The running joke for years is that FOX News has been the propaganda arm of the GOP and in many ways it has been, replete with attacks on Democrats and liberals for well over a decade, but here in the Trump era there's a far more sinister attack on on the nation's free press, and it isn't coming from cable news at all.
Rather it's coming from your local network news affiliate, and those affiliates are increasingly owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, a conservative far-right media conglomerate that has been quietly buying up the news stations that you've watched and trusted for years. I've talked about Sinclair before as they moved to buy dozens of local TV stations in markets across the country and then forced those stations to run pro-Trump segments on their local news broadcasts and "terror alert" segments that attack immigrants and especially Muslims.
Now Sinclair is forcing their local anchors to attack non-Sinclair stations as "fake news".
Seattle-based ABC affiliate KOMO-TV says its owner, the conservative-leaning Sinclair Broadcast Group, is forcing its reporters to air pre-scripted segments about fake news media, in an attempt to undermine non-Sinclair stations.
Sinclair has long produced “must-run” segments for its stations, dispersing them to its various subsidiaries and requiring the local stations to run controversial, typically conservative commentary promos alongside their regular news coverage. However, in recent weeks, it’s begun turning its sights on the competition, throwing in mentions of “fake news,” among other things.
“The promos, which began airing on the station last week, are part of a Sinclair campaign that forces local anchors to read Sinclair-written scripts warning of the dangers of ‘one-sided news stories plaguing our country,'” the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported on Thursday.
The Post-Intelligencer published one of the scripts this week; in it, the authors lament the “trend of irresponsible, one sided news stories” and the “sharing of biased and false news,” referencing President Trump’s preferred term for the press, “fake news.”
These Sinclair stations are literally being given scripts to read, because they are Trump state media stations now.
(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.
Don't believe me? Here's video of Sinclair station anchors all over the country in the last couple of weeks reading this exact script.
How America's largest local TV owner turned its news anchors into soldiers in Trump's war on the media: https://t.co/iLVtKRQycL pic.twitter.com/dMdSGellH3— Deadspin (@Deadspin) March 31, 2018
This would be cute if Sinclair wasn't so obviously sinister. And yes, these are all Sinclair stations in America.
Sinclair regularly runs disinformation segments favorable to President Trump: one of its staples is a recurring pre-taped segment featuring Sinclair’s chief political analyst, Russian-born former Trump adviser Boris Epshteyn. As ThinkProgress previously reported, those segments frequently include misleading talking points and misinformation from the Trump administration, packaged as actual political analysis and news coverage.
Another previously recurring segment, “Behind the Headlines” with Mark Hyman, Sinclair’s vice president for corporate relations, frequently parroted administration talking points on controversial subjects like health care, immigration, free speech, and extremism, functioning as right-wing and white nationalist propaganda.
More recently, Sinclair pushed a must-run segment featuring former Trump adviser Sebastian Gorka complaining about the existence of the so-called “Deep State,” and unelected group of government officials who are supposedly manipulating policy and controlling the public narrative. The segment was reportedly produced by Sinclair national correspondent Kristine Frazao, who previously worked at Russian state-run media outlet RT.
If you're getting your news from one of these stations, be aware they are Sinclair-owned and producing pro-Trump propaganda on a regular basis. They have been for years now. Here in Cincy they run the CBS and CW affiliate, WKRC, the area's most popular local news station, where you get happy stories like this about the "Deep State".
Welcome to the era of the regime's state-run media. You're living in it, and odds are increasingly goo that you and your family are getting their local news from it too.
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