Trump TV Inside Sinclair Broadcasting

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Trump TV Inside Sinclair Broadcasting

Postby seemslikeadream » Mon Apr 02, 2018 2:41 pm

Ready for Trump TV? Inside Sinclair Broadcasting’s Plot to Take Over Your Local News

Its mix of terrorism alerts, right-wing commentary, and “classic propaganda” could soon reach three-quarters of US households.

Andy KrollNovember/December 2017 Issue



Jesse Lenz
One evening in July, David Smith, the executive chairman of Sinclair Broadcast Group, strolled into the newsroom at WJLA, the ABC affiliate for Washington, DC, and the crown jewel of his company’s 193-station empire. Smith lacks the name recognition of Rupert Murdoch or the late Roger Ailes. But his company—with holdings concentrated in midsize markets like Tulsa, Flint, and Boise—owns more television stations than any other broadcaster in the country, reaching 2 out of every 5 American homes.

Station staffers thought it odd to see Smith, one of four brothers who control Sinclair, aimlessly show up at this evening hour. According to a source familiar with the newsroom, he assured them that he wouldn’t be staying long; he was just killing time until a dinner appointment. Before he left, he confided that he was headed to the White House, to dine with President Donald Trump himself.

At 67, Smith has thick jowls and a head full of silver hair with wide-set eyes shaped like crescents. A longtime Republican donor who travels in rarefied circles (he once hosted a party for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas), Smith lives outside Baltimore in Maryland’s horse country, where his company is headquartered. Over the past 30 years, Smith and his brothers have transformed a small family company with three TV stations into a media goliath with entrée to the Oval Office. Along the way he has shown no qualms about using his stations for political purposes and has salivated at the prospect of acquiring more under Trump’s friendly regulatory regime. In April, Sinclair hired Boris Epshteyn, a former Trump White House staffer and frequent television surrogate, as its chief political analyst. Epshteyn’s softball interviews with administration officials and brusque commentaries are slavishly pro-Trump; a Baltimore Sun columnist wrote that the segments are “as close to classic propaganda as anything I have seen in broadcast television in the last 30 years.”

Boris Epshteyn’s Sinclair segments are “as close to classic propaganda as anything I have seen in broadcast television in the last 30 years.”
After a campaign season spent boosting Trump, Sinclair looks set to grow even bigger thanks to the president’s appointees at the Federal Communications Commission: In May, the company announced a $3.9 billion deal to acquire Tribune Media’s 42 TV stations, which would give Sinclair access to New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, the nation’s three largest media markets. The deal—and, for many, Sinclair itself—came to prominence after John Oliver blasted it in an episode of his HBO show, Last Week Tonight, that has been seen more than 6 million times on YouTube. Experts believe the FCC will approve the merger, despite critics on the left and right who argue the deal will give Sinclair far more reach into American households than the law allows.

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

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

If the merger is approved, Sinclair’s broadcasts will reach 72 percent of all households. Some media analysts have speculated that with Fox News reeling from cascading sexual harassment scandals, Sinclair senses an opportunity to build a rival conservative network. David Smith is reportedly eyeing a collaboration with Steve Bannon, the former Trump White House chief strategist who leads Breitbart News. There have also been reports, which Sinclair denies, that the company is pursuing the ousted Fox host Bill O’Reilly as well as Sean Hannity.

Sinclair’s Plan to Take Over Your Television


Sinclair has downplayed talk about taking on Fox, and Smith, who declined to comment for this story, rarely speaks about the broadcaster’s larger plans. The two companies are clearly in different lines of business. Fox News operates a single channel that shovels red meat, 24 hours a day, to dedicated conservative viewers. Sinclair’s stations around the country slip hardline political content between local weather, high school sports, and city council reports—broadcasting to a mass audience that, survey after survey shows, trusts local news more than any other medium.

“Sinclair is exploiting that credibility or trust that people have invested in their local stations by injecting a political message into it,” warns David Zurawik, the Baltimore Sun‘s veteran TV critic and a close company watcher. “Boris Epshteyn is wrapped in the packaging of the trusted local newsperson.”

In Baltimore, they call it TV Hill. On the north side of the city, it’s home to three of the city’s four biggest stations. There’s WJZ, the mighty CBS affiliate, at the top. Next is WBAL, the Hearst-owned NBC affiliate, its massive transmitter looking out over the city. And at the bottom of the Hill, before you cross the West 41st Street bridge, is WBFF, known to locals as Fox 45, the first station in the Sinclair empire.

“Boris Epshteyn is wrapped in the packaging of the trusted local newsperson.”
Julian Sinclair Smith, an electrical engineer, took a gamble when he founded WBFF. As Smith’s wife, Carolyn, later recalled, the family used “every penny we had” to launch in April 1971. Its call letters stood for “We’re Baltimore’s Finest Features,” but as one of only two independent stations in the city, marooned high on the dial in ultra high frequency (UHF), it struggled to attract quality programming. When early viewers tuned their sets to Channel 45, they usually found reruns of Lassie, black-and-white movies, and kids’ fare like Captain Chesapeake.

By 1986, the family business had grown to three stations, one in Baltimore, one in Pittsburgh, and one in Columbus, Ohio. Under threat from an outside buyer, Smith’s four sons—David, J. Duncan, Robert, and Frederick—took over and renamed it Sinclair Broadcast Group, after their ailing father. (He died from Parkinson’s disease in 1993.) None of the Smith sons had any formal experience running a broadcast media company, though David, the second oldest, had helped found a TV transmitter company. Years earlier, he’d also been a partner in a side project called Ciné Processors that churned out bootlegs of porn movies like Deep Throat from the basement of a building owned by his father’s business. “All you had to do was get the film and sound in sync, and you had something that was not available anywhere,” David Williams, Smith’s partner in the business, told author Eric Klinenberg in Fighting for Air: The Battle to Control America’s Media. “We’d just solicit guys in the strip joint area and tried to sell them.”

From the day he took over Sinclair, David Smith, the new CEO, whose desk featured a rattlesnake head and a toy shark, had grand ambitions for his small company. Seated together in a bullpen-style office on the WBFF building’s first floor—the better to keep an eye on each other—the Smith brothers used every tool at their disposal to expand their company’s reach.

Standing in their way was the duopoly rule, a 1940s-era policy preventing broadcasters from owning more than one station in a single market. To take over a second station in Baltimore, their mother, Carolyn Smith, and a Pittsburgh-based African American broadcaster named Edwin Edwards Sr. established a company called Glencairn. With financial backing from the Smith family, Glencairn acquired WNUV, but Sinclair would share advertising sales and staffing and provide 20 hours of programming a day. While Edwards controlled Glencairn’s voting shares, according to FCC records, profit from the new stations would flow through the company to the Smith family.

“David doesn’t build expensive newsrooms,” a former Sinclair executive says. “If anything, he’s the anti.”
Sinclair used the tactic to gobble up stations in markets where it already had a presence. A veteran broadcast industry lawyer who has worked on many sidecar agreements told me it was no coincidence that Sinclair chose a minority broadcaster as its business partner. Under President Jimmy Carter, the FCC had introduced policies designed to encourage greater minority ownership of TV stations, and according to the lawyer, it cited that goal in its decision approving an early Sinclair deal with Edwards. Critics including the National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters called these arrangements a sham and a front and accused Sinclair of violating the law. Edwards said Sinclair’s opponents were standing in the way of a successful African American businessman and “should be ashamed of themselves.”

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 deregulated the industry and unleashed a wave of consolidations, and Sinclair embarked on a buying spree, quickly gaining a reputation for its low-budget approach. “David doesn’t build expensive newsrooms,” a former Sinclair executive says. “If anything, he’s the anti.” According to another former colleague, “Public service journalism was not what he really focused on.”

By the late 1990s, Sinclair had grown its portfolio to almost 60 stations reaching 24 percent of households, making it among the largest broadcasters in America. Smith had also taken the company public, and its revenue soared past $500 million. “We’re forever expanding—like the universe,” Smith told the Baltimore Sun.

Even as the company boomed, David Smith and his brothers kept a low profile. Smith sometimes drove a pickup to work and wore jeans to business meetings. There was no corporate PR team. It helped that it wasn’t Sinclair’s name viewers in Rochester or Indianapolis saw every evening on the 10 p.m. news—it was the four letters and familiar faces of their local TV station. Closer to home, though, David Smith earned a bit of notoriety for his arrest in the mid-1990s after soliciting a prostitute in a police sting. He was allegedly receiving a blow job in a company-owned Mercedes when he was arrested and charged with a misdemeanor. Smith struck a deal with prosecutors requiring Sinclair stations to produce segments highlighting the state’s drug courts. His employees, in other words, would fulfill his community service for him.

Between 1997 and 2002, the Smith brothers donated nearly $200,000 to Republican candidates and committees in Maryland and at the federal level.
Sinclair’s rapid growth also caught the attention of the FCC, and in proceedings surrounding a round of proposed acquisitions in 1998, the commission examined the company’s use of sidecar agreements. Edwards provided the FCC with incorrect figures related to the purchases, leading the commission to wonder “whether he is actively involved” in his company. In the end, the commission fined Sinclair $40,000 for exercising too much control over Glencairn’s acquisitions, in violation of US law. Glencairn was also fined $40,000. As Michael Copps, a Democratic commissioner, wrote in a blistering opinion, the fine “merely points out that lines have been crossed, while allowing Sinclair to run over these lines and to continue its multiple ownership strategy.”

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

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

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

The fine, an FCC commissioner wrote,“merely points out that lines have been crossed, while allowing Sinclair to run over these lines and to continue its multiple ownership strategy.”
The attacks brought politics into the company’s newsrooms in a new way. “It was a great place to work until 9/11,” says Kirk Clyatt, a former anchor and weather reporter at WBFF in Baltimore. “It was almost like you could feel the wind change.” The on-air editorials were unprecedented for Sinclair. While scripts noted that the messages represented the views of “station management,” there was unrest in Sinclair’s newsrooms among a generation of journalists trained to be neutral and nonpartisan. That wasn’t how Sinclair executives saw it: If they were guilty of anything, one executive said, it was “being patriotic during a time of tragedy.”

But the company followed up with more—and more strident—political content. As the major networks rushed to fill airtime with retired generals after the attacks, Sinclair found its own pundit in Mark Hyman. A former Navy intelligence officer who had worked as a Sinclair lobbyist, Hyman went on WBFF in the weeks after the attacks to cheer on President George W. Bush and scold other media for their unfair and unpatriotic coverage. Sinclair soon elevated Hyman to be its chief commentator and designated his editorials, titled “The Point,” as must-runs. Hyman’s segments were taped near Baltimore and distributed nationwide to Sinclair’s stations, which were required to knit them into their local news broadcasts. For the viewer, the effect could be jarring: one minute, traffic and sports. The next, a centrally recorded, straight-to-camera clip of, say, Hyman visiting Iraq after the 2003 US invasion in search of “good news,” or a Hyman commentary claiming that “terrorist leaders would dearly love to see President Bush replaced with Senator Kerry.”

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


Jesse Lenz
In 2002, Ehrlich, Sinclair’s congressman, took on Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, the state’s Democratic lieutenant governor, in the Maryland governor’s race. As former WBFF political reporter Jon Leiberman later told GQ, newsroom staffers at Sinclair’s flagship station were tasked with taking down Townsend. “All of our resources were used to go after her,” he recalled. After she lost the election, the Baltimore Sun reported that Ehrlich had failed to report a series of discounted flights he received during the campaign from a helicopter company controlled by J. Duncan Smith, a potential violation of campaign finance laws. The scandal was dubbed Choppergate, and Ehrlich voluntarily repaid $26,600.

That year, Sinclair created a national news desk to produce segments for stations’ local newscasts, and in 2003 it followed up with a Washington bureau. Sinclair’s political leanings gained more widespread attention in 2004 when Ted Koppel planned to spend an episode of Nightline reading the names of soldiers killed in Iraq. Sinclair ordered its ABC affiliates not to run the show, saying it was “motivated by a political agenda.” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) called Sinclair’s move “unpatriotic.” During that year’s presidential campaign, Sinclair sparked a national uproar when it planned to air Stolen Honor, a controversial documentary widely seen as a hit piece on then-Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), the Democratic nominee. Amid the backlash, Mark Hyman compared news networks that refused to report Stolen Honor‘s allegations about Kerry’s anti-Vietnam War activism to Holocaust deniers. After Sinclair’s DC bureau chief described the documentary to a Baltimore Sun reporter as “biased political propaganda with clear intentions to sway this election,” the company fired him and sued him for breach of contract.

