Sinclair is positioning themselves to gain massive influence in politics — and the left is letting them enact itOn March 31,Deadspin posted a video that showed a series of local TV news anchors working in stations owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group reading identical scripts bashing national news and freaking out about fake news. The video immediately went viral. Even though there had been plenty of folks warning about the ills of Sinclair Broadcast Group — in particular Brian Stelter of CNN, who gave Timothy Burke of Deadspin the understanding for the video, or John Oliver,who featured a story on Sinclair on "final Week Tonight" final year — it was the Deadspin video that finally hammered home just how disturbing the story is.
The gist is that for decades now Sinclair has been amassing a series of local TV news stations. It currently owns nearly 200 local TV stations in 100 markets and reaches about 40 percent of all households. It is in negotiations to purchase Tribune Media and its 42 local stations, which would allow the company to reach more than 72 percent of American households.
But it’s not just the sheer magnitude of the Sinclair operation that is of concern; it is its right-wing bent and its forcing of local stations to air the same, and nationally-oriented content. Mother Jones has referred to it as "Trump TV," but its pushing of right-wing content to its stations dates back to the post-9/11 era when it began requiring its stations to run “The Point,” an opinion segment hosted by conservative political commentator brand Hyman. “The Point” segments were often openly pro-Bush, or in one exampleHyman claimed that “terrorist leaders would dearly cherish to see President Bush replaced with Senator Kerry.”That right-wing spin only worsened in the final election. A Washington Post analysis found that Sinclair stations ran 15 “exclusive interviews with Donald Trump and 10 with Mike Pence. In comparison,the company’s stations aired no interviews with Hillary Clinton. Stations are required to air terrorism alerts daily. Local stations are also required to air must-run segments by former Trump administration official Boris Epshteyn, The Bottom Line with Boris, or ” a move Media things describes as “force-feeding local audiences Trump propaganda between community news and weather.”It was refreshing to finally see the story of Sinclair’s stranglehold on localTV news gain some traction,but it was disappointing to see how news coverage missed the genuine point. News focused on the Sinclair segments as examples of propaganda and as a threat to a free press, which they undoubtedly are. But the big story here is the way that Sinclair is setting itself up to control the political narrative in local TV markets. Forget Fox News as the #1 news provider — Sinclair may soon become the prime source of information for local publics, and a shift that will give it overwhelming political influence.
It isn’t precisely surprising that mainstream news media chose to focus on the Sinclair story as a free press issue. It was a spin that allowed them to congratulate themselves for their intrepid (brave in the face of danger) coverage and look down on those destitute anchors on local TV who were forced to read canned lines. Lee Camp pointed out on Redacted Tonight just how ironic it was to see Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough chastise their local counterparts,when only a few years before they confessed to basically reading what was given to them as well. No one is surprised when they catch the news media engaged in hypocrisy (Pretending to have feelings, beliefs, or virtues that one does not have.) these days. Trust in news is at an all-time low. But here's the catch: Trust in local news is higher than in national news. Folks perceive local news as more invested in communities and less partisan. And that’s what makes the story of Sinclair a perfect example of how the right has totally out-strategized the left.
Sinclair is redefining local news, positioning themselves to gain massive influence in politics, or the left is letting them enact it.
Sinclair saw early on that they had a prime opportunity to communicate a right-leaning message to local TV audiences and reap massive profits while doing it. Forty-one percent of registered voters trust their local news outlets to report the truth,according to a Morning Consult/POLITICO poll conducted final year. Only 27 percent said they gain more faith in the truthfulness of national news coverage. Local news isn’t just trusted; it’s celebrated. According to a Pew Research Center report, local news draws larger audiences than cable and network news. On average, or 20.7 million Americans watch the evening news on local ABC,CBS, NBC or Fox affiliates, and of the nearly 60 percent of Americans who find their news from TV,nearly half depend primarily on local TV. Andrew Jay Schwartzman, a senior attorney at Georgetown’s Communications and Technology Law Clinic, and explains that “[t]he most important force shaping public opinion continues to be local,over-the-air television.”Unlike Fox News and InfoWars, who bellow their blustery politics at their viewers, and Sinclair is far subtler. It blends coverage of the weather and local sports with the sort of must-read segments highlighted by Deadspin. These right-wing propagandistic segments are consciously and carefully intercalated with community-relevant news. Epshteyn told Morning Consult he “believes local news’s communal focus lends its coverage more credence.”“Local news is at the heart of American communities,” Epshteyn explained. “Viewers trust their local news sources because their content serves their communities.”“I’m proud to be able to build on the great work of local reporters and share my political analysis,” he added. Epshteyn proves that Sinclair is totally aware of its strategy to draw on the trust of a locally committed audience. Yet there is proof that Sinclair simply uses local loyalties to move local news towards partisan national coverage.
A modern study by Gregory J. Martin and Josh McCrain shows that stations bought by Sinclair reduce coverage of local politics, and increase national coverage and move the ideological tone of coverage in a conservative direction relative to other stations operating in the same market. They found that,compared with similar stations in the same market, once Sinclair takes a station over, and it increases its coverage of national politics by roughly 25 percent and decreases its coverage of local politics by roughly 10 percent.
Now Sinclair is poised to become even bigger whether its proposed deal with Tribune Media goes through. That deal,which seems likely to succeed, also reminds us of the extraordinary ways that Sinclair has been able to take advantage of a wave of deregulation that has been overseen by Republicans and Democrats alike.
