Why is the part about Sinclair news reporting on "Islamic terror" and "Trump support" singled out. Do they not report on anything else at all? Or is reporting on both this stuff by default a wrong thing to do?
Sinclair Made Dozens of Local News Anchors Recite the Same Script
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Re: Sinclair Made Dozens of Local News Anchors Recite the Same Script
#22I'm not clear why this is a problem. A corporation asked its broadcasters to make a statement on fake news. This statement sounds similar to others made by other corporate owned networks. Viewers are invited to comment on the website.
It's ironic (cue pedants) because they're denouncing one-sided presentations that advance a particular agenda while using a facade of ostensibly independent-minded locals that are actually mouthpieces for their remote overlords.
It betrays that their indignation isn't so much over dangers to democracy as it is their loosening grip on the ability to frame the discussion of any given day.
Re: Sinclair Made Dozens of Local News Anchors Recite the Same Script
#23This is extremely dangerous to our democracy.
I agree. 232 people control the news that 277 million americans are allowed to see. ([1] from 2012). Many of us have been pounding this drum for a long time, including Trump himself. I think it is this control at a national level that the Sinclair news anchors were being told to warn people about, but the NYT has flipped the narrative on them, and now they're the bad guys. Genius, but unfortunate. [1] http://www.busi…
> Many of us have been pounding this drum for a long time, including Trump himself.
Can you cite that? It sounds like prime material for Reddit's /r/TrumpCriticizesTrump/
Re: Sinclair Made Dozens of Local News Anchors Recite the Same Script
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem is the corporation. Sinclair has it's own political agenda. Forcing anchors across the US to recite something is bad enough, but when that something is of questionable truth, and orchestrated to minimuze Sinclair's own propensity to push its right-ist agenda, it's downright scary.
Yeah, just about as scary as GE, Disney, Time Warner et al. pushing their left wing agendas via CNN, MSNBC/NBC and ABC. See, everyone can play this game in the Postmodernist world.
OK but now you have to explain why pushing a "left wing agenda" is supposed to be scary.
Was it voting rights? Is voting rights scary? Or perhaps universal health care? Is that scary? Or a public education? Wooow that's REALLY scary!
Come on.. scare us! We liberals love a good scary story!
Re: Sinclair Made Dozens of Local News Anchors Recite the Same Script
#25Isn't this pretty much the case for all corporate media? The narrative is set from the top down, and if anyone strays too far outside the Overton Window, they're punished. Example: Phil Donahue getting fired from MSNBC for speaking against the war in Iraq. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Donahue#MSNBC_program
A lot of people believe that, but it's far from proven in the general case. There are some proven examples of the US government influencing news (at home and abroad), there are clearly advertiser influences, there are political influencers (e.g. Fox News) on partisan channels.
But I haven't seen evidence for it as the norm. Obviously this piece was published by the New York Times, for example.
Re: Sinclair Made Dozens of Local News Anchors Recite the Same Script
#26This is extremely dangerous to our democracy.
Or our constitutional republic, as the case may be.
Re: Sinclair Made Dozens of Local News Anchors Recite the Same Script
#27I'm not clear why this is a problem. A corporation asked its broadcasters to make a statement on fake news. This statement sounds similar to others made by other corporate owned networks. Viewers are invited to comment on the website.
- people trust local media - a single corporation owns a fuckton of those local stations - the same corporation writes a script to broadcast on every station - media hosts or journalists can't say "no". Do the job or lose your job. They're not free to report news without bias - you don't know everything about everything, so you're inclined to trust the news because they're supposed to be neutral and report facts - ul…
Not the person you're replying to, but I also have a hard time seeing the problem. Or rather, I can see the problem, but this is how I would've expected news to have been done for decades. I grew up when there was only 4 TV channels and no internet. I would have assumed CBS (or its parent) would have controlled all the CBS affiliates in this way in the 80s. NBC would do the same, etc.
Re: Sinclair Made Dozens of Local News Anchors Recite the Same Script
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem is the corporation. Sinclair has it's own political agenda. Forcing anchors across the US to recite something is bad enough, but when that something is of questionable truth, and orchestrated to minimuze Sinclair's own propensity to push its right-ist agenda, it's downright scary.
I'm FAR more concerned about national stations like CNN than local Sinclair stations. Just anti-american agenda based news non-stop. Some of us happen to like the country we live in.
You can like your country and still be critical of behaviour done in it's name. In fact - I would say it's a duty. If you care about something, you care about it's well being and reputation.
Would you call reporting on, say, The Mai Lai Massacre or the Kent State shootings "anti-american"? How about Monica Lewinsky or Watergate?
Re: Sinclair Made Dozens of Local News Anchors Recite the Same Script
#29[deleted]
Re: Sinclair Made Dozens of Local News Anchors Recite the Same Script
#30They most likely had their speeches written by the same person/people/company. It goes like that in most countries: a big media outlet sells pre-made news/opinions to most newspapers which they then only adapt slightly and keep most of the taglines and significant phrasing.
The script came from Sinclair Broadcast Group, the country’s largest broadcaster, which owns or operates 193 television stations.
Last week, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer published a copy of the speech and reported that employees at a local news station there, KOMO, were unhappy about the script. CNN reported on it on March 7 and said Scott Livingston, the senior vice president of news for Sinclair, had read almost the exact same speech for a segment that was distributed to outlets a year ago.