Mark Hyman compared news networks that refused to report Stolen Honor’s allegations about Kerry’s anti-Vietnam War activism to Holocaust deniers.
The outcry drove the company’s stock price to its lowest point in three years. In the end, Sinclair retreated, instead airing a more balanced piece on the use of documentary films during political campaigns that included excerpts of Stolen Honor.

The fracas brought the company unprecedented attention: “Keep your eye on Sinclair Broadcasting,” New York University professor and media critic Jay Rosen wrote the day after the 2004 election, adding that Sinclair represented “a new kind of media company—a political empire with television stations.”

Sinclair receded from the headlines during the Obama years. The Great Recession battered the company’s balance sheet, pushing it to the brink of bankruptcy by mid-2009. But unlike some of its competitors, Sinclair avoided collapse through heavy cost-cutting, a refinancing of its debts, and an influx of political ad spending unleashed by the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision. Sinclair had recovered enough by 2011 to embark on a multiyear shopping spree. By 2015, it had acquired another $3 billion worth of TV properties, for a total of 151 stations—more than twice as many as it had owned or operated a decade earlier.

The company’s size was again drawing scrutiny from a Democrat-controlled FCC. When Tom Wheeler took the commission’s helm in 2013, he aimed at a loophole that allowed broadcasters to avoid the FCC’s consolidation limits by dividing the audience figures of their UHF stations—found on channels 14 and higher—in half. The rule dated to the mid-’80s, when viewers favored lower-numbered stations. But it became even more outmoded after 2009, when broadcast television went digital and technical requirements forced most lower-numbered stations to start transmitting in UHF. Wheeler believed broadcasters were abusing the rule to gobble up stations while staying under the national ownership cap of 39 percent. So he eliminated it, throwing up a barrier to future growth by Sinclair.

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

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

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

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

Former staffers on Ben Carson’s presidential campaign say Carson, Armstrong Williams, and Sinclair were deeply intertwined.
Former staffers on Carson’s presidential campaign say Carson, Williams, and Sinclair were deeply intertwined. Carson’s staff planned an elaborate campaign rollout event in Detroit, Carson’s hometown, complete with a church choir and 1,700 guests brought in for the day. National media flew in from across the country to cover it.

At the rehearsal the night before, Doug Watts, who was Carson’s communications director, remembers a reporter approaching him with a peculiar question. “Why are we here?” the reporter asked. “You just announced.” Watts chuckled. “Ben’s going to make his announcement tomorrow,” he said. No, the reporter said, Carson just announced in an interview on the Sinclair station in Palm Beach, Florida.

In fact, the interview—pretaped weeks earlier at Carson’s home in West Palm Beach—was airing on Sinclair stations across the country, from Florida to Ohio to South Carolina. Jeff Barnd, Sinclair’s national political correspondent, had landed the sit-down with Williams’ help. “He did it so that he could give Sinclair this exclusive,” Watts says. (Williams declined to comment for this story.)

It wasn’t the only time Williams and Sinclair used their massive reach to benefit the Carson campaign, Watts says. Once, Watts told Williams he was searching for archival footage of riots in Baltimore to use in a campaign spot. The clips Watts had found were all marked for editorial use only, meaning they couldn’t air in a political ad. Williams offered to help and soon sent four or five archival clips from a Sinclair station in Baltimore. When Watts pointed out that the footage had the same restrictive labels, he remembers Williams telling him, “You go ahead and use it. I’ll take care of it.” Several times, Watts recalls Williams secreting Carson away to gently question him on a range of subjects, triggering concerns that Williams would air the tapes on stations he owned: “I said, ‘Armstrong, that’s what’s called an in-kind contribution,'” Watts remembers. “It seems to me it puts your [broadcast] license in jeopardy. It puts the campaign in jeopardy.”

“It’s math,” Kushner reportedly said, boasting about the benefits of reaching Sinclair’s massive audience.
After Carson dropped out of the race in March 2016, Sinclair threw its weight behind Trump. A Politico story detailed how Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, speaking in a postelection off-the-record session, described an arrangement where Sinclair had aired interviews with candidate Trump without commentary in exchange for greater access to the campaign. “It’s math,” Kushner reportedly said, boasting about the benefits of reaching Sinclair’s massive audience. While Sinclair says Kushner was describing a standard offer made to both campaigns to conduct extended interviews with local anchors, a Washington Post analysis found that Sinclair stations ran 15 “exclusive” interviews with Trump, 10 with running mate Mike Pence, and 10 more with campaign surrogates. By contrast, the company’s stations aired zero interviews with Hillary Clinton, five with Sen. Tim Kaine, Clinton’s pick for vice president, two with Chelsea Clinton, and none with any other top surrogates. According to the Post, Sinclair higher-ups suggested questions with a strongly anti-Clinton bent to local reporters.

Just before the campaign, Sinclair took steps to expand its style of news online. In August 2015, the company bought the name and technology from the remains of a failed San Francisco startup, Circa News. The new venture’s announcement promised an “independent digital news site” for readers who “value raw content, differing perspectives, and personalization.” Circa would produce stories for the web and video segments for Sinclair’s stations.

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

The Big Power of the Small Screen


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

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

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

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

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

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

“If Donald Trump is as deregulatory as he suggests he is,” David Smith said, “we’re going to be the first industry in line.”
Pai was no stranger to Sinclair. Just two months before, he had spoken at the company’s annual meeting for general managers at the Four Seasons in Baltimore, taking a short private meeting with Smith afterward. (What he told the managers is unclear: Sinclair declined to comment for this article, and Pai’s office said it couldn’t locate any remarks or notes for the event in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.) In the January meeting, Smith, Williams, and Ripley argued that the sidecar agreements utilized by Sinclair were vital to the industry, and to a minority broadcaster like Williams. (In March, after opening with a brief disclaimer that he owned TV stations regulated by the FCC, Williams hosted Pai for a friendly interview on his show The Right Side, which airs on Sinclair stations.)

When Trump took office, he elevated Pai to serve as chairman. Since then the commission has made one move after another that has benefited Sinclair. Two weeks into the administration, the FCC tossed out what remained of Wheeler’s policy clamping down on sidecar agreements. Then, in April, the FCC voted to bring back the ultra high frequency discount, setting the groundwork for Sinclair’s purchase of Tribune Media’s 42 stations. Without the discount, the combined company is estimated to reach 72 percent of households—far above the 39 percent limit. Sinclair officials note that the new FCC changes benefit many companies, not just Sinclair. At an industry luncheon, Ripley praised the chairman’s work to cut regulation: “Thankfully, we’ve got Chairman Pai.”

Sinclair CEO Chris Ripley praised the FCC chairman’s work to cut regulation: “Thankfully, we’ve got Chairman Pai.”
As the company expands, it also seems to be growing more assertive about its politics. Stations are required to air terrorism alerts daily. Sinclair responded to criticism of its must-run Boris Epshteyn segments by tripling the number of times stations are mandated to air them each week. In March, the company’s executive in charge of news, in a must-run segment of his own, cribbed a favorite term of Trump’s when he lashed out at unnamed national media outlets for peddling “fake news.”

The FCC is reportedly investigating a 2016 incident where Sinclair newscasts aired months of paid segments promoting a Utah hospital without proper disclosure. Smith has reportedly said the violation could cost the company millions of dollars. Travis LeBlanc, a former head of the FCC’s enforcement bureau, warns it could also delay the Tribune deal: “It would be out of the ordinary and inappropriate for the commission to approve any merger—or any transaction—if there is an unresolved enforcement investigation.”

While Sinclair awaits federal clearance for the purchase, there are already rumblings that the FCC will soon consider further deregulation of its duopoly rule and ownership cap—changes that could unleash yet more consolidation on the airwaves. Which, according to Ripley, is precisely what Sinclair wants. “We think the industry needs to consolidate to two or three large broadcasters, and really just one to two strong local players in each market,” he told shareholders in August. If the FCC rolls back the regulations, he said, it could create “significant savings” for companies like Sinclair—while allowing them to spread their message to more Americans than ever before.

Additional reporting by Russ Choma.

What is Sinclair showing you?

If your TV station is owned or operated by Sinclair Broadcasting, tell us what you’re seeing. Not sure? Check for your station on this map.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/20 ... al-news-1/



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cabD_0h5mcA


Matt Pearce
A former Sinclair journalist sent me a screenshot of their contract. “I couldn't leave because of this part of my contract.”
Image


How America's Largest Local TV Owner Turned Its News Anchors Into Soldiers In Trump's War On The Media

Timothy Burke
Yesterday 3:45pmFiled to: MEDIA



Earlier this month, CNN’s Brian Stelter broke the news that Sinclair Broadcast Group, owner or operator of nearly 200 television stations in the U.S., would be forcing its news anchors to record a promo about “the troubling trend of irresponsible, one sided news stories plaguing our country.” The script, which parrots Donald Trump’s oft-declarations of developments negative to his presidency as “fake news,” brought upheaval to newsrooms already dismayed with Sinclair’s consistent interference to bring right-wing propaganda to local television broadcasts.

You might remember Sinclair from its having been featured on John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight last year, or from its requiring in 2004 of affiliates to air anti-John Kerry propaganda, or perhaps because it’s your own local affiliate running inflammatory “Terrorism Alerts” or required editorials from former Trump adviser Boris Epshteyn, he of the famed Holocaust Remembrance Day statement that failed to mention Jewish people. (Sinclair also owns Ring of Honor wrestling, Tennis magazine, and the Tennis Channel.)


The net result of the company’s current mandate is dozens upon dozens of local news anchors looking like hostages in proof-of-life videos, trying their hardest to spit out words attacking the industry they’d chosen as a life vocation.

Not that any of it matters to Sinclair, which, with the help of a friendly federal government, is about to swallow up another 40 television stations—increasing its reach and its lead over competitors like Hearst and Scripps. The script, as transcribed by ThinkProgress based on the KOMO (Seattle) version, reads:

Hi, I’m(A) ____________, and I’m (B) _________________…

(B) Our greatest responsibility is to serve our Northwest communities. We are extremely proud of the quality, balanced journalism that KOMO News produces.

(A) But we’re concerned about the troubling trend of irresponsible, one sided news stories plaguing our country. The sharing of biased and false news has become all too common on social media.

(B) More alarming, some media outlets publish these same fake stories… stories that just aren’t true, without checking facts first.

(A) Unfortunately, some members of the media use their platforms to push their own personal bias and agenda to control ‘exactly what people think’…This is extremely dangerous to a democracy.

(B) At KOMO it’s our responsibility to pursue and report the truth. We understand Truth is neither politically ‘left nor right.’ Our commitment to factual reporting is the foundation of our credibility, now more than ever.

(A) But we are human and sometimes our reporting might fall short. If you believe our coverage is unfair please reach out to us by going to KOMOnews.com and clicking on CONTENT CONCERNS. We value your comments. We will respond back to you.

(B) We work very hard to seek the truth and strive to be fair, balanced and factual… We consider it our honor, our privilege to responsibly deliver the news every day.

(A) Thank you for watching and we appreciate your feedback.
For a list of stations owned or operated by Sinclair Broadcast Group, check here. If you’re a Sinclair employee who has something to say—anonymity guaranteed on request—let me know or use our anonymous SecureDrop.
https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/how-a ... 1824233490


Kushner: We struck deal with Sinclair for straighter coverage
By JOSH DAWSEY and HADAS GOLD 12/16/2016 05:35 PM EST

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

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


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

“It’s math,” Kushner said according to multiple attendees.

But Sinclair and other networks said such a deal is nothing nefarious or new - just an arrangement for extended sit-down interviews with both candidates, one many campaigns have done in previous years to get around the national media and directly to viewers in key states.

Scott Livingston, vice president of news at Sinclair, said the offer for extended interviews with local anchors was made to both candidates. Trump did a handful of interviews, while Sen. Tim Kaine did a few as well, though Hillary Clinton did not.

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

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

Barbara Maushard, senior vice president for news at Hearst Television said in a statement "Any suggestion that Hearst Television cut any deal with political candidates is categorically false and absurd.”