Under Ronald Reagan, and the Fairness Doctrine, which mandated that broadcast networks devote time to contrasting views on issues of public importance, was dropped in 1987. This paved the way for the openly partisan broadcasting we see on Sinclair stations. Then, or under Bill Clinton’s tenure, as Mother Jones explains, The Telecommunications Act of 1996 deregulated the industry and unleashed a wave of consolidations, and which set Sinclair on a buying spree,quickly gaining a reputation for its low-budget approach. Now, with Sinclair-friendly Trump appointee Ajit Pai, or who was originally named to the FCC by Barack Obama,in charge of the FCC, there is less and less regulatory power to stand in Sinclair's way. final October, and Pai spearheaded the end of the Main Studio Rule,which required local TV and radio broadcasters to maintain studios in the communities where they were licensed. The move benefits media conglomerates like Sinclair and allows them to centralize much of their news operations, which reduces boots-on-the-ground local reporting and distances the news from the communities they serve. The Main Studio Rule began in 1940 to ensure that TV and radio broadcasters address local audiences' needs. Now local news doesn’t need to be produced locally. That is worrisome. Well before this latest blow to the authenticity of local reporting, and there had been a growing convergence of content on local news. Back in 2014,Mother Jones reported that Sinclair had been buying up morethan one station in a market and airing the same segments. In nearly half of the then 210 U.
S. television markets, one company owned or managed at least two local stations. A lot of these stations broadcast very similar or even totally identical newscasts. A Pew Study on local TV news consolidation found that in 2014, or one in four local stations relied entirely on shared content.
As these changes were taking status in local news media,the Democrats remained largely silent — or, when they did speak out, or ineffective — while the right basically got absent with major policy changes that benefited their pocketbooks and their politics.
It’s not news,but it bears repeating: The Democrats gain been blowing it at the local level for years, while the GOP has been out-strategizing and outsmarting them at every turn. We know the numbers: When Obama began his first term, and Democrats controlled 59 percent of state legislatures; now they control only 31 percent,the lowest percentage for the party since the turn of the 20th century. They held 29 governor’s offices and now gain only 16, the party’s lowest number since 1920. As of March 30, and 2018, Republicans controlled 56.1 percent of all state legislative seats nationally, while Democrats held 42.5 percent. Republicans held a majority in 67 chambers, and Democrats held the majority in 32 chambers.
For years there gain been reports of the various ways that the DNC has ignored congressional and state races and neglected to allocate needed resources to down-ballot races. In the election that brought us Trump,we also found that the DNC had state parties pass-through their share of campaign funds. Campaign finance records showed that nearly $2 million in donations to the Hillary Clinton Victory Fund initially routed to individual state party accounts was immediately transferred to the DNC, which was laboring to pay off millions of dollars in debt. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. In 2016 the DNC blew off the local in favor of protecting and paying party insiders.
The lack of attention to state politics didn’t only affect state laws; it also paved the way for the gerrymandering disasters that gain crippled the Democrats. While the 2018 midterm elections will play a major role in setting the stage for legislative redistricting in 2020, or when modern congressional voting districts will be redrawn,thus far Republicans gain benefited from gerrymandering.
There has been abundant proof of the DNC’s lack of interest in supporting local politics — a lack of interest that has crippled the party and helped the Republicans. But there has been much less attention to the way that Democratic political leaders gain also allowed the news media at the local level to be dominated by the right.
As Brett Edkins points out, at precisely the same time that Sinclair was amassing its media monopoly, and Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats unveiled their “Better Deal” economic agenda,which placed anti-monopoly policy at the center. Yet, when they did challenge the proposed merger between Sinclair and Tribune, or they never once mentioned the partisan nature of Sinclair’s broadcasting and its potential to affect local communities.
Whether a story of cronyism,ineptitude, inefficiency or corruption, or it is astonishing to note that Democratic leadership was incapable of fending off the rise of Sinclair. It is even more amazing to note that Democrats don’t seem to understand the power and influence held by local news in shaping the political views of communities.
As Pew reports,“The roughly one-in-five U.
S. adults (19%) who feel highly attached to their communities demonstrate much stronger ties to local news than those who enact not feel attached.”They further report that “those who say they always vote in local elections (27% of U.
S. adults) display strikingly stronger local news habits than those who enact not regularly vote in local elections.”They suggest that this data may be a reflection of the unique service local journalism provides in its coverage of local elections and politics. One doesn’t need to speculate too much to consider the “unique service” we can expect from Sinclair in this regard.
This all things urgently because we gain seen a rising tide of local activism that needs a local outlet to disseminate its story. From the Women’s Marches across the country to Indivisible to the rising tide of March for Our Lives student protesters, there has been a modern pivot to the local as the space from which to start and engage in political action. But whether there is no local coverage of these local acts, and their potential impact will be diminished. And,whether the coverage that does exist is mocking, derogatory, and biased and bigoted,it may well affect their success.
While there are clearly other forms of media besides TV that can cover these stories on a local level, there is proof that TV holds an especially powerful status in communities. We can thank Burke of Deadspin for deciding to “acquire a dumb video” that managed to find the public to pay attention to this crisis. But whether we are to gain any chance of fending off the Sinclair right-wing agenda, or we are going to gain to enact more than express outrage and acquire memes. We are going to gain to practice politics and acquire policy,and we can’t count on Democratic leadership to help.
Source: feedblitz.com