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Multiple local news stations say the same thing verbatim [video]
- temp8964 5y agoSearch this in Google News: "mass shootings surge as nation faces record high" https://www.google.com/search?q=mass+shootings+surge+as+nation+faces+record+high https://www.google.com/search?q=mass+shootings+surge+as+nati...
- josefresco 5y agoThe sites in those results (at least the 10 I checked) are all low quality blog spam. I suspect this is a politically motivated spam network created for the purpose of then using it as an example of media bias. Similar to what's happened in the parent story actually!
- tboyd47 5y agoRelevant here is an article by Huffington Post from 2012 criticizing a bill to update the Smith-Mundt Act which prohibited the US government from spreading propaganda to American citizens. The congressmen were complaining that if other countries can propagandize Americans, our government should have the same right. Their update would effectively remove that prohibition. The bill was swiftly passed and made law. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/propaganda-public-diplomacy_b_1547214 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/propaganda-public-diplomacy_b...
- kube-system 5y agoThat bill was about "propaganda" like VOA... which is mandated to provide pretty damn fair and accurate news by other laws. Do you really think it should have remained (technically) illegal to click this link: https://www.voanews.com/ https://www.voanews.com/ ? In any case, that law/amendment has nothing to do with the video in this post. The reason all these stations are saying the same thing is not because of the government, it is because they are all owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, and those who run that company wanted to push this message. Honestly, the quality of "government propaganda" from VOA is better than what we get from Sinclair. https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/voice-of-america/ https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/voice-of-america/ https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/sinclair-broadcast-group/ https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/sinclair-broadcast-group/
- coliveira 5y agoVOA is not propaganda with quotes, it is real propaganda produced by American government targeted at other (mainly eastern European) countries. It is the same thing they complain about in RT and similar state controlled news stations.
- kube-system 5y agoIt is propaganda in the most technical sense of the word, which is why I used it. I put it in quotes because it is a very loaded word with colloquial connotations that depart from the technical sense.
- tboyd47 5y agoSo, it’s good propaganda because it’s by the good guys?
- kube-system 5y agoA fair and accurate statement made with the intent to influence does, in fact, meet the dictionary definition of propaganda. This is not, however, the way that the word is typically used.
- swiley 5y agoTelevised news is harmful manipulative crap. Just like most Google products you should avoid exposing yourself to it. Of course I feel a little bad telling people this because it's pretty easy to avoid. Once TV news becomes unpopular they'll probably start shoving the same stuff into something that was previously mostly free of that kind of thing.
- BuyMyBitcoins 5y agoThe new strategy is to saturate social media with the same talking points ad-nauseam. It’s especially apparent on Reddit and Twitter.
- nitrogen 5y agoYou can even do this with things that are true, to discredit them. Then, when someone independently comes to the same true conclusion, their friends can robotically shut them down with "you are just repeating side X's talking points!"
- fallingknife 5y agoOr it's been "debunked," like the lab leak theory (until it was rebunked a couple months ago).
- kube-system 5y agoI think that is also a case of multiple different claims muddying the water, partly fueled by conjecture on social media. There were (and still are) multiple “lab leak” theories that are in widespread circulation, ranging from “it is possible that there was accidental infection at a research facility” all the way to “it is a bioweapon” The scientific community has always discounted the latter. Also, science is evidence based, and so many scientists are (rightly) hesitant to make conclusions (and to support others conjecture) unless they have some sort of evidence to support it. China knows this, and knows they can avoid bad publicity altogether by limiting the evidence that is released. Scientists are not in a position to make political accusations in the absence of other information. “We don’t have any evidence to support that theory” is perfectly reasonable scientific statement, regardless of the political realities.
- underseacables 5y agoI’ve always felt the media is generally reading from the same script. The News, locally or national, is more of a theatrical production than actual information.
- dylan604 5y agoThere's a difference from everyone quoting from an AP or Reuters new service. It's an entirely different thing when one media company forces it's stations to literally read from the exact same script, or worse, force a must-run segment produced externally from the local station.
- coliveira 5y agoBut it's not that much different. The main difference is who is doing the scripting. The reality is that local TV never did anything by themselves, they're repeating messages that have been fed by someone else.