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

Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon said they had nothing to add to Sinclair’s explanation.

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

A Kushner spokeswoman declined to comment on his remarks, made at an off-the-record meeting in the Morgan Stanley Cafeteria for the Partnership for New York City, a business group, and referred questions to the campaign.

Kushner, dressed in a suit and sneakers, told the business executives that the campaign was upset with CNN because they considered its on-air panels stacked against Trump. He added that he personally talked with Jeff Zucker about changing the composition of the panels but Zucker refused. He repeatedly said in the panel that CNN wasn't "moving the needle" and wasn't important as it once was, according to three of the people present.

The campaign then decided not to work as closely with CNN, and Trump ramped up his bashing of the cable network.

Two people present said that they were surprised how much Kushner talked about CNN. "He kept going on and on about it," one business executive said.

He also told the crowd that Google and Facebook are now more powerful, and that The New York Times and CNN aren't as powerful.

A CNN spokesperson declined to comment.

Kushner also said that he had learned far more about the country by traveling with Trump and was now a different person, calling the thousands of people who would show up to Trump rallies “amazing Americans.”

“Here he is with 400 elites, CEOs of the banks, those are his people. He’s among his people, but he’s speaking this Trump-like language,” one attendee said.
https://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/ ... ner-232764



John Oliver Tears Into Sinclair Broadcasting, the Trump-Loving Local News Giant

Mother JonesApr. 2, 2018 8:42 AM

Over the weekend, a video featuring dozens of local news reporters reciting the same, “fake news”-bashing script went viral, with many comparing the chilling supercut to something of a hostage video. The clip demonstrated the rise of Sinclair Broadcasting—the media giant few may know by name but have likely encountered—and the company’s conservative takeover of local news outlets.


On Sunday, John Oliver went further to unpack some of the alarming ways the Trump-friendly media group twists viewers’ trust in their local news reporters to parrot highly misleading, right-wing messaging. That content can range from mandatory “Terrorism Alert Desks” to deceptive features on the “deep state.”

The HBO host also slammed the “fake news” script: “When you see just how many local stations were forced to read it and you watch them together, as many have been doing online in the last couple of days, you begin to realize the true effect of Sinclair’s reach and power.”

For more, don’t miss Mother Jones‘ deep-dive investigation into Sinclair and its ties to the Trump administration, including the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.


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

https://www.motherjones.com/media/2018/ ... ews-giant/
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Trump TV Inside Sinclair Broadcasting

Postby seemslikeadream » Mon Apr 02, 2018 3:00 pm

On The Bill Press Show, Matt Gertz describes how Sinclair uses must-run segments to push propaganda through local news
MEDIA MATTERS STAFF


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGJc-65XA5c


Here are 66 local news stations airing Sinclair’s brainwashing anti-media promo
The promotional videos have aired in 29 states and Washington, D.C.
Research ››› 1 hour 39 min ago ››› PAM VOGEL

Here are the "manipulative" ads Sinclair forced local anchors to read, now airing across the country
Blog ››› March 29, 2018 1:59 PM EDT ››› PAM VOGEL


Sarah Wasko / Media Matters
Weeks after CNN reported that Sinclair was requiring its local anchors to film promotional segments attacking the “irresponsible, one-sided stories plaguing our country,” the widely lambasted segments have begun to air on stations around the country.

Earlier in March, CNN obtained internal documents sent to Sinclair Broadcast Group’s local TV news stations requiring them to film and air short segments decrying “biased and false news” and accusing mainstream media figures of bias. In the script obtained by CNN, Sinclair reporters focused on mainstream press, attacking unnamed "national media outlets" for publishing "fake stories." At points, the script appears to echo President Donald Trump's attacks on press with cries of "fake news." (Though the final version of the script, as NPR noted in an interview with a Sinclair executive about the promotional spots, no longer included "the word national ... coupled to the word media.") Reporters at some of the Sinclair-owned or -operated stations shared concerns with CNN’s Brian Stelter, calling the corporate-dictated segment requirements “inappropriate” and “manipulative.”

Apart from disparaging statements about non-Sinclair news outlets, the ads mostly contain trite and inoffensive statements supporting responsible, “balanced” journalism -- and that’s part of the problem. As Stelter noted, “On its face, some of the language is not controversial. But that's precisely why some staffers were so troubled by it. The promo script, they say, belies Sinclair management's actual agenda to tilt reporting to the right.” One staffer told CNN they “felt like a POW recording a message.”

A Media Matters search of the iQ media database found that between March 23 and March 27, at least 62 Sinclair stations reaching 29 states and D.C. have now run their own versions of the scripted segment. In the clips, local news anchors say things like, “I’m concerned about the troubling trend of irresponsible, one-sided news stories plaguing our country.” The Sinclair employees also largely seemed to follow the other reported instructions delivered from the Sinclair corporate offices, such as wearing politically neutral colors (e.g. not red or blue).

Here are just three examples, from stations in Florida, Pennsylvania, and Nevada:



WPEC (CBS 12) in West Palm Beach, FL



WHP (CBS 21) in Harrisburg, PA



KRXI (Fox 11) in Reno, NV

Here is a full transcript from one of the segments (there are slight variations among the videos).

Hi, I’m [name] with [station]. Our greatest responsibility is to serve our communities. I am extremely proud of the quality, balanced journalism that [station] produces, but I’m concerned about the troubling trend of irresponsible, one-sided news stories plaguing our country.

The sharing of biased and false news has become all too common on social media. More alarming, some media outlets publish these same fake stories without checking facts first. Unfortunately, some members of the media use their platforms to push their own personal bias and agenda to control exactly what people think. This is extremely dangerous to our democracy.

At [station], it is our responsibility to report and pursue the truth. We understand the truth is neither politically left nor right. Our commitment to factual reporting is the foundation of our credibility now more than ever. But we are human, and sometimes our reporting might fall short. If you believe our coverage is unfair, please reach out through our [station] website by clicking on “Content Concerns.” We value your comments and we will respond back to you.

We work very hard to seek the truth and strive to be fair, balanced, and factual. We consider it our honor and privilege to responsibly deliver the news every day. Thank you for watching, and we appreciate your feedback.

These segments are Sinclair’s latest attempt to sneak pro-Trump messaging into local media outlets. The media company’s chief political analyst, former Trump aide Boris Epshteyn, routinely echoes his former boss in attacking mainstream media outlets he believes are too critical of the president. And in a segment that aired across Sinclair news stations last March, Sinclair’s vice president for news, Scott Livingston, read from a virtually identical promotional script.

Sinclair is now well-known for its history of abusing public trust to air right-wing spin and promote xenophobia on local news shows, and the company is currently awaiting federal approval to finalize a massive acquisition that will help it spread its conservative propaganda further across the country.

The corporate promotional segments have aired (very often, more than once) on at least the following local TV news stations:

WABM (ABC 33/40) in Birmingham, AL
KBAK in Bakersfield, CA
KBFX (Fox 58) in Bakersfield, CA
KMPH (Fox 26) in Fresno, CA
WJLA (ABC 7) in Washington, DC
WEAR (ABC 3) in Pensacola, FL
WPEC (CBS 12) in West Palm Beach, FL
WGXA (Fox 24/ABC 13) in Macon, GA
WTGS (Fox 28) in Savannah, GA
KGAN (CBS 2) in Cedar Rapids, IA
KFXA (Fox 28) in Cedar Rapids, IA
KPTH (Fox 44) in Sioux City, IA
KBOI (2 News) in Boise, ID
KHQA in Quincy, IL
WSBT 22 in South Bend, IN
WBFF (Fox 45) in Baltimore, MD
WGME (CBS 13) in Portland, ME
WPFO (Fox 23) in Portland, ME
WSMH (Fox 66) in Flint, MI
WWMT (Newschannel 3) in Kalamazoo, MI
WPBN (7&4 News) in Traverse City, MI
KTVO (ABC 3) in Kirksville, MO
KRCG 13 in New Bloomfield, MO
WLOS (ABC 13) in Asheville, NC
KFXL (Fox Nebraska) in Lincoln, NE
KRXI (Fox 11) in Reno, NV
WRGB (CBS 6) in Albany, NY
WUHF (13 WHAM, Fox) in Rochester, NY
WTVH (CBS 5) in Syracuse, NY
WSTM (NBC 3) in Syracuse, NY
WSTR (Star64) in Cincinnati, OH
WKRC (Local 12) in Cincinnati, OH
WSYX (ABC 6) in Columbus, OH
WTTE (Fox 28) in Columbus, OH
WTOV (News 9) in Steubenville, OH
WNWO (NBC 24) in Toledo, OH
KOKH (Fox 25) in Oklahoma City, OK
KTUL (ABC 8) in Tulsa, OK
KVAL (CBS 13) in Eugene, OR
KMTR (NBC 16) in Eugene, OR
KTVL (News 10) in Medford, OR
KATU (ABC 2) in Portland, OR
WHP (CBS 21) in Harrisburg, PA
WJAC (NBC 6) in Johnstown, PA
WOLF (Fox 56) in Wilkes-Barre, PA
WACH (Fox 57) in Columbia, SC
WPDE (ABC 15) in Myrtle Beach, SC
WTVC (ABC 9) in Chattanooga, TN
KVII (ABC 7) in Amarillo, TX
KEYE (CBS Austin) in Austin, TX
KBTV (Fox 4) in Beaumont, TX
KDBC (CBS 4) in El Paso, TX
KFOX (Fox 14) in El Paso, TX
KGBT (CBS 4) in Harlingen, TX
WOAI (News 4) in San Antonio, TX
KABB (Fox 29) in San Antonio, TX
KUTV (2 News) in Salt Lake City, UT
WSET (News 13) in Lynchburg, VA
KOMO in Seattle, WA
KIMA (Action News) in Yakima, WA
WLUK (Fox 11) in Green Bay, WI
WCHS (ABC 8) in Charleston, WV


Media outlets are citing a hate group in reports about Trump's planned census change for 2020
Blog ››› March 29, 2018 11:50 AM EDT ››› ZACHARY PLEAT

Media outlets are citing the anti-immigrant hate group Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) in reports about the Trump administration’s addition of a citizenship question to the 2020 census, which experts say will jeopardize its accuracy.

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has called CIS founder John Tanton “the father of the modern nativist movement” and designated his organization a hate group because it “churns out a constant stream of fear-mongering misinformation about Latino immigrants.” Also contributing to the decision to designate was CIS' “repeated circulation of white nationalist and anti-Semitic writers in its weekly newsletter and the commissioning of a policy analyst who had previously been pushed out of the conservative Heritage Foundation for his embrace of racist pseudoscience.” CIS personnel have a record of making racist commentary and portraying immigrants as dangerous criminals. Yet, all too often, media outlets treat CIS as a credible voice in immigration debates, and they frequently fail to identify either its anti-immigrant views or its white nationalist ties.

This is happening again in reports regarding the Trump administration’s announcement that it will add a question about citizenship to the 2020 census. At least a dozen states oppose the move and have indicated they will sue the administration to prevent the question from being added, and census and civil rights experts have said adding such a question will reduce response rates from immigrants, jeopardizing the census’ accuracy. Yet CIS has defended the addition of a citizenship question, and news reports from both conservative and mainstream outlets are discussing the organization’s support of the Trump administration move.

A Minnesota Star Tribune article quoted CIS, as did a column from the Boston Herald’s Adriana Cohen. D.C.’s ABC affiliate station WJLA (owned by the pro-Trump Sinclair Broadcasting Group) also cited CIS research, and ABC Radio’s D.C. affiliate WTOP briefly cited CIS’ defense of adding the citizenship question. Four different Fox News shows also cited CIS in their March 27 coverage of the census change: Happening Now, Outnumbered Overtime, The Daily Briefing, and Special Report. A March 28 FoxNews.com column defending the administration’s move linked to a CIS study. Fox host Laura Ingraham’s radio show hosted CIS Executive Director Mark Krikorian on March 27 to criticize Democrats’ response to the move, and Washington Examiner columnist Paul Bedard extensively quoted CIS to justify adding a citizenship question to the census.

Only WTOP and the Star Tribune mentioned CIS’ agenda, saying simply that the group “pushes for decreased immigration” and has “advocated for tougher immigration regulations.” But those descriptors hardly inform voters about CIS’ problematic origins or its continuing associations with white nationalists and other bigots. Legitimate media outlets should not cite anti-immigrant groups as sources of unbiased information at all -- and if they do, they should clearly label them as such.

