— by Lin McNulty, Managing Editor —
It wasn’t some amusing April Fools Day prank. In fact, it’s not amusing at all. The web site Deadspin, straight out of the fictional dystopia we read in high school, released a video of talking head newscasters who work for stations owned by the Sinclair Broadcast Group, all reading the same promo about fake news that is shockingly similar to lines used by the president.
The closing line, repeated by newscasters all across our country frighteningly sums it up: “This is extremely dangerous to our Democracy.”
This is not some Saturday Night Live episode, nor some 400-pound person playing on the internet from a basement bedroom. This is a composite of what is occurring in communities across America. Deadspin’s Timothy Burke wrote that the journalists looked “like hostages in proof-of-life videos, trying their hardest to spit out words attacking the industry they’d chosen as a life vocation.”
If you have avoided tuning in to FOX News stations because it resembles, more and more, what (hopefully) a majority would consider to be a state-run media outlet, your concerns have just become amplified. Sinclair Broadcast currently owns or operates a reported 193 stations across the country (233 after all currently proposed sales are approved) in over 100 markets (covering 40 percent of American households).
KOMO-TV in Seattle is one of those stations that many consider to be “local” news when, in fact, they are among the growing list of Sinclair-owned TV stations that, increasingly, are being asked (required?) to spew conservative blather.
With “must-run” commentary from ex-Trump aide Boris Epshteyn, a Russian-born American Republican political strategist who is currently the Chief Political Analyst at Sinclair, along with fear-mongering updates from a “Terrorism Alert Desk,” Sinclair seeks to control hearts and minds.
Would Orcas Issues sell out to a corporation that dictates what stories are covered and how they are presented? No, of course not. But what if they offered us, say, a livable wage? Momentarily, monetarily tempting, perhaps, but no. And it’s not just the right-leaning aspect that repels us, it’s the notion that local, community journalism should not be controlled by media corporations. Period.
If you find yourself captivated, concerned, or consumed by this development, note that the FCC is being sued by a group of organizations that allege the Commission’s recent local media ownership rule changes disproportionately favor broadcasters. Though expansion is not a done deal, there are nearly 200 TV stations already locked into this performance piece. Click here to learn what’s hiding in the woodwork at the FCC. And remember, at least at this point, you still have the option of communicating your opinion.
“This is extremely dangerous to our democracy.”
Yeah. OK. But we are not a democracy. We are a republic.
Remember that. It’s important.
I, for one, am not too bothered by the control of local media outlets by large corporations. It’s a way for local outlets to remain profitable and therefore viable.
Sinclair is not the only large corporation in the game. Certainly, NBC and CBS, among others, also control large quantities of local news outlets. Always have. Always will.
I believe that the real issue here is that Sinclair, and Fox, are not Liberal/Progressive. Rather, they are Conservative, and maybe even reactionary.
That’s bad because a news outlet should be as unbiased as possible. But then, look at CBS, NBC, and CNN. Are they unbiased? Ha!
Maybe the only way to achieve balance in this all-too-divided, at-each-other’s-throats nation is to have equal numbers of dedicated, biased, news outlets.
Or is that too ironic?