HN2iVe8_Ato https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HN2iVe8_Ato

mattnewton 9y ago

What better way to drive home the point that news is bought to influence people, then to buy a bunch of local news channels and use it to tell people that? There is some beautiful symmetry here, even if it was unintentional.

rhapsodic 9y ago

Those news anchors were either OK with the contents of the script they were ordered to read, or they were gutless cowards for not resigning or allowing themselves to be fired.

macintux 9y ago
The journalism job market ain't what it used to be. I find it hard to label people trying to keep their family fed and housed as "gutless cowards."
- ModernMech 9y ago
  The problem is your excuse is used to justify any action all the way down to killing Jews in a gas chamber. "I was just doing as I was told" Sure no one is being gassed here, bit this seems pretty subversive. I have a family to feed too, we all do, but I also chose my line of work so that I'm comfortable saying "No" to the boss (and have had to quit because of this in the past).
  - macintux 9y ago
    Slippery slope is not a compelling argument.
    - iambateman 9y ago
      At least ModernMech made an argument, which you have chosen not to do. Dismissiveness is not a compelling argument. Journalists have a social duty to tell the truth, as they understand it. This duty in particular extends to keeping a check on government. Participating in the deployment of propaganda is not a slippery slope, it is a violation of trust. If our journalists are willing to participate, then we have a problem.
      - macintux 9y ago
        > Participating in the deployment of propaganda is not a slippery slope, it is a violation of trust. If our journalists are willing to participate, then we have a problem. I agree, and my intent originally was not to downplay the core problem, but to point out that dismissing them as "gutless cowards" was not the ideal way to approach it.

analogmemory 9y ago

Last Week Tonight (John Oliver) dove into this last year. It's really frustrating that they can leverage so much political sway under the cover of "news reporting". Then forcing news stations to broadcast this garbage. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvtNyOzGogc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvtNyOzGogc

ModernMech 9y ago
He did a follow up last night with this new development.
rlindgren 9y ago
"👎" to the John Oliver reference. His "reporting" is as biased as it gets. His show is written in a style that convinces the subconscious to accept presented arguments without engaging any serious logical scrutiny. Just try to remember if at any point during any of his broadcasts you actually analyzed the subject of his monologues, rather than simply furthering the thought-process that he was laying out for you. Chances are that you never have because it's written to be persuasive (obviously) and only incidentally informative. Sadly, I know this is precisely what many people now believe "journalism" to be...
- somebehemoth 9y ago
  John Oliver hosts a late night talk show and he is primarily a comedian. He is not a journalist so your commentary on journalism seems misplaced on this point.
  - akoncius 9y ago
    what are you trying to say? That given he is comedian, his reporting is less credible or audience should receive his stories less seriously or what? Given that he throws a joke from time to time, does it mean that it's less reporting and more comedy?
    - ModernMech 9y ago

philipodonnell 9y ago

It seems like the issue is a lack of competition, if I don't like what Sinclair is saying I can not watch it, but if they own all the stations then I don't have that choice. The FCC did all this while everyone was distracted with net neutrality, so even if it came up again there the FCC knows how to distract people already. I'm just not sure what I as a viewer/voter can do about except wait for the next election, and even then, there's no guarantee that the candidate who wins is going to do anything about it. But... looking at the list of stations Sinclair owns[0]... where are the markets that they control all the stations, defined as ABC+NBC+FOX+CBS? I honestly don't see any. Is this more of a concern if they do manage to get all of these, or if the merger with Tribune Media goes through? 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_stations_owned_or_operated_by_Sinclair_Broadcast_Group https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_stations_owned_or_oper...

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
creaghpatr 9y ago
>or if the merger with Tribune Media goes through? That's the whole reason this is a story. The viral clip was assembled by far-left think tank ThinkProgress to attempt to torpedo the merger by stirring up public outcry. And of course, the mainstream media, who indirectly compete against these local stations, is happy to support these efforts.
- trose 9y ago
  are we getting russian trolls in HN as well? I thought we were here to have intelligent discussions. Not political nonsense about "mainstream media"
  - creaghpatr 9y ago
    You are trying to dismiss my point of view by accusing me of being a Russian troll?
  - dang 9y ago