Sinclair's Boris Epshteyn: A pro-Trump Republican struggling in Pennsylvania is actually good news for Trump
Blog ››› March 14, 2018 5:03 PM EDT ››› PAM VOGEL


Boris Epshteyn, Sinclair Broadcast Group’s chief shill for President Donald Trump, was definitely not worried about the special election in Pennsylvania yesterday, and he is not worried now that the results remain too close to call. In the alternate universe Sinclair and Epshteyn promote to local news viewers across the country, the brewing upset is actually good for Republicans and Trump.

Pennsylvania’s 18th congressional district, which voted for Trump by a 20-point margin in 2016, held a special election last night to replace former Republican Rep. Tim Murphy, who resigned last year. The race should have been an easy win for the GOP in a reliably red district, but as of publication, it remains officially "too close to call," with Democrat Conor Lamb leading Republican Rick Saccone by a tiny margin.

But Boris Epshteyn, the No. 1 Trump propagandist at conservative local TV news giant Sinclair Broadcast Group and a former Trump aide, thinks that this outcome is somehow good for Republicans and doesn’t reflect poorly on Trump -- and he wants local news audiences to see it the same way.

Epshteyn kicked off election day with a pre-emptively dismissive note in his morning email newsletter, arguing, “An election in one district in Pennsylvania in March does not indicate how the rest of that state, let alone the country, is going to vote in November.”

As the results were coming in last night, Epshteyn took to Twitter to declare the close race “already a good result for the Republican Party” and ask, “Where is that Democrat passion everyone is talking about?” His tweets quickly met the fate of many scorching takes: a high ratio of mocking replies from other users.


(Epshteyn attributed the mass mocking of his election analysis to “triggered” liberals upset that he was “hitting a nerve and calling it right.”)

This morning, Epshteyn continued his attempts to spin the Pennsylvania results with a quick note in his newsletter to tell his fans that the election is just not a big deal:


Breakfast with Boris newsletter
Epshteyn also promoted his live appearances this morning on several Sinclair stations in Maryland, Ohio, Florida, and even Pennsylvania to talk about the results. They were even worse. In his morning spot on WBFF/Fox 45, Sinclair’s flagship station in Baltimore, he argued that Saccone had actually benefited from a “Trump bump” because the race was too close to call instead of a blowout for Lamb:



BORIS EPSHTEYN: Saccone was down by about six points going into the final weekend. Now it’s tied. I don’t see how this is a negative for the Republicans. I see it as a positive.

TOM RODGERS (ANCHOR): Well, everyone keeps going -- saying, “Well, look, Trump won it by 20 points.” So because Trump was campaigning for him --

EPSHTEYN: Sure.

RODGERS: -- do you see the connection there that says maybe Trump hurt him? Or do you see it that Trump helped him with the election when we’re looking at Saccone’s votes?

EPSHTEYN: Well, the president really made one true appearance where he endorsed and helped Saccone. Overall, you’re right. Saccone was down by six points, the president came in, now it’s tied. You’re seeing a Trump bump of about six points. But it’s very different from having Donald Trump on the ballot in 2016 to now having a special election where he’s not on the ballot and made one appearance. The two are not the same at all.

Epshteyn has now also released online a "must-run" segment focused on the Pennsylvania special election. In the clip, he argues that the race is "not necessarily" any "indication of a Democrat wave for the midterms in November," and reminds viewers that "the president was not on the ballot."



Many may have missed Epshteyn’s weird, transparently pro-Trump defenses of the election outcome so far -- especially considering what little interest the public seems to have in his takes. But his latest Trump propaganda missive will be force-fed to viewers across the country now, as Sinclair mandates that all its news stations air Epshteyn’s desperate spin.

New ad campaigns from Fox News and Sinclair reflect their role as Trump propagandists
Blog ››› March 13, 2018 12:52 PM EDT ››› MATT GERTZ

Sarah Wasko / Media Matters
In what amounts to a declaration of corporate solidarity with the White House, two major conservative news outlets are letting their audiences know that they are not part of the “fake news media” that President Donald Trump frequently attacks.

The term “fake news,” coined during the 2016 presidential campaign to describe deliberately fabricated information packaged to resemble news articles, was quickly co-opted by Trump. He used the term to describe stories he disliked and the outlets that produced them as part of a broader effort to delegitimize the American press. At the same time, Trump made clear that there were outlets he preferred that were not part of the “fake news” problem.

Fox News’ new slogan presents the network as opposing this “fake news” media. Ad Age’s Jeanine Poggi reported yesterday that the network is “readying a new ad campaign with the tagline, ‘Real News. Real Honest Opinion.’” As with past Fox slogans, this one should be read as an implicit attack on the rest of the press -- what is the purpose of calling your network “fair and balanced” if not to suggest that the others are not?

Fox’s conservative commentators have spent much of the Trump administration echoing his inflammatory statements that journalists at other outlets deliberately fabricate stories -- they even drew criticism from the network’s elder statesman, Chris Wallace, for unfairly “bashing the media.” But now Fox as a whole is implicitly suggesting that the rest of the press is “fake news.”

Sinclair Broadcast Group, the corporate behemoth that uses a network of nearly 200 local news stations to stealthily promote nationally produced right-wing spin, is reportedly prepping a similar, even more explicit campaign.

According to internal documents obtained by CNN, local anchors are being forced to film ad spots that criticize “some members of the national media” for publishing “fake stories” because they want to “push their own personal bias and agenda.” The ad copy provides this contrast: “We understand Truth is neither politically 'left or right.' Our commitment to factual reporting is the foundation of our credibility, now more than ever.”

Media branding efforts like this tell you something about how the outlets view their audiences. Since Trump’s election, The Washington Post has adopted the slogan “democracy dies in darkness,” The New York Times has run ads stating that “The truth is more important now than ever” and criticizing “alternative facts,” and CNN has stressed that “there is no alternative to a fact” and that “opinions matter” but “they don’t change the facts.” In each case, the outlet is betting that its audience wants journalism that finds the truth, even in the face of hostility from those in power. At times, the outlets have been challenged by critics, including Media Matters, pointing out that they have not lived up to those promises.

The Fox and Sinclair campaigns are telling their audience something very different. They are telling their viewers that they stand with the president of the United States, in opposition to his foes in the rest of the press. They are stating -- implicitly in the case of Fox, explicitly in the case of Sinclair -- that while other media outlets are producing “fake news,” they are not. It’s a declaration that the networks are a safe space for conservatives: If you are worried about turning on the television and hearing criticism of the president, you can tune in to these networks and instead hear praise of his many successes.

The Post’s Margaret Sullivan wrote last year that the central media divide was between what she termed the “reality-based press,” which tries to discover what the powerful are doing and hold them to account, and “propaganda” outlets that seek to obscure the truth and protect those in power. Both Fox and Sinclair have made it as clear as possible which side of that divide they fall on.

Local Sinclair journalists share concerns with CNN after Sinclair forces them to spread pro-Trump propaganda
Blog ››› March 8, 2018 4:20 PM EST ››› MEDIA MATTERS STAFF


CNN recently obtained internal documents sent to local Sinclair TV stations requiring them to run 60- to 75-second promos that attack mainstream media outlets. Sinclair journalists shared concerns with CNN, calling the promo requirements “inappropriate” and “manipulative.” An internal document calls for one or two anchors at each local station to criticize national media outlets for allegedly pushing “fake stories” and “personal bias.” One Sinclair anchor said, “I felt like a POW recording a message.”

These promos are Sinclair’s latest attempt to sneak pro-Trump messaging into local media outlets. In April, Sinclair hired Boris Epshteyn, a former aide to President Donald Trump, and began producing must-run segments for local stations called “Bottom Line with Boris” in which Epshteyn espouses conservative commentary bolstering the president. Epshteyn has used the segments to go after mainstream media before, and he frequently uses his airtime to defend Trump’s comments and actions.

Sinclair Broadcast Group’s owners have strong ties to the Republican Party, and many Sinclair executives have a history of donating to Republicans and conservative causes. During the 2016 presidential campaign, the Trump campaign coordinated with Sinclair for kinder media coverage. And in a 2017 segment, Sinclair’s vice president for news, Scott Livingston, accused mainstream media of “using their platforms to push their own personal bias and agenda to control exactly what people think” -- the exact phrase now included in Sinclair’s planned promos, which are supposed to start airing this month.

From CNN’s March 7 report:

"Please produce the attached scripts exactly as they are written," the instructions say. "This copy has been thoroughly tested and speaks to our Journalistic Responsibility as advocates to seek the truth on behalf of the audience."

The promos begin with one or two anchors introducing themselves and saying "I'm [we are] extremely proud of the quality, balanced journalism that [proper news brand name of local station] produces. But I'm [we are] concerned about the troubling trend of irresponsible, one sided news stories plaguing our country."

Then the media bashing begins.

"The sharing of biased and false news has become all too common on social media," the script says. "More alarming, national media outlets are publishing these same fake stories without checking facts first. Unfortunately, some members of the national media are using their platforms to push their own personal bias and agenda to control 'exactly what people think' ... This is extremely dangerous to our democracy."

Then the anchors are supposed to strike a more positive tone and say that their local station pursues the truth. "We understand Truth is neither politically 'left or right.' Our commitment to factual reporting is the foundation of our credibility, now more than ever."

There is no audience for Boris Epshteyn's pro-Trump propaganda, so Sinclair forces it on people
Blog ››› March 5, 2018 11:10 AM EST ››› PAM VOGEL

Sarah Wasko / Media Matters
For nearly a year now, Sinclair Broadcast Group has been mandating that its local news stations air commentary segments from former Trump aide Boris Epshteyn. It’s essentially force-feeding local audiences Trump propaganda between community news and weather -- and the numbers show no one would watch it otherwise.

Sinclair is a corporate giant that owns or operates around 190 local TV news stations across the country, and it’s been quietly forcing its stations to air nationally produced right-wing spin for years. But when it hired Epshteyn, fresh from a stint in the Trump administration, to serve as its “chief political analyst,” it was only a matter of time before everyone was paying attention. Numerous media and business reporters highlighted Sinclair’s twofold plan for growing local right-wing news: using the company’s still-pending acquisition of Tribune Media stations to further expand its reach across the country (with its potentially unethical relationship with the Trump administration and its appointees paving the way), and hiring Epshteyn as a new, Trump-aligned star for “must-run” national segments.

After I spent the last 11 months in the Sinclair rabbit hole with these reporters, one thing has become awkwardly, painfully obvious to me: Sinclair is forcing its stations to run Epshteyn’s segments because no one cares otherwise. There is no organic audience actively seeking out his pro-Trump commentary.

At the time it hired Epshteyn, Sinclair touted its new analyst as providing “unique perspective to the political conversation” that would “better inform and empower our viewers.” It also made the decision months later to up his airtime, though the company declined to say why.

I watch each new “Bottom Line with Boris” must-run segment on his YouTube channel, usually shortly after it’s posted. On YouTube, I alone account for a not-insignificant portion of his total viewership, which is usually less than 50.


YouTube screenshot
On occasion, one of his segments makes the jump into thousands of views; those are usually the ones I or another media researcher or reporter decided to write about.

Things are not going much better for Epshteyn on Facebook. He has hosted a handful of Facebook Live sessions, and on more than one occasion, for a moment or two, I’ve been the only person joining him for the ride. I’ve spent collective minutes intently watching, all by myself or with a handful of other random people, as Epshteyn explains his latest video or tries to end the video before someone off camera tells him to keep going.


Facebook screenshot
His typical Facebook posts aren’t getting much engagement either. While the videos of his segments sometimes garner a few thousand views each on Facebook, that number is likely higher than the YouTube view counts because of algorithm and platform differences like Facebook’s use of video auto-play in newsfeeds. The videos typically don’t receive high engagement beyond views (i.e., “likes” or comments) and his non-video posts often show similar minimal engagement. And often the comments his posts do manage to garner are from users explaining why they disagree with him -- or more crudely explaining exactly how they feel about Epshteyn or Sinclair.


Facebook screenshot

Facebook screenshot
He doesn’t have fans engaging with him on other social media either. The official Bottom Line with Boris Instagram account has 91 followers as of this publication. He has about 30,000 Twitter followers, but most of his tweets seem to get extremely low engagement for a verified user with his own almost-daily news platform. He also sends out a morning email newsletter every day. I read it; I’m not convinced anyone else does.

