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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

#132

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.

I guess you're completely ignorant of the Fairness Doctrine, then.

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

#133

Trump recently took DACA off the negotiating table, announcing it in a tweet, citing a Fox News & Friends segment on 'caravans' of inbound immigrants: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration/trump-say... The President is watching this same garbage and making policy decisions based on it. Let that sink in for a moment.

If you watched the state of the union, you know that Trump made a proposal about DACA that was such a huge compromise to the left, that much of his base raised hell. The left refused that compromise, and refused again, when he asked for DACA and the wall to be addressed in the latest spending bill. Since he has twice been rebuffed on his compromises, he's going the other way. That seems reasonable to me.

That is not an accurate summary of what happened. Trump killed any possibility of compromise, insisting on extreme proposals once Congress started to act. Here are the details of what happened back in February on this because it is too long and complicated to summarize here: https://www.politico.com/story/2018/02/15/immigration-daca-s...

Who knows what Trump really wants? One day he says generous things about DACA, the next he wants to kill it. I think it depends whether he watched Fox news in the interim. Or spoke to Stephen Miller.

He did the same thing with gun legislation. Says promising things in front of the camera, but then kills anything meaningful after checking in with the NRA and/or Fox news.

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

#134

Those news anchors were either OK with the contents of the script they were ordered to read, or they were gutless cowards for not resigning or allowing themselves to be fired.

The journalism job market ain't what it used to be. I find it hard to label people trying to keep their family fed and housed as "gutless cowards."

The problem is your excuse is used to justify any action all the way down to killing Jews in a gas chamber. "I was just doing as I was told" Sure no one is being gassed here, bit this seems pretty subversive. I have a family to feed too, we all do, but I also chose my line of work so that I'm comfortable saying "No" to the boss (and have had to quit because of this in the past).

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

#135

Those news anchors were either OK with the contents of the script they were ordered to read, or they were gutless cowards for not resigning or allowing themselves to be fired.

Here's some context around the provisions of the contracts these anchors frequently work under:

https://twitter.com/mattdpearce/status/980800914423406592

https://twitter.com/mattdpearce/status/980811757726810112

Essentially, if they were to chose to leave, they'd owe 40% of their base pay prorated by the remainder of their contract, as-well as the potential requirement to return some bonuses received. Vacation days are lost, and there are typically non-competes within the same region.

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

#136

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.

The FCC hasn't failed, here. They were intentionally hamstrung by the right wing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine

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

#137

Trump recently took DACA off the negotiating table, announcing it in a tweet, citing a Fox News & Friends segment on 'caravans' of inbound immigrants: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration/trump-say... The President is watching this same garbage and making policy decisions based on it. Let that sink in for a moment.

If you watched the state of the union, you know that Trump made a proposal about DACA that was such a huge compromise to the left, that much of his base raised hell. The left refused that compromise, and refused again, when he asked for DACA and the wall to be addressed in the latest spending bill. Since he has twice been rebuffed on his compromises, he's going the other way. That seems reasonable to me.

Do we have to be on the left to think Trump is a nut? Does Trump own the right?

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

#138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CNN doesn't stand up and say "we're devoting our reporting resources to all things anti Trump, this is our bias, it's not secret". They simply report the news they choose to report. Just like Sinclair. People watch the news hoping to get an accurate depiction of reality. When only one side of a multifaceted situation is reported on, the depiction becomes distorted. It's never OK to do this, regardless of whose side y…

All news is based. Anyone telling you otherwise (that they are fair and balanced and unbiased) is lying to you. I don't need CNN to explicitly tell me their biases, because they are not my only source of news. It's not CNN's job to make sure i get unbiased news. It my job to make sense of biased news and weave it into a consistent mental model of the world. This let's me do things like watch CNN and Fox News and reco…

If all news is biased, then what Sinclair is doing should be no big deal. They have a message they're pushing, just like everybody else.

Do you believe that?

And if everybody has a bias, it also shouldn't be a big deal for me to ask you: What's yours?

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

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you watched the state of the union, you know that Trump made a proposal about DACA that was such a huge compromise to the left, that much of his base raised hell. The left refused that compromise, and refused again, when he asked for DACA and the wall to be addressed in the latest spending bill. Since he has twice been rebuffed on his compromises, he's going the other way. That seems reasonable to me.

I remember Trump saying he would sign literally any immigration deal brought to him by a bipartisan group, and when they did what he asked he rejected it, thanks to Stephen Miller. Then Chuck Schumer basically told Trump to name how much he wanted for the wall, which Trump refused to do. Then the government shut down and Trump relished in blaming Democrats. > The left refused that compromise Why was a compromised nee…

Democrats should be willing to compromise because they value the DACA fix more than their opposition to border funding. They are instead doing the same thing Republicans did to Obama, refusing to compromise in order to whip up their base.

Any politician that compromises an inch these days will be portrayed as an immoral enemy and attacked by some vocal part of their own base.

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