ChicagoDave 9y ago

I do see this as a bad thing, but I also know that everyone under 40 gets their news from the web. The target audience for these channels are older people who don't read news online or on mobile phones. In a way, Sinclair is becoming a TV streaming service. I sense the badness, but I also think they run the risk of spending a lot of money on a wasted effort. You can only influence people if they're dumb _and_ watching your news programs. Seems like a dwindling market if you ask me. People already have FOX News and they've reached their ceiling (35% of the population). Sinclair is going to run into the same demographic problem.

x220 9y ago
>You can only influence people if they're dumb _and_ watching your news programs. Seems like a dwindling market if you ask me. The amount of people watching TV is going down, but the proportion of people who think uncritically is skyrocketing.
sitkack 9y ago
Isn't the rate of voting much higher for 40+? As a method for controlling a large block of voters, this probably pretty effective. How many of these people are also going to see other sources of news? They probably have the TV on for comfort (fear), everything else is a side effect.
anigbrowl 9y ago
I have gotten my news from web for 25 years but I still watch local news 2 night s a week - to see coverage of some local issue, to check on the weather or see a bit of a baseball game, or just by default. And while people over 40 are generally in the second half of their lives and heading for the demographic exits, that doesn't mean they're politically irrelevant. They're far more likely to vote, more likely to be homeowners/property tax payers (with the political heft that that gives), and have greater financial and political heft than their younger counterparts. You're naive if you think they're just bumbling along without thinking of much of anything. Just because you find that demographic boring and personally irrelevant doesn't mean they can't exert political power over you int eh aggregate. Many such people are willing to have their opinions shaped or validated by broadcast media and act accordingly. Take Fox News; it's easy to make fun of their audience, because who int heir right mind would take people like Sean Hannity seriously? And yet millions do, and their existence and hostility cannot be wished away. Incidentally, just "getting your news from the web" is no guarantee of objectivity either. Come on, we live in a society where people in high places tweet links to Infowars or Qanon conspiracy theories non-ironically.

swerveonem 9y ago

How much would it cost to buy all that airtime?

AlphaWeaver 9y ago

The actual video they talked about is linked on this [1] page... It's mildly haunting to watch... [1]: https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/how-americas-largest-local-tv-owner-turned-its-news-anc-1824233490 https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/how-americas-largest-local...

shadowtree 9y ago

The branding of those stations is the core problem, no? Says ABC/NBC/Fox - but actually that's just a logo. Why not have them clearly labeled as Sinclair, then consumer would know. And maybe still be fine with it. This way it's indeed shady.

rglover 9y ago

Nothing new. I worked in a newsroom as an intern and most major news stations rely (maybe, relied, it's been a few years) on a tool like ENPS. It's made by the Associated Press and has a "wire" feature where new stories come into. So, e.g., if there was a plane crash, that message would be pushed out to all newsrooms that rely on ENPS. The news producers were lazy, too. They'd literally take the script that ENPS pushes out, tweak a few words, and put it on air. I was working in a minor midwestern market (Toledo, Ohio). If you watched the evening broadcasts in the same market and nationally, you'd frequently see the same stories and similar verbiage popping up. Being surprised by a broadcast group like Sinclair was forcing a narrative is like being surprised that the sky is blue. The "news" is highly filtered and easily controlled. To think otherwise is deliberate ignorance. The broadcasting industry is corrupt and untrustworthy as all hell. My father worked in it at a high level (owning licenses and stations) and he'd frequently come home from trips either stone faced or frustrated beyond belief: https://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/22/business/media/22spectrum.html https://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/22/business/media/22spectrum... (he's the stately looking black fella throwing a fit in this piece). To trust anything the mass media tells you is to severely handicap your intelligence. Unfortunately, large swats of the general public do exactly that. /rant

ptr_void 9y ago
Where do you suggest people go to get their news instead ?
- stronglikedan 9y ago
  One must try to find points of view from all "sides", and then apply critical thinking to everything that one reads/hears. Every source is very biased and full of a lot of (mostly, really) shit, but the facts can be discerned if personal biases give way to objective analysis.
  - beat 9y ago
    That's the logical failing of the moderate - to reduce everything to opinion and bias, and ignore the existence of fact. If one side says 2+2=4, and the other side said 2+2=6, the truth is not that 2+2=5 and everyone needs to stop being so partisan.

korethr 9y ago

So, this explains the creepy video I saw over the weekend, of numerous news stations reciting the same canned speech, verbatim. When I see one station doing it, or similar sentiment from multiple stations in their own words, that might slightly temper my cynicism about the (lack of) objectivity and truthfulness of the news. But when I see shit like this, it only serves to harden my cynicism.