There are a couple theories about why Epshteyn’s political commentary just isn’t landing, and in reality it’s probably some combination of both: His delivery is monotonous and pretty uninspiring, and his opinions are predictable and add nothing original to public conversation.

Epshteyn’s demeanor as he delivers his commentary to viewers was perhaps best described by HBO's John Oliver last July, when he described Epshteyn as “a rejected extra from The Sopranos in a J.C. Penney's tie whose voice sounds like Sylvester Stallone with a mouthful of bees.” Epshteyn somehow manages to be incredibly boring on screen even though behind the scenes he reportedly terrorized green rooms during his time as a Trump spokesperson.

Beyond the question of charisma, Epshteyn doesn’t really make any compelling or interesting points. For a chief political analyst, his takes are notably unoriginal. At best, he regurgitates Trump talking points or touts some vague, imaginary bipartisan ideals that involve being nicer to Trump. At worst, he defends the most absurd, racist things Trump does. These are not exactly principled positions.

But the worst part about Epshteyn’s almost-daily segments isn’t his lack of charm or compelling analysis, or their propagandistic nature -- it’s that Sinclair viewers are subjected to his commentary regardless.

Sinclair is forcibly creating an audience where none exists by requiring its news stations to air Epshteyn’s segments. Even though only about 25 to 50 people seem to care about his commentary enough to seek it out on YouTube, it’s still reaching about 39 percent of U.S. TV households -- and could soon reach an unprecedented 72 percent.

Propaganda doesn’t work because people genuinely love reading or watching it -- it works when it’s repeated enough to just become an acceptable part of everyday life. Like, for example, when an awkward stranger shouts at you after the local weather every night about what a great job his former boss, the president, is doing.

Sinclair definitely doesn't want anyone to think that Trump's White House is in a state of crisis
Blog ››› March 2, 2018 4:53 PM EST ››› PAM VOGEL

Sarah Wasko / Media Matters
Boris Epshteyn, Sinclair Broadcast Group’s chief political analyst and a former Trump administration aide, would like you to know that everything is fine at the Trump White House -- and if you hear otherwise, blame the media.

From today’s “must-run” “Bottom Line with Boris” commentary segment, posted with the headline, “Don’t buy into the media’s portrayal of a White House in chaos”:



BORIS EPSHTEYN: Have there been a lot of staff changes in the Trump White House? Sure. A lot of that is because the president is not a lifelong politician. He did not have scores of people riding his political coattails like almost every other president in recent history. The White House is a tough place to work. I can tell you firsthand that it is a pressure cooker. Is everything always smooth and perfect in this White House? Of course not. But is it at your job? Here’s the bottom line: Just because someone in media says that there’s a meltdown in Washington, D.C., does not make that true. As you’re taking in news and political coverage, do not buy into the hysteria.

The segment does not delve into exactly what’s caused such widespread reports of an administration in mayhem, nor mention any of the reasons there has been unprecedented staff turnover, such as pressure stemming from an ongoing federal investigation into collusion or reports of serial domestic abuse by a staffer.

This embarrassing segment will now be forcibly aired, often spliced into local news coverage, on more than 100 Sinclair-owned or operated news stations throughout the country as part of the media giant’s infamous “must-run” lineup.

Sinclair is known for its history of injecting right-wing spin into local newscasts, most notably with these “must-run” segments. The segments have included blatant (and sometimes embarrassing) pro-Trump propaganda missives from Epshteyn since last spring. In the last six months, Epshteyn has used his “Bottom Line With Boris” segments to attack members of the press for being too mean to the president, praise seemingly every move Trump makes, and offer jaw-droppingly ill-timed defenses of Trump and his staff members. Most recently, he developed an entire segment arguing that Trump’s authoritarian dream of a “military parade” was a good idea.

Thanks to the Trump Federal Communications Commission, pro-Trump propaganda like this could soon air on even more local TV news stations and in major cities across the country, reaching 72 percent of U.S. television households.

Sinclair’s “Terrorism Alert Desk” segments are designed to gin up xenophobia via local news

I watched more than 200 of Sinclair's terror alerts -- here's what I learned
Research ››› March 1, 2018 9:22 AM EST ››› PAM VOGEL

The Trump FCC is now being investigated for making rules changes to help Sinclair
Blog ››› February 15, 2018 1:18 PM EST ››› PAM VOGEL


Sarah Wasko / Media Matters
The nefarious relationship between the Trump-era Federal Communications Commission (FCC), conservative local TV news giant Sinclair Broadcast Group, and the Trump administration itself is now under investigation.

On February 15, The New York Times reported that the FCC inspector general has opened an internal investigation into potential improper conduct by Trump-appointed FCC chair Ajit Pai and his aides in advocating for deregulatory rules that specifically benefited Sinclair.

The Times noted that little is known about the extent of the investigation, which was launched at end of last year but had been undisclosed until now. The investigation began after several lawmakers called on the inspector general to investigate a “disturbing pattern of a three way quid-pro-quo.” Congressional letters to the inspector general, David Hunt, detailed reports of communications and meetings involving Pai, the Trump White House, and Sinclair executives. According to the Times report:

A New York Times investigation published in August found that Mr. Pai and his staff members had met and corresponded with Sinclair executives several times. One meeting, with Sinclair’s executive chairman, took place days before Mr. Pai, who was appointed by President Trump, took over as F.C.C. chairman.

Sinclair’s top lobbyist, a former F.C.C. official, also communicated frequently with former agency colleagues and pushed for the relaxation of media ownership rules. And language the lobbyist used about loosening rules has tracked closely to analysis and language used by Mr. Pai in speeches favoring such changes.

In November, several Democrats in Congress, including Mr. Pallone, called on the inspector general’s office to explore all communications — including personal emails, social media accounts, text messages and phone calls — between Sinclair and Mr. Pai and his staff.

The lawmakers also asked for communications between Mr. Pai’s office and the White House. They pointed to a report in March 2017 from The New York Post, in which Mr. Trump is said to have met with Sinclair’s executive chairman, David Smith, and discussed F.C.C. rules.

The internal investigation could also tackle a series of recent FCC actions that have directly allowed Sinclair greater room to expand:

In April, the FCC reinstated an outdated media ownership rule known as the UHF discount, making room for a new level of local media consolidation at the hands of big media groups like Sinclair.
Weeks later, Sinclair announced it was proposing to acquire Tribune Media, a huge local news merger that wouldn’t have been allowed without the UHF discount in place. The FCC and Trump’s Department of Justice are now the only agencies that need to approve the deal.
In October, the FCC voted to eliminate a rule that required local news stations to maintain offices within the communities they serve, making it easier for Sinclair to consolidate and centralize local news resources as it buys up more stations.
In November, the FCC rolled back rules that limit broadcast station ownership, allowing for Sinclair to more easily own or operate multiple stations -- or merge stations -- in the same local media markets.
Sinclair’s unprecedented gains under Pai’s purview are not just significant in terms of media consolidation; they’re ideologically dangerous. The company is known for requiring its local news stations across the country to air almost-daily segments that function as Trump propaganda. Its pending acquisition of Tribune would allow these segments to quietly spread further into major cities and battleground states ahead of the 2020 presidential race.

The new FCC internal investigation, however, could throw a wrench in Sinclair’s plans. According to the Times, “Antitrust experts said this new investigation may complicate the reviews of the Sinclair-Tribune deal by the F.C.C. and the Justice Department. Even if the deal were approved, they said, any conclusions of improper conduct by Mr. Pai could give fuel to critics to challenge the review in courts.”

Sinclair solicits contributions for an election fight while running a nationwide segment supporting Trump's military parade
Sinclair edges ever closer to full-blown state media
Blog ››› February 12, 2018 4:15 PM EST ››› PAM VOGEL

Sarah Wasko / Media Matters
Sinclair Broadcast Group‘s secretive campaign to transform local news stations into Trump propaganda machines is becoming all the more difficult to ignore -- both behind the scenes and on air.

On February 1, TV news trade outlet FTVLive first reported that Sinclair’s political action committee (PAC) had sent a letter to executive-level employees (including many station news directors) encouraging them to donate to the PAC. The letter, which FTVLive published in full, says the PAC “supports candidates for Congress who can influence the future of broadcasting.” It also praises Trump-appointed Federal Communications Commission (FCC) head Ajit Pai, and worries that Congress may attempt to derail Pai’s pro-Sinclair agenda. The letter says, “Since the change in administration last year, we now have an FCC Chairman who appreciates the important role of local broadcasting enough to launch a number of politically unpopular deregulatory initiatives necessary to ensure the future of our industry.”

What that vague sentence actually means is: Pai has spearheaded several FCC actions that all seem, incidentally, to benefit Sinclair more than anyone else. The rapid deregulation of the local broadcast industry under Pai’s leadership essentially permits Sinclair to have news control in an unprecedented number of local media markets across the country, in major cities and battleground states. It does nothing short of pave the way for Trump’s reelection.

And if any lawmakers dare to challenge the FCC in its blatant regulatory overhaul, Sinclair PAC aims to be ready for an election fight -- ethics be damned.

The Washington Post’s Paul Farhi spoke to experts about the PAC solicitation, and they seemed pretty shocked by the overt partisanship of making such a request of news directors:

Major TV news outlets such as ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News and NBC say they prohibit their journalists from contributing to political parties, candidates or causes, and don’t ask them to chip in to the company’s PAC. The prohibition is aimed at eliminating the perception of partisanship by journalists.

Given that tradition, Sinclair’s policy “violates every standard of conduct that has existed in newsrooms for the past 40 or 50 years,” said Lewis Friedland, a journalism professor at the University of Wisconsin and a former TV news producer. “I’ve never seen anything like this. They certainly have the right to do it, but it’s blatantly unethical.”

By contributing money to Sinclair’s lobbying efforts, he said, news directors would be tacitly supporting the company’s agenda, potentially raising doubts about impartiality and independence when reporting on issues such as city or state legislative debates about deregulation. “It would cause people to ask whether they’re being fair and balanced in their coverage,” he said.

[...]

In addition to breaking with journalistic tradition, the company’s request could put its news directors in an untenable position, said Mark Feldstein, a professor of broadcast journalism at the University of Maryland. Despite Sinclair’s official reassurances, said Feldstein, a former local and network TV reporter, some news directors might feel that opting out would be perceived by their superiors as an act of disloyalty.

Days after reports revealed this “blatantly unethical” behind-the-scenes strategy at Sinclair, its chief political analyst Boris Epshteyn produced yet another “must-run” segment that can only be described as propaganda.

The “must-run” practice is itself questionable: Sinclair has been requiring all its local news stations to air Epshteyn’s “commentary” segments, essentially feeding audiences thinly veiled pro-Trump missives mixed in with local news stories, weather, and sports.

In a Bottom Line with Boris segment posted on February 12, Epshteyn argues that the dictator-style “military parade” floated by Trump last week could be a needed “morale boost" and “well worth” its estimated $21 million price tag to “promote national unity and strength.”



Epshteyn -- a former Trump aide -- has starred in segments veering dangerously close to state media before; he routinely defends pretty much every action Trump takes and has relished the opportunity to attack media or individuals he views as too critical of the president. Thirsting for a Trumpian “military parade” is, in some ways, the next logical step.

Sinclair defends Trump’s racist “shithole” remarks as mere “salty language”
And local news viewers across the country will now be subjected to it
Blog ››› January 17, 2018 6:05 PM EST ››› PAM VOGEL

Nearly one week after President Donald Trump reportedly referred to Haiti, El Salvador, and unspecified African nations as “shithole countries” in a racist diatribe, Sinclair Broadcast Group’s #1 Trump shill Boris Epshteyn would like local news audiences to know that it doesn’t matter.

In a January 17 Bottom Line with Boris “must-run” segment for Sinclair, former Trump aide and Sinclair chief political analyst Epshteyn added his voice to the chorus of desperate right-wing media figures defending Trump’s latest racist moment. He argued that the entire “dust up” about Trump saying yet another clearly racist thing was about a president using “salty language” and saying “a curse word to a group of adults in private.” Epshteyn’s segment does not mention what the comments were in reference to, or name any of the countries targeted -- he doesn't even use the words "immigrant" or "immigration."