- dylan604 5y ago>But it's not that much different. The main difference is who is doing the scripting. That's just being totaly unrealistic. The news agencies like AP report news where forced must-run scripts from agenda pushing corporate owners cannot even be considered the same ballpark as "not much different" >The reality is that local TV never did anything by themselves If you are referring to local news reporting on anything outside the local area, then of course they don't do much themselves. If they had first party reporters outside of their local area, they'd no longer be a local news. This is why local news have partners in other markets, or other agencies like AP.
- MarkLowenstein 5y agoThe classic Onion News Network videos are proof of your point. They're hilarious because while the content is ridiculous, the rhythm and theatrics are so clearly shared with every other newscast.
- nisa 5y agois this related to the sinclair broadcast group[1,2] or something else? 1:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_Broadcast_Group#2018_journalistic_responsibility_promos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_Broadcast_Group#2018_... 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvtNyOzGogc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvtNyOzGogc
- rejectedandsad 5y agoThis is Sinclair, and I find it extremely funny that the right has taken this video to smear the rest of the MSM.
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- voldacar 5y agoWoah, it's almost as if the right isn't monolithic
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- tolbish 5y agoI think the point being made is that the smearing is not done in earnest and is a deflection tactic.
- fallingknife 5y agoHypocritical, but not wrong.
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- tboyd47 5y agoThanks for the context!
- res0nat0r 5y ago
- MattGaiser 5y agoTangentially related segment from Last Week Tonight. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIi_QS1tdFM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIi_QS1tdFM
- legitster 5y agoI worked with someone who worked in a local news studio. They told me that A LOT of the stories came pre-scripted. Imagine you are a local news studio. You went from being responsible for 30 minutes of content a day to (often) upwards of two hours. And you only have a skeleton crew of on staff writers. To stretch the time, corporate offers a library of "stock" news stories and scripts to choose from. I am told that local studios still have a lot of choice on what they use, but yeah, you're going to find a bunch of different studios grabbing the same script and not making any changes. Grain of salt.
- pmyteh 5y agoThat's absolutely true. I understand that this particular piece is a step beyond that: a 'must run' segment that was mandated by corporate (something for which Sinclair has form).
- legitster 5y agoThat's the thing: I don't know if anyone ever established that it's a "must run". I've only ever seen this clip as evidence for it, so I'm still not sure that it's not entirely conjecture.
- exsinclair 5y ago> I don't know if anyone ever established that it's a "must run". It was.
- stonogo 5y agoIt didn't really need establishing, since Sinclair themselves acknowledged it. The debate was over whether that was normal, which it is not: http://www.mediafiledc.com/sinclair-says-must-runs-normal-industry-experts-disagree/ http://www.mediafiledc.com/sinclair-says-must-runs-normal-in... Lots of people like to point to AP or Reuters as examples of copy-paste news programming, but that ignores the primary difference: affiliates select which AP or Reuters stories they want to air and/or publish. Others compare TV networks like ABC or CBS requiring shows to be aired at certain times, but none of the networks mandate local news coverage like Sinclair does.
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- eplanit 5y agoNewspapers do this a lot with Associated Press stories -- they're filler for what you don't have the capacity to create yourself. I don't really see a problem with it.
- kube-system 5y agoThey might repost news from the AP, but not opinion pieces.
- JohnTHaller 5y agoThis is Sinclair Broadcasting Group which operates "a total of 193 stations across the country in over 100 markets (covering 40% of American households), many of which are located in the South and Midwest". It has had "must run" segments that all stations are required to run coming down from management that are generally right-wing talking points. In a John Oliver segment about Sinclair he stated that he "did not know it was possible to dip below the journalistic standards of Breitbart". Sinclair also struck deals with the Trump family and campaign to promote them during the 2016 campaign. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_Broadcast_Group https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_Broadcast_Group
- chiefgeek 5y agoI've consciously not watched news for at least the last 20 years. I never watched it much before that. My life is better because of it. It's nothing but fear mongering.
- FridayoLeary 5y agoI heard once that the ten o clock news is when the presenter starts with a "good evening" then explains why it's not.