krapp 9y ago
>So, this explains the creepy video I saw over the weekend, of numerous news stations reciting the same canned speech, verbatim. Local news stations receive packages and content with scripts pre-written from national networks and other sources all the time. It's not a conspiracy, and it shouldn't cast doubt on the truthfulness of a story. Television news is a scripted medium, and most stations don't have the time or talent to write a completely unique script for every newscast from scratch.
- sjwright 9y ago
  When it's the introduction to a news package, fair enough. When it's a politically charged attack on competitors, it crosses a pretty uncomfortable line.

jessaustin 9y ago

After making it about halfway through the comments here, I flagged TFA. It is probably "hypocritical" for me to say this, since I also have political opinions. Here it is anyway: despite the widespread understanding that "mainstream" news media leans Democrat, the fact that USA president is controversial and drives increased viewership has added tens of millions of dollars to their bottom lines. This would make a thoughtful person wonder just how committed to the Democrats (or "the truth"?) they really are. Similar observations about other media firms are left as an exercise for the reader.

beat 9y ago

It's kind of sad to see a potentially important discussion here devolve into a: off-topic threads about policy (DACA), or partisan trolling about #fakenews to derail the subject away from Sinclair. That said, something I'm curious about... how many people still get their news primarily from local tv broadcast in this day and age? And what are the age ranges of those people? Lacking any actual data, I'd suggest by complete conjecture that it's not that many, and they skew much older than the general population. I'd be surprised if anyone under the age of 30 watches local tv news regularly at all. I know that personally, I watch so little local news that when I do, the cognitive dissonance is kind of jarring. And when do I watch it? Mostly, when visiting my Baby Boomer in-laws...

HankB99 9y ago
I watch morning news in the Chicago market for weather and traffic. I suppose I also get local news. And I get irked because I don't think cute Youtube videos are news but regardless of the station I can't seem to escape that. I'm getting tired of the transplant doctor that dresses up as a Star Wars character (the big furry thing) to deliver good news. Maybe I'm getting too old or just not enough of a Star Wars fan. (Wookie. That's the thing that the doctor impersonates.) I looked for Sinclair station ownership in this market and according to The Book of Knowledge (Wikipedia) there is none.

daodedickinson 9y ago

You've never seen these kind of videos before? Local news stations have been gutted for at least a decade and they get just about all their non-local content in this way.

cmurf 9y ago

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. Sinclair is far superior to CNN and even more Fake NBC, which is a total joke. https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/980799183425802240 https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/98079918342580224... I think it's reasonable to conclude that POTUS likes that Sinclair compels local news anchors to recite scripts that present a favorable impression of, support for, his policies or him personally. This is the American crony capitalism version of what Putin did with his state media in order to gain and retain control of the country, and destroy his adversaries. Trump won't have to have his adversaries poisoned. He's poisoning the ability for people to triangulate. And near as I can tell this is what people who support him want. They do not want contrary opinions. They want an autocrat.

CodeWriter23 9y ago

The interesting thing here is the groupthink believes this methodology is unique to Sinclair.

squozzer 9y ago

A certain conservative radio talk show host has a hobby of stringing together identical-sounding phrases from various sources in the establishment media, as if they all read from the same memo. It seemed certain someone had coordinated their talking points. Is the Sinclair issue that much different? Presumably the former example was performed by a group of like-minded individuals operating under some flavor of free will, who arrived at a consensus. But we can't be sure that was the process. They might have been coerced, or merely chose to parrot each other regardless of circumstance, because they found themselves so well aligned. Sinclair, on the other hand, assumed obedience by virtue of signing the checks. That said, I don't know if this situation is as scary as it used to be, now that we've had some experience with the power of more monolithic-appearing news sources such as FB and Google.

RickJWag 9y ago

Reminds me of when Trump won the Republican nomination-- a gob of stories ran with basically the same theme and spin. There's no such thing as straight news. It's all spin, one way or the other. Here's Politico's take on the Trump speech lockstep reaction: https://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/trump-convention-speech-media-226010 https://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/trump-convention-spee...

Fjolsvith 9y ago

This is a non issue for my household either way. We cut the cord a year ago and haven't missed the spin doctors and commercial breaks.