He instead reserved his criticism for media outlets that reported on the comments and quoted the president saying "shithole," saying, "The problem here is that these networks are played in public places throughout our country. They are in airports, doctors’ offices, and restaurants. The screens are seen by adults and children alike. The allegation is that President Trump said the word once in a private meeting. How is it ok to repeat it and splash it on the screen hundreds of times? I believe that makes no sense." During the segment, the word "shithole" is even blurred out in a screengrab of CNN's coverage.

Seriously, just watch this.


This embarrassing segment will now be forcibly aired, often spliced with local news coverage, on more than 100 Sinclair-owned or operated news stations throughout the country as part of the media giant’s infamous “must-run” line-up.

Sinclair is known for its history of injecting right-wing spin into local newscasts, most notably with these “must-run” segments. The segments have included blatant (and sometimes embarrassing) pro-Trump propaganda missives from Epshteyn since last spring. In the last six months, Epshteyn has used his Bottom Line With Boris segments to attack members of the press for being too mean to the president, praise seemingly every move Trump makes, and offer jaw-droppingly ill-timed defenses of Trump and his staff members. Most recently, he developed an entire segment arguing that Trump’s horrifying “nuclear button” tweet threatening nuclear war with North Korea was a strong foreign policy move.

Thanks to the Trump Federal Communications Commission, pro-Trump propaganda like this could soon air on even more local TV news stations and in major cities across the country, reaching 72% of U.S. television households.

Sinclair airs anti-survivor “must-run” segment on local news stations weeks after being named in a sexual harassment lawsuit
Blog ››› January 8, 2018 4:09 PM EST ››› PAM VOGEL

Conservative local media giant Sinclair Broadcast Group is mandating local news stations air a “must-run” commentary segment touting “due process” at the expense of accusers in the #MeToo movement just weeks after being named in a lawsuit alleging workplace sexual harassment at its digital media entity Circa.

A January 4 national “must-run” segment from former Sinclair executive Mark Hyman argued that while “sexual misconduct in any form, at any time, anywhere is never acceptable,” some protections for people who publicly report sexual misconduct are not appropriate. Hyman specifically begged, “Let’s not automatically grant anonymity to every accuser,” warning that doing so "could lead to false allegations used as weapons for any number of reasons." Hyman failed to note the very real dangers people face when they come forward.


On December 20, 2017, The Baltimore Sun reported that Sinclair and its digital media arm, Circa, had been named in a lawsuit alleging workplace sexual harassment experienced by three former Circa employees. The lawsuit was not mentioned in Hyman’s website post about the “must-run” segment.

Sinclair is known for its history of injecting right-wing spin into local newscasts, most notably with these nationally produced “must-run” commentary segments. The segments, which all Sinclair-owned and operated news stations are required to air, have included rants about “politically correct” culture from Hyman for some time, as well as blatant (and sometimes embarrassing) pro-Trump propaganda missives from former Trump aide Boris Epshteyn and “Terrorism Alert Desk” segments seemingly focused on whatever Muslims do.

Sinclair’s pending acquisition of Tribune Media, if approved by Trump’s Federal Communications Commission and Department of Justice, would allow it to force-feed conservative commentary segments like these to more local news audiences in battleground states and major cities ahead of the likely re-election campaign of reported serial sexual harasser President Donald Trump in 2020.

Sinclair’s Boris Epshteyn praises Trump “nuclear button” tweet as strong, purposeful foreign policy
Epshteyn’s praise will be force-fed to local news viewers across the country
Blog ››› January 5, 2018 4:42 PM EST ››› PAM VOGEL


President Donald Trump’s recent unhinged, decidedly phallic tweet threatening nuclear war with North Korea horrified many -- but not former Trump aide and Sinclair Broadcast Group’s chief political analyst, Boris Epshteyn. Conveniently, Epshteyn has been given an ever-growing platform to share his views about his former boss with unsuspecting audiences nationwide during local news broadcasts.

In a new Bottom Line with Boris segment posted on January 5, Epshteyn argues that Trump’s tweet comparing the size and power of his “nuclear button” to that of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un was an example of Trump fulfilling his promise of "standing up to international bullies." He concluded, "Strength is the policy that will be effective with these rogue actors."



Sinclair is known for its history of injecting right-wing spin into local newscasts, most notably with its nationally produced “must-run” commentary segments. The segments, which all Sinclair-owned and operated news stations are required to air, have included blatant (and sometimes embarrassing) pro-Trump propaganda missives from Epshteyn since last spring. In the last six months, Epshteyn has used his Bottom Line With Boris segments to attack members of the press for being too mean to the president, praise seemingly every move Trump makes, and offer jaw-droppingly ill-timed defenses of Trump and his staff members.
https://www.mediamatters.org/networks-a ... -group-inc



This is Sinclair, 'the most dangerous US company you've never heard of'

Sinclair is the largest broadcast company in America. But its partisan politics – and connections to the White House – are raising concerns

Lucia GravesThu 17 Aug 2017 07.00 EDT
Sinclair’s size, rightwing politics and close connections to Donald Trump’s White House are starting to attract attention.

Most Americans don’t know it exists. Primetime US news refers to it as an “under-the-radar company”. Unlike Fox News and Rupert Murdoch, virtually no one outside of business circles could name its CEO. And yet, Sinclair Media Group is the owner of the largest number of TV stations in America.

“Sinclair’s probably the most dangerous company most people have never heard of,” said Michael Copps, the George W Bush-appointed former chairman of Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the top US broadcast regulator.

John Oliver – host of HBO’s weekly satirical show Last Week Tonight – used a similar line when he introduced an 18-minute segment on Sinclair last month by referring to it as “maybe the most influential media company you never heard of”.


But that is beginning to change. Sinclair’s size, rightwing politics and close connections to Donald Trump’s White House are starting to attract attention. Democrats are wading in to the fray and demanding answers over Sinclair’s close ties to the Trump administration, which, they say, could mean the group is getting preferential treatment.

The New York Times refers to the group as a “conservative giant” that, since the Bush presidency, has used its 173 television stations “to advance a mostly right-leaning agenda”. The Washington Post describes it as a “company with a long history of favoring conservative causes and candidates on its stations’ newscasts”.

More recently, Sinclair has added a website, Circa, to its portfolio. But not any old website. Circa has been described as “the new Breitbart” and a favorite among White House aides who wish to platform news to a friendly source (a process otherwise known as “leaking”). As the US news site the Root put it: “What if Breitbart and Fox News had a couple of babies? What if they grew up to be a cool, slicker version of their parents and started becoming more powerful? Meet Sinclair and Circa –Donald Trump’s new besties.”

The growing anxiety in America over the rise of Sinclair stems from the belief the company’s close connections to Trump have allowed it to skirt market regulations. Already the biggest broadcaster in the country, Sinclair is poised to make its biggest move yet. If the FCC approves Sinclair’s $3.9bn purchase of an additional 42 stations, it would reach into the homes of almost three-quarters of Americans.

Another cause for concern, and increased scrutiny, is what’s seen as the company’s pronounced political agenda. Sinclair forces its local stations to run pro-Trump “news” segments. In April, they hired Boris Epshteyn, a former Trump campaign spokesman and member of the White House press office, as its chief political analyst. His “must-run” 10-minute political commentary segments unsurprisingly hewed closely to the Trump administration’s message. The news and analysis website Slate, referring to Epshteyn’s contributions, said: “As far as propaganda goes, this is pure, industrial-strength stuff.”

Some local stations have reportedly chafed at the idea of pro-Trump “must run” packages. Sinclair’s management says the packages are necessary to provide viewers with diverse viewpoints as a counterweight to progressive leanings they’re convinced are held by the media, including the staff of their own local stations. “Ninety-nine-point-nine percent of the media is left of center,” David Smith, then Sinclair’s CEO, told Rolling Stone in 2005.

But Sinclair’s politics isn’t restricted to Epshteyn’s contributions. It has a long history of airing material which has often been controversial, and for which it has been sanctioned in the past – all the while purporting to simply report the “news”.

While it doesn’t have the cultural cachet of major conservative networks like Fox News, Sinclair’s influence is more subtle. Unlike Fox News, which brands itself clearly and proudly, most viewers of Sinclair’s local stations have no idea who owns them since they are not branded as part of the Sinclair network.

But it is their intended purchase of a collection of new stations owned by Tribune Media – the former owners of the illustrious Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times – that has thrust them into the national spotlight unlike ever before.

“It used to be a few years ago there were some mergers that were unthinkable,” Copps, now with the DC-based watchdog group Common Cause, told the Guardian. “We’re in a period now when everything’s so wild that nothing is unthinkable.”

For the Trump administration, Sinclair has obvious appeal

The figure that looms large behind Sinclair is David Smith, whose father founded the company in the Nixon era. Smith recently ended his 28-year reign as CEO, and along with his brothers maintains what an industry publication called “iron-clad control” of the billion-dollar media empire as well as the company’s majority financial interest.

The Smith family, based in and around Baltimore, likes to keep a low profile – they give few interviews and David Smith has no Wikipedia page. “We would tend to maintain as much anonymity as we can,” he told the Baltimore Sun in 1995, one of the rare times he’s spoken to the press.

Their political agenda is somewhat less mysterious. Campaign finance records show the Smith brothers have historically donated overwhelmingly to Republicans. And a Washington Post analysis of the company’s 2016 presidential election coverage found Sinclair stations were unusually favorable towards Trump and negative towards Hillary Clinton.

During last year’s presidential campaign, Sinclair conducted zero interviews with Clinton. But it touted 15 “exclusive” ones with Trump, which aired mostly in critical swing states in the final months of the election and without any commentary, despite the copious fact-checking Trump interviews tend to require. Sinclair has insisted it had no special arrangement with the Trump campaign and that Clinton simply did not make herself available to them. Clinton campaign officials say they spurned Sinclair for a reason, though her vice-presidential nominee, Tim Kaine, gave a handful interviews to Sinclair stations.

According to Politico, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner told a room full of Manhattan business executives that the campaign had struck a deal with Sinclair to secure better coverage in the states where they needed spots most.

Former FCC Commissioner Pai and Chairman Wheeler testify at House Appropriations Subcommittee hearing on the FCC’s 2016 budget.
The FCC chairman, Ajit Pai, testifies in the House of Representatives. Photograph: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
The manner in which Sinclair looks set to expand – specifically, with Trump paving the way – is causing widespread anxiety throughout media and political circles. The focus of the concern is Ajit Pai, the man Trump appointed as head of the country’s top broadcasting regulator, the FCC.

Since he began work in January, Pai has been busy relaxing the protections for local broadcasting that had previously limited Sinclair’s expansion.

Trump’s new-look FCC has moved swiftly to clear the hurdles for Sinclair’s proposed takeover of Tribune. A day before Trump was inaugurated, Smith invited Pai to a meeting at the Washington-area headquarters of the company’s ABC affiliate. Within 10 days of taking over the FCC, a New York Times investigation found, Pai had already relaxed a restriction on TV stations’ sharing of resources, including ad revenue – precisely the topic Smith had met with Pai about.

Since January, the Times report found, “Pai has undertaken a deregulatory blitz enacting or proposing a wishlist of fundamental policy changes advocated by Mr Smith and his company.”

Tom Wheeler, Pai’s predecessor at the FCC, who is now at the Brookings Institution, said: “What’s surprising is how fast the Trump FCC moved and how they moved without any real opportunity for public comment and without any following of procedural due process ... So you look at that kind of behavior and scratch your head.”

To better understand such behavior and where it’s leading, it helps to consider where Sinclair began.

David Smith’s father, Julian Sinclair Smith, described by the company’s official history as “patriarch to the Smith brothers”, founded the company in 1971, and kept a hand in the business until his death, following a battle with Parkinson’s, in 1993. But the company’s greatest evolutionary changes began around 1990, when the brothers bought up the remainder of their parents’ stock, kicking off an extended buying spree that would last decades.

As Sinclair grew, so did the scrutiny. And increasingly, the Smith brothers found themselves not just the broadcasters, but the subject of the news.

In 1996, David Smith was arrested on suspicion of soliciting a prostitute who performed what the police called “unnatural and perverted sex on him” in a Mercedes owned by Sinclair. More disturbing to critics than the misdemeanor sex offense, though, was the unusual way he got out of doing the court-ordered community service that resulted from his plea bargain in the case: by having his broadcasting company do what amounted to publicity hits for local drug counseling programs, packaged as news.