- slg 5y agoAs the video description says "Found the clip, sharing it here." We probably shouldn't link to someone who just stole this clip. On the other hand, the original clip was posted on Deadspin, which was mismanaged so badly that the entire staff ended up resigning roughly a year after they first posted this clip so I don't want to link to them either. So instead I will point to the author of the original article that contained this video, Timothy Burke [1][2]. He has an insane setup for capturing television broadcasts and does a lot of great work like this to highlight the most interesting and troubling aspects of news and sports television. [1] - https://twitter.com/bubbaprog https://twitter.com/bubbaprog [2] - https://www.patreon.com/bubbaprog https://www.patreon.com/bubbaprog
- mistrial9 5y agoA stealth tech company in Calif-US created a system to record as many news casts as possible, 24-7, and invoke the closed-caption system to annotate it, and make it searchable. The company was sold in the early 2000's for $1B+ ; I have never seen the name in any tech news. source: colleague was a core engineer there
- lstamour 5y agoI've no idea if it matches your story, but I hear a lot of shows use SnapStream to find content? https://www.thewrap.com/the-secret-to-daily-show-colbert-report-and-the-soup-snapstream/ https://www.thewrap.com/the-secret-to-daily-show-colbert-rep... And I remember back when Google Video was a thing that Google was indexing feeds of TV channels' subtitles. I remember there was a search engine at one point for subtitles? Presumably they still index live TV subtitles and content both to support YouTube TV but also to feed content into their YouTube Content ID program... I wonder if anyone's comparing TV subtitles to speech-to-text output to catch differences in either. Here's an article about Google's early Video Search product for captions: http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2006/08/brief-history-of-google-video.html http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2006/08/brief-history-of-go... Apparently displaying and searching captions to the public for free lasted barely 6 months... Here's a screenshot showing a search result: https://informitv.com/2005/01/25/google-video-search-for-television-programmes/ https://informitv.com/2005/01/25/google-video-search-for-tel...
- clan 5y agoThere is a recent Last Week Tonight covering sponsored content on local news stations which is worth a watch as well. https://youtu.be/sIi_QS1tdFM https://youtu.be/sIi_QS1tdFM
- CrazyPyroLinux 5y agoThis type of thing is why I like shows like https://unfilter.show/ https://unfilter.show/ that not only are "independent" but also provide some meta-commentary on the production of the news stories themselves, rather than just using the headline to jump off onto whatever rant they feel like.
- desktopninja 5y agoNothing new I guess. Its like youtube reposting lol
- phkamp 5y agoThe correct description for that kind of operation is not "news stations" but "propaganda outlets".
- guscost 5y agoThis also happens nationally, and on the web. Today one paraphrase is "Rumors are swirling about Dong Jingwei (董經緯)".
- dfxm12 5y agoThis is what happens when one media company [0] keep buying up local affiliates. Take a look at the stations, they are all owned by Sinclair: Fox 29, San Antonio: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KABB https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KABB Fox 66: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WSMH https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WSMH KATU 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KATU_(TV) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KATU_(TV) CBS 4, El Paso: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KDBC-TV https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KDBC-TV KGAN: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KGAN https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KGAN etc. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_Broadcast_Group https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_Broadcast_Group
- myfavoritedog 5y agoNot surprising since those are all Sinclair stations just repeating canned statements. What’s really scary is when mainstream media outlets from a variety of corporate entities all repeat the exact same talking points that are exactly in sync with one political party.
- Black101 5y agoI have seen something similar to this before, but for the left-wing stations. This is not the same one that I have seen before, but here is another that I just found: https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/26/21271137/amazon-propaganda-tv-news-stations-coronavirus-covid-19-safety https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/26/21271137/amazon-propagand... There are a bunch more examples if you do a little research.
- reureu 5y agoBut is it extremely dangerous to our democracy?
- RickJWagner 5y agoIt happens at a national level, too. Especially when politics are involved. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLEchPZm318&t=27s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLEchPZm318&t=27s
- nayuki 5y agoAnother example: "You don't need us to tell you that gas prices are back on the rise", from year 2013 or earlier: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjQkwB1IhPc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjQkwB1IhPc
- jakeogh 5y agoThe national 'news' players do the same thing, except they (must) bother to reword it.
- Quanttek 5y agoAll these stations are owned by the Sinclair Group, a right-wing broadcasting corporation that is eroding the editorial independence of local stations in order to run segments like these or the "terrorism alert desk" [1]. John Oliver had a great video on them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvtNyOzGogc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvtNyOzGogc Also, the following quote is just utter BS, trying to draw a distinction where there is none: > Reminder: "While it is extremely dangerous to our democracy..." the US is actually a Constitutional Republic. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZ3hb6LhPGo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZ3hb6LhPGo