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Sinclair Made Dozens of Local News Anchors Recite the Same Script

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61–70 of 344 posts

Re: Sinclair Made Dozens of Local News Anchors Recite the Same Script

#61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

It's easy if you just blindly accept the axioms of one of the groups. You accept the axioms of left wingers, so it doesn't seem scary to you. I'm not a right winger but they could just as easily say: murdering millions of unborn children, robbing us of our right to defend ourselves, denying the right to freedom of association, infringing on our freedom of speech, infringing on our freedom of religion, etc. Those are…

> robbing us of our right to defend ourselves

Well, the problem with that narrative is that most of the center-left is quite happy to find a comprimise. It seems like arms dealers are too, actually. It's mostly the NRA unable to disengage its PR machine from collapsing the entire narrative to "you'll take our guns" vs "total gun freedom".

So that itself is a good thing to bring up: it's impossible to disassemble with facts because it's already counterfactual.

Similar things can be said of the freedom of association and freedom of religion arguments. They're currently fixed by a narrative of constant assault that most folks freely admit is poorly supported in their daily experience, but that they're convinced (by media groups coordinated by Sinclair) are just over the horizon coming from them.

It's certainly fair to claim left wing media has bias. We should always be watchful for bias and unfairness in our media. It's just that right now, unless you believe in hidden child porn rings in pizza shops being shut down by a secret Trump task force (the Storm, a literal extension of pizzagate), potential influence from demons/lizard people in the democratic party (Alex Jones pushes this narrative), or a global Jewish coordinated conspiracy that reaches down to the level of each individual life on the planet, and that ever Muslim is part of a coordinated global conspiracy to "end whitness"... Well you get the picture. Unless you believe in the output of this machine coordinated to spread this disinformation (and I say machine because we've got people freely admitting part of it is theirs, e.g., Cambridge Analytica), facts and uncharitable readings are sufficient from the left wing media.

A centrist or even a libertarian should have no problem picking their poison in the marketplace of ideas, unless they're genuinely bought into these increasingly absurd conspiracy theories that put 9/11-truther levels of weird to shame.

Re: Sinclair Made Dozens of Local News Anchors Recite the Same Script

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- 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.

Actually, no, back in that day long ago, in a world far away, the local broadcaster wasn't 'owned' by the big three. The local broadcaster was independent, and they got their feed for first run programming, and the "world news" from their affiliation (more akin to the local purchasing the rights to broadcast) with one of the big three majors.

There used to be actual regulations on the books that prevented this type of consolidation from happening. Then, sometime circa. the 1980's, those laws were tossed out, leading to today where one single corporate parent controls nearly 200 local broadcasters in a very direct way.

Re: Sinclair Made Dozens of Local News Anchors Recite the Same Script

#63
post #56

There are many threats to democracy, but this is not one of them. Audience numbers for local TV news (not to mention national TV news) is shrinking across the U.S. Younger people in particular will not sit down to watch a 30 minute talking-heads newscast stuffed to the gills with car, telecom, and insurance ads. See: https://www.poynter.org/news/new-pew-study-says-local-tv-new...

Old people watch more local news and vote at higher rates than any other demographic group.

Re: Sinclair Made Dozens of Local News Anchors Recite the Same Script

#64

I'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. https://youtu.be/TRBppdC1h_Y h…

Except they're not "mouth pieces". Local journalists are much more independent than national ones. This instance by Sinclair of attempting to combat the national news broadcasters was a David vs Goliath attempt, and they are coming out of it much worse than David did.

Re: Sinclair Made Dozens of Local News Anchors Recite the Same Script

#65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

It's unbelievable how narrow the overton window is, and people think it's larger than it really is. There is very little separating Democrats and Republicans in 2018, at least from party officials (I believe the population is further left than represented). Voting rights, universal healthcare, public education is not a concern of any "left" wing media any longer; that ended a long time ago. "Left" wing media also helped push us into the Iraq War, helping to set the stage for American approval.

Re: Sinclair Made Dozens of Local News Anchors Recite the Same Script

#66

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 are a media company that owns local news stations. For the past few years, they've been feeding "must run" content (in the form of pre-recorded segments or scripts for anchors to read) to those news stations to be presented along side news.

Those segments are, overwhelmingly, right-wing talking points.

Re: Sinclair Made Dozens of Local News Anchors Recite the Same Script

#67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't most corporate cable news a scripted message read from a teleprompter?

National anchors clearly have a boss that they listen to, but they also pretty clearly have a pretty large amount of editorial control over their shows.

>they also pretty clearly have a pretty large amount of editorial control over their shows.

The case of Phil Donahue indicates otherwise.

Re: Sinclair Made Dozens of Local News Anchors Recite the Same Script

#68
post #12

This is extremely dangerous to our democracy.

It's about as dangerous as Twitter spam. If people's votes are swaying based on the trash that is cable news and fake Twitter accounts, I'm not sure we had much hope for government-by-the-people to begin with.

Re: Sinclair Made Dozens of Local News Anchors Recite the Same Script

#69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because Sinclair just purchased more TV stations, so many in fact that it was banned under previous administrations at the FCC. At the start of 2017, the FCC just rewrote the rules allowing Sinclair to own a large swath of the US's local news capacity. In many markets they're the sole source of local news. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-07/sinclair-...

They're also the most likely candidate to pick up the pieces when iHeartRadio goes bankrupt. They're going to have the strongest propaganda outlet since the times of Hearst newspapers. This is an abject failure of the FCC.

I am delighted to hear on HN, somebody admit the possibility of propaganda in the USA without being downvoted. That you did it as an attack on non-left-leaning thought is fine. At least you get that it can happen. It's a start.

Re: Sinclair Made Dozens of Local News Anchors Recite the Same Script

#70
post #63
post #56

There are many threats to democracy, but this is not one of them. Audience numbers for local TV news (not to mention national TV news) is shrinking across the U.S. Younger people in particular will not sit down to watch a 30 minute talking-heads newscast stuffed to the gills with car, telecom, and insurance ads. See: https://www.poynter.org/news/new-pew-study-says-local-tv-new...

Old people watch more local news and vote at higher rates than any other demographic group.

> Old people [...] vote at higher rates than any other demographic group.

Now that one is bound to change. Young people, both in the US and abroad, are discovering the powers of social media and organize to advance their causes. Trump with his backwards, racist and misogynistic rhetoric and his politics mostly serving the old, white, male population provides a perfect enemy figure to rally against.

Somewhere on Reddit I have read that from now until the elections this fall there will be 4 million young people turning old enough to vote (sounds about right, given ~4M births per year in the US). That's a massive block of voters and most of them will either vote Democrat or some of the fringe parties.

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