LuAnne Canipe, a former reporter for Sinclair, said the incident was also indicative of a broader culture of office sexism. “Let’s just say the arrest of the CEO was part of a sexual atmosphere that trickled down to different levels in the company,” said Canipe, who left Sinclair in 1998. “There was an improper work environment. I think that because of what he did, there was a feeling that everything was fair game.”

One person concerned by Sinclair’s growth: Rupert Murdoch

The growth of Sinclair may have passed below the radar, but not past another media mogul – Rupert Murdoch, chairman and acting CEO of Fox News.

Although Sinclair has insisted it has no interest in competing with national cable news platforms like Murdoch’s, industry observers say the mogul is already planning a strategy to combat the rise of a potential rival. After a failed attempt to outbid Sinclair for Tribune, Murdoch is threatening a switch of Fox’s broadcast affiliates from Sinclair-owned stations to those of a smaller independent broadcaster.

Donald Trump with media mogul Rupert Murdoch in July 2016.
Donald Trump with media mogul Rupert Murdoch in July 2016. Photograph: Carlo Allegri / Reuters/Reuters
But it isn’t just Sinclair’s business interests that are a cause of creeping concern – its political affiliations could be, too.

Take the case the former congressman Bob Ehrlich, a Maryland Republican who later become governor. After pressing the FCC to fast-track Sinclair’s request to acquire more stations, Ehrlich enjoyed company perks like the frequent use of a Sinclair executive’s luxury helicopter, as the Baltimore Sun reported in 2002. By the time full details of the report emerged, Ehrlich had already won his gubernatorial election.

In 2004, Sinclair leadership reportedly ordered its local affiliate stations to air a documentary critical of the Democratic presidential nominee, John Kerry, based on allegations which later proved unfounded – that Kerry had exaggerated his record as a swift-boat officer in the Vietnam war.

A Washington DC bureau chief publicly resisted and was fired for the offense. The incident sent ripples through its stations, but Sinclair said media reports about the controversy exaggerated the issue.

Around the same time, as George W Bush faced criticism over the faltering war in Iraq, Sinclair ordered seven of its stations not to run an episode of Nightline in which host Ted Koppel read the names of every American soldier killed in the war, saying it “undermine[d] the efforts of the United States in Iraq”. The decision sparked a major backlash, including from the Republican senator John McCain, a Vietnam war veteran, who wrote a letter to David Smith calling the decision “unpatriotic” and “a gross disservice to the public, and to the men and women of the United States Armed Forces”.

Other times, Sinclair’s influence has been more ambiguous. When the Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs was assaulted by the then US congressional candidate Greg Gianforte on the eve of his election in Montana, the local NBC affiliate, recently purchased by Sinclair, refused to air Jacobs’s audio recording of the incident, despite entreaties from NBC executives in New York. The local news director said she was not influenced by Sinclair, noting the purchase was not yet complete. Gianforte won the election, and, the day after the Montana Republican was charged with assault, Sinclair’s vice-president and director Fred Smith donated $1,000 to him.

Meanwhile, with its 2015 purchase of Circa, a mobile aggregated news app, Sinclair has control for the first time of a national text-based news outlet. Backed by a staff of 70, Sinclair transformed the app into conservative-leaning platform offering thinly sourced scoops – often written without any author byline other than “Circa staff” – that frequently seem to advance the Trump administration’s agenda du jour. Trump and his aides have returned the favor by linking to Circa’s content, and it’s become a favorite source of Sean Hannity, Fox News’s most obsequious Trump booster. (Sinclair denies Circa has any political orientation, noting that it does not carry op-eds.)

The rise of Sinclair has also recently stirred the Democrats in Washington, who have become increasingly vocal on the issue.

This summer, Senator Maria Cantwell led a group of colleagues in urging commerce and judiciary leaders to carefully examine the pending deal with Tribune, citing concern “about the level of media concentration this merger creates, and its impact on the public interest”, according to the lawmakers’ June letter.

And this week, House Democrats in top FCC oversight positions wrote directly to the FCC’s Pai expressing their dismay at what they perceive to be a “pattern” of preferential treatment toward Sinclair.

In addition to changes paving the way for Sinclair’s merger, Pai’s FCC has proposed eliminating one of its most fundamental rules, which requires local news stations to actually have a local studio where they broadcast the news.

Now, the agency seems poised to do away with local broadcast protections, which would allow Sinclair and other broadcasters to save money by cutting local staff and to impose more editorial input from corporate headquarters.

And that means many more Americans will be hearing from the most dangerous company most people have never heard of – whether they know it or not.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/ ... tbart-news


Sinclair's Propaganda Bomb Is What Media Critics Have Warned About Since Reagan
President Trump publicly backs the outfit.


BY CHARLES P. PIERCE
APR 2, 2018

Embedded in Monday’s episode of Executive Time was a tweet in which the president* came to the defense of Sinclair Broadcasting’s Bot TV approach to local news.


There has been a lot of buzz around tout les toobz about this remarkable mashup of local Sinclair news readers essentially auditioning for jobs at Eyewitness News Stepford.


As more than a few people have pointed out, this is a stunning example of what happens in a deregulated media market, something that media critics have been warning us about ever since the Reagan Administration went to town on the FCC. What some people seem to have forgotten is that Sinclair has been up to this monkey mischief for quite some time now, even before it commanded its local stations to carry the frothing nonsense of stubbly Trumper Boris Epshteyn. Jay Rosen wrote a dire warning about these people 14 years ago.

She said that on all 62 stations owned by Sinclair Broadcasting, at different times, on different nights, but close to the election—“like within ten days”—Sinclair was going to interrupt the prime-time programming offered by different networks in different cities where it owns affiliates, and put on the air Stolen Honor, an anti-Kerry documentary—agitprop, as it used to be called—featuring former POWs in Vietnam who, in essence, charge John Kerry with treason for his anti-war efforts. And they were doing all this because….? It didn’t make any sense. You couldn’t complete the because. “That’s an amazing story you have,” I told her. Then she swore me to secrecy until her account ran, which is standard practice. What Sinclair was planning to do didn’t make sense within any known model for operating a company that owns local television stations under U.S. law. Customary practice had always precluded a political intervention of any kind near the finish line of an election. Ultimately behind this custom was not some grand sense of the public interest shared among civic-minded station owners, but a cold realism about electoral politics. Start interfering in the horse race by backing the wrong horse and regulators from the hostile party are likely to make you pay if their guy wins.
As Rosen points out, when Ted Koppel decided to read the names of every member of the servicemembers who had died in Iraq, Sinclair refused to air Nightline on any of the ABC affiliates it owned. So, as we noted, this has been Sinclair’s modus operandi for a very long time.


Not only is this a cautionary tale about media consolidation—Sinclair is inches away from owning stations in Chicago and Los Angeles—it’s also a cautionary tale about the imbalance between labor and management in a very visible industry. When the mash-up appeared this weekend, anonymous Sinclair employees leapt to the electric Twitter machine to talk about the read-or-die pressure on the employees in the company’s local stations. And, when this happens in the context of an administration dedicated to keeping people stupid enough to believe all its lies, you have reached a critical mass driving the country inexorably toward the result of Mr. Madison’s great warning:

“A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both.”
No “perhaps” about it, Jemmy. Not any more.
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/p ... ropaganda/
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Trump TV Inside Sinclair Broadcasting

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Apr 04, 2018 10:44 am

Dan Rather Thoroughly Dismantles Sinclair Broadcasting's 'Orwellian' Propaganda

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sinclair Broadcasting is fully backed by this country’s oligarchy right now, and along with Ajit Pai and telecoms, they plan on strengthening their control on what information people can and cannot have access to.
https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-polit ... propaganda
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Re: Trump TV Inside Sinclair Broadcasting

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Apr 04, 2018 7:13 pm

Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin is calling on Sinclair Broadcasting Group’s Executive Chairman to explain his company’s policy regarding mandating content for local news stations.
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Re: Trump TV Inside Sinclair Broadcasting

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Apr 04, 2018 7:23 pm

Confessions of a Former Sinclair News Director

I realized I would have trouble looking myself in the mirror if I put stories like that on the air.
By Aaron Weiss / The Huffington Post April 4, 2018, 10:20 AM GMT


I was a Sinclair news director. For a few months, at least.

In 2013, I was a young news director at a struggling small station in the Midwest, having worked my way up the ranks as a producer in larger markets. I’d uprooted my family the year before and moved from the West Coast to “earn my stripes” running a newsroom. I had a small team with a handful of veterans and eager new reporters I enjoyed mentoring.

That fall, Sinclair Broadcast Group bought the station. Sinclair was not a household name at the time, but it did have a reputation in the business for being heavy-handed in station operations and for having a conservative editorial lean. The company first made national headlines when it forced all its stations to run an anti-John Kerry documentary just before the Democratic nominee lost the 2004 presidential election.

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Still, I went in with an open mind. As Sinclair prepared to purchase my station, I emailed a colleague to say, “From everything I’ve seen so far, it’s not the evil empire some people think.”

It took just a few months to realize how wrong I was.

It began with the “must run” stories arriving in my inbox every morning. “Must-run” stories were exactly what the name suggests: They were a combination of pre-produced packages that would come down from corporate, along with scripts for local anchors to read. We had to air them whether we wanted to or not.

On the way to a meeting of company news directors, someone whose station had been acquired a few months earlier explained that the arrangement wasn’t that bad — you just had to bury the “must-run” corporate stories and commentary in early-morning newscasts where few viewers would see them. Shortly after that, an executive made it clear to us that the “must-run” stories were not optional and that corporate would be watching to make sure they weren’t getting buried at 5am.

Sinclair knows its strongest asset is the credibility of its local anchors. They’re trusted voices in their communities, and they have often been on the air for decades before Sinclair purchased their stations.


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The must-run stories, however, barely passed as journalism. More than one script came down that, had it come from one of my fresh-out-of-college reporters, I would have sent back for a complete rewrite. But Sinclair executives made it clear that the must-run scripts were not to be touched by producers or anchors.

I didn’t last long after that. I soon realized I would have trouble looking myself in the mirror if I put stories and commentary like that on the air. I couldn’t in good conscience ask young reporters and anchors to sign multi-year contracts knowing what they’d be forced to say on the air and face severe financial penalties if they left early.

So I quit, and once again uprooted my family in search of a company with ethical and news standards I could be proud of. I was fortunate enough to find a new position with another station group that, unlike Sinclair, had a true commitment to local journalism.

Over the course of my 14-year career in broadcasting, I worked for multiple corporate owners, large and small. I have good friends who are anchors, reporters and executives at other station groups across the country. Only Sinclair forces those trusted local journalists to lend their credibility to shoddy reporting and commentary that, if it ran in other countries, we would rightly dismiss as state propaganda.

In the four years since I left, Sinclair has doubled down on its “must-run” strategy. Segments like the Islamophobic “Terrorism Alert Desk” and commentary from Trump adviser Boris Epshteyn have started running in markets from Seattle to Washington, D.C. If the Federal Communications Commission approves Sinclair’s purchase of Tribune Broadcasting, it will get a foothold in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Denver and other major markets. I know several journalists who preemptively left Tribune stations after the sale was announced. They’re the lucky and principled ones.


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When Deadspin’s genius supercut of Sinclair’s latest promo went viral last weekend, my heart broke for the anchors who were used to make the equivalent of a proof-of-life hostage video. They know what they’re being conscripted to do, but most of them have no choice in the matter. They’re trapped by contracts, by family obligations and by an industry that is struggling to stay relevant in an era of changing media habits.

The anchors who were forced to decry “fake news” put their own credibility on the line, accusing “some members of the media” of pushing “their own personal bias and agenda,” when nothing could be further from the truth. The only ones pushing a personal bias in local broadcasting today are the corporate executives at Sinclair, who leverage the trust that those anchors have developed in their communities over years and often decades of hard work.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with journalism that wears its bias on its sleeve. At some point, local news may transform into something more like the cable news landscape, with hosts who are paid to share their perspective and commentary. But that requires honesty on the part of station owners, and it requires embracing a diversity of viewpoints on the air. That’s the exact opposite of what Sinclair is doing to local broadcasting today.

