Colin Woodard, Portland Press Herald -Marc McCutcheon of South Portland was watching WGME’s evening newscast as he has for half a century when something came on that shocked him.
In the midst of the local news, a taped commentary from President Trump’s former special assistant Boris Epshteyn appeared on the screen, trumpeting the administration’s position with what he thought selective use and abuse of facts.
McCutcheon, a small-business owner and political independent, describes the experience as “surreal,” “extremely jarring” and “so out of place with the friendly, local broadcast from news people I’ve come to trust over the years.” There was no rebuttal, no context, no alternate point of view – a situation he found concerning.
WGME-TV (Channel 13) and WPFO-TV (Channel 23) each carry the segments nine times a week on orders from their owner, the Maryland-based Sinclair Broadcasting Group, the nation’s largest owner of local television stations and an aggressive, unabashed disseminator of conservative commentary supporting the Trump wing of the Republican Party.
NY Magazine- Never
the pride of the Fourth Estate, local television journalism has been
notorious for its sensationalism, credulity, obsession with crime
(particularly, crimes committed by racial minorities), and superhuman
corniness. But for all the medium’s liabilities, it retains two rapidly
appreciating assets: a nonpartisan image, and genuine ties to
communities outside of New York City and Washington, D.C.
These
qualities have helped to make “local news organizations” the most
trusted source of information in Pew Research Center’s polling on trust
in media. They have also made local TV news stations an excellent tool
for disseminating propaganda.
And the nation’s largest owner of such stations is using them to do just that.
A
family of conservative multimillionaires owns Sinclair Broadcast Group.
And Sinclair Broadcast Group is on the cusp of owning enough local
television stations to reach 70 percent of American households. Every
news station under Sinclair’s umbrella is required to syndicate
commentary that comports with its owners’ ideological views. Over the
past 13 months, this has meant regularly providing viewers with the
insights of Sinclair’s chief political analyst, former Trump spokesman
Boris Epshteyn. It has also meant featuring analysis from conservative
pundit Mark Hyman, and updates from the “Terrorism Alert Desk”
(sensationalized coverage of recent terror attacks from around the
world) on a routine basis. Trump's War on the Media Has Been Years In
The Making
Now, Sinclair is taking its “covert state media” game
to new, Orwellian heights: By the end of this month, Sinclair will
require all of its local news anchors to condemn “national media
outlets” for publishing “fake stories” and “using their platforms to
push their own personal bias,” according to internal documents obtained
by CNN. Those documents instruct local news directors to air these
criticisms of “biased and false news” — criticisms that, of course, echo
the president’s own — over and over again, so as “to create maximum
reach and frequency.”
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