During my time with Sinclair, while on a conference call with other news directors, someone asked if we could ever run local commentary during newscasts. The answer was a firm “no.” The only opinions Sinclair allows on air are the opinions that come out of headquarters, because the company will not risk giving local audiences a dissenting view.

That “no” was telling. Being afraid of a variety of viewpoints is, in the words of Sinclair’s now-infamous “must-run,” extremely dangerous to a democracy.
https://www.alternet.org/media/confessi ... s-director
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Re: Trump TV Inside Sinclair Broadcasting

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Apr 05, 2018 7:38 pm

Sinclair producer resigns over company's 'obvious' pro-Trump bias, as staffers across the country voice concern

Justin Simmons, a former employee at KHGI TV in Nebraska, resigned after their owner, Sinclair, mandated that local anchors read controversial promos warning of "fake" and biased news on March 26. (FACEBOOK)
BY
CHRIS SOMMERFELDT
ELIZABETH ELIZALDE
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Updated: Thursday, April 5, 2018, 4:35 PM
A TV producer at a Sinclair-owned Nebraska station resigned last month over the media giant's "obvious” political bias.

Justin Simmons, a former KHGI-TV producer, told CNN he was disillusioned by Sinclair’s corporate promos warning viewers of “fake news," leading him to step down on March 26.

“This is almost forcing local news anchors to lie to their viewers,” Simmons told the network on Wednesday.

Simmons' resignation comes as Sinclair faces severe scrutiny over a cross-platform promo that critics say echoes President Trump's repeated anti-media tirades.

Sinclair's journalists must stand up and say 'enough'
In his resignation letter, Simmons wrote that he was required to produce segments that would make him uncomfortable. He had to work on segments such as the “Terrorism Alert Desk,” which are considered “must-runs” at Sinclair.

After Sinclair executives noticed the segments were not running, Simmons said his boss got into trouble.

“Making the local anchors do this was a big concern for me,” said Simmons, who worked at KHGI for nearly four years. “I didn't go into news to give people biased information.”

Sinclair's senior management has pushed back against suggestions that it has a political bias, insisting that it was just trying to warn audiences about the prevalance of "fake news" on social media.

Sinclair denies making its TV outlets push pro-Trump propaganda
“It is ironic that we would be attacked for messages promoting our journalistic initiative for fair and objective reporting, and for specifically asking the public to hold our newsrooms accountable,” said Scott Livingston, Sinclair’s Senior Vice President of News.

But Sinclair employees across the country are concerned about the corporation's cross-platform messaging.

An anchor at a Sinclair-owned station on the West Coast said multiple staffers in her newsroom are seriously considering resigning, or at the very least not renewing their contracts.

"It's a really bad week for everybody," the anchor, who spoke on condition of anonymity over fears of retribution, told the Daily News.

The anchor said strangers have hurled insults at her TV crews while they've been reporting in the field since news of the Sinclair scandal first began spreading last week.

"Everyone feel really disheartened right now," the anchor said.

The Maryland-based broadcasting behemoth — the country's largest operator of local TV stations — came under even more fire over its alleged pro-Trump bias after the President came out in its defense.

"Sinclair is far superior to CNN and even more Fake NBC, which is a total joke," Trump tweeted on Monday.

The West Coast anchor told The News that her colleagues are disappointed in their corporate bosses.

"There are a lot of conversations," she said. "I don't know how organized of an effort there is, but people definitely want to do something to uphold our journalistic standards."
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... ailyNewsTw
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Re: Trump TV Inside Sinclair Broadcasting

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Apr 10, 2018 1:09 pm

Sinclair chief to Trump in 2016: 'We are here to deliver your message'

Rebecca Savransky04/10/18 10:20 AM EDT
The chairman of Sinclair Broadcast Group reportedly told President Trump during the 2016 campaign that the company was there "to deliver" his message.

The Guardian reported that David D. Smith met with Trump after he won the GOP presidential nomination in 2016.

“I asked [Trump], ‘Would you like us to embed with you during your campaign?’,” Smith told the Guardian.

“And he brought a bunch of people in the room, and he said, ‘Well, whatever’. And I said: ‘We are here to deliver your message. Period.’”

Smith told the Guardian the comments signaled that Trump could be interviewed by Sinclair whenever he wanted — not that the company was biased in his favor.

He added that he made similar comments to former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton via a letter.

“What I get out of it is access to a guy who’s running for president,” Smith said.

“Or a guy who’s running for U.S. senator, or governor, or anything else. As any other news organization does. You want to be on TV? Sure, we’d like to have you on TV.”

Smith has met with Trump at the White House as part of an effort to discuss a product that would give authorities the ability to broadcast directly to peoples' phones.

Sinclair has been facing criticism in recent days after Deadspin compiled clips of network anchors across the country reading the same mandated script condemning "fake news" and biased reporting by national news outlets.

Critics have slammed the segment, saying it disparages the media.

Sinclair officials have defended the promo, with an executive saying the decision to air the promo was part of the company's "commitment to our communities." The executive said the promo was "focused on fact-based reporting" and a "well-researched journalistic initiative."

Trump also weighed in on the debate earlier this month, defending Sinclair.

"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," he tweeted.
http://thehill.com/homenews/media/38244 ... ter-he-won



Sinclair TV chairman to Trump: 'We are here to deliver your message'

The rightwing broadcaster met Trump at the White House to pitch a potentially lucrative new product to officials

Jon SwaineLast modified on Tue 10 Apr 2018 10.09 EDT
The chairman of Sinclair Broadcast Group met Donald Trump at the White House during a visit to pitch a potentially lucrative new product to administration officials, the Guardian has learned.

David D Smith, whose company has been criticised for making its anchors read a script echoing Trump’s attacks on the media, said he briefed officials last year on a system that would enable authorities to broadcast direct to any American’s phone.

“I just wanted them to be aware of the technology,” Smith said in an interview. He also recalled an earlier meeting with Trump during the 2016 election campaign, where he told the future president: “We are here to deliver your message.”

Sinclair is the biggest owner of local TV in the US, and may soon reach 72% of American households if a proposed $4bn takeover of a rival is approved by federal regulators. It is accused by critics of having a conservative bias, which it denies.

The company has been a driving force in the development of a new broadcasting standard known as Next Gen TV, and is one of the first involved in making chips for televisions, cellphones and other devices to receive the new transmissions.

A broadcasting industry group, of which Sinclair is a prominent member, lobbied federal authorities last year to force manufacturers to incorporate the chips in all new devices. This would have created orders for millions of chips and probably new revenues for Sinclair.

Smith said his White House meeting was not financially motivated. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) decided last November to make incorporating chips voluntary. Sinclair had itself stopped short of calling for compulsory installation but said the government might need to consider this in the future.

As well as entertainment, the chip allows mobile devices to receive messages from an upgraded government public warning system, through which authorities can send video statements and multimedia even when telephone lines are down.

“The public interest aspect is enormous in terms of the lives it will save,” said Smith. The chips would, he said, allow authorities to target any individual cellphone, all phones in a specific zipcode, or other select recipient lists.

“If you were Rudy Giuliani on 9/11,” Smith said, referring to the then mayor of New York City, “you would have turned on your desktop, typed in an access code, and gone live to every phone or pad or device in the marketplace in seconds.”

Smith said he was unable to recall precisely when the White House meeting took place and which officials he briefed. But during the same visit, he said, “I was invited to say hello to the president, so I said, ‘Hey, great, have a nice day.’”

Smith did not respond to follow-up questions on whether Sinclair’s proposed purchase of Tribune Media was discussed with Trump or other officials. The White House did not respond to questions and requests for comment.

In his interview with the Guardian, the Sinclair boss also struck out at Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and adviser, for reportedly boasting that Trump’s 2016 campaign team made a deal for favourable coverage on Sinclair stations in return for giving access to the company’s journalists.

“I was pissed off,” said Smith, who denied giving Trump’s team a special arrangement.

Sinclair is the biggest owner of local TV, and may soon reach 72% of American households if a proposed merger goes through.
Sinclair is the biggest owner of local TV, and may soon reach 72% of American households if a proposed merger goes through. Photograph: Win McNamee/Getty Images
But Smith did recall an offer he made to Trump in 2016 after Trump secured the Republican presidential nomination. Ben Carson, now Trump’s housing secretary, helped arrange a meeting at Trump Tower, according to Smith, who like Carson is based in the Baltimore area.

“I asked [Trump], ‘Would you like us to embed with you during your campaign?’,” said Smith. “And he brought a bunch of people in the room, and he said, ‘Well, whatever’. And I said: ‘We are here to deliver your message. Period.’”

Smith denied that this amounted to Sinclair acting as a mouthpiece for Trump. He said it meant only that Trump could be interviewed by Sinclair whenever he chose. Smith said a similar offer was extended to Hillary Clinton by letter but was not taken up by the Democratic nominee.

“What I get out of it is access to a guy who’s running for president,” said Smith. “Or a guy who’s running for US senator, or governor, or anything else. As any other news organisation does. You want to be on TV? Sure, we’d like to have you on TV.”

Asked for an assessment of Kushner’s role in Trump’s White House, Smith laughed and said: “I don’t know what his role is. Nobody does.” He added: “Look … he’s obviously a smart guy, a successful guy.”

Smith tried to dismiss criticism of Sinclair that has mounted since CNN revealed news anchors across the US were being instructed to read identical scripts decrying “fake” news, which mirrored Trump’s long-running attack on journalism.

Describing the controversy as “the most absurd thing I’ve ever seen in my life”, Smith claimed rank-and-file Sinclair staff who had been expressing dismay to media reporters did not understand that the scripted segments were in their own interest.

“If people believe you more than they believe somebody else, they’re more likely to watch you,” he said. “And you know what that means? We might get a higher rating. And you know what that means? We will therefore make our spots worth more. And you know what that means? That means I will make more money, which means I can pay you more money.”

Despite multiple detailed accounts finding that Sinclair’s news coverage is skewed politically to the right, Smith insisted that his news output was not biased. “If anybody can show me otherwise, in the context of any local news that works for me, then show me,” he said.

Smith said he had “zero tolerance” for “political spin” of any kind, and even said he had fired staff in the past after they displayed bias in their coverage, though he said he could not recall any specific examples.

“If you believe philosophically, so strongly, that you can’t just stand in the centre and tell the truth, then go work someplace else,” said Smith. “I don’t care.”

Smith professed to have “no interest in politics” and even suggested that his reputation as a backer of Republicans was inaccurate. “I probably give more money to Democrats than I give to anybody,” he said.

According to federal filings, Smith has contributed $206,650 to Republicans and $132,350 to Democrats in congressional and presidential campaigns since 1995. He also gave $36,000 to two political action committees (Pacs) that have consistently contributed more to Republicans than to Democrats.

Smith also defended Sinclair’s strident news analysis segments hosted by Boris Epshteyn, a former Trump adviser. Epshteyn’s so-called “must run” segments, which Sinclair headquarters instructs local stations to show during news bulletins, have generated controversy for laundering White House talking points.

“Boris Epshteyn does not do news,” said Smith. “He does commentary, and it is defined as commentary throughout.” Epshteyn has latterly spoken in front of a logo that includes “Commentary” in a smaller typeface. During some earlier editions, he was introduced by anchors as a commentator but then spoke without an onscreen commentary label.

Smith said Epshteyn’s output was more clearly labelled than the work of opinionated Fox News hosts such as Sean Hannity. He spoke more favourably of Hannity’s primetime colleague, Tucker Carlson, who is renowned for heated disputes with his guests.

“I like to watch people argue, and the people he brings on are good at it,” said Smith.

As for the current argument about his company’s news broadcasts, Smith declared himself the winner and said he would not make concessions. “I don’t know what I would change,” said Smith, “because everything that we’ve done is absolutely unassailable under any circumstances.”
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/ ... are_btn_tw
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They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
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Re: Trump TV Inside Sinclair Broadcasting

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Apr 12, 2018 5:59 pm

12 senators are calling on the FCC to investigate Sinclair Broadcasting for “deliberately distorting news" and engaging in a "systematic news distortion operation that seeks to undermine freedom of the press."

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Re: Trump TV Inside Sinclair Broadcasting

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Nov 28, 2018 3:48 pm

Sinclair Makes 200 Local News Stations Run Segment Supporting Use of Tear Gas on Migrants

https://www.mediaite.com/tv/sinclair-ma ... ssion=true
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