TV meteorologist objected to management’s ‘code red’ orders

Basic facts that would inform the reader, like "how many days a year are 'code red'?" are missing. On one of the core points of contention - does corporation decide when a day is code red or do the meteorologists decide - we hear from a single meteorologist and a single corporate spokesperson who give opposite answers, but the reporter (Matthew Cappucci) apparently couldn't be bothered to call a few more Sinclair meteorologists (off the record) and figure out who was telling the truth and who was lying. Instead, readers are left to infer based on their previous biases - which, if you look at the comment section on WaPo's website - they have no problem doing.

Does this even count as journalism?

Management's job is to make money. Since they don't actually do the work, they have a limited number of options for doing that. And they are not judged on the quality of the work, since someone else did it, only how much money the company makes.

They need people to watch the station. So they came to the conclusion that ratings would increase if they created a sense of emergency. Even if it's a totally false emergency. This is actually a public safety issue, because it means that viewers may not be able to determine when there is an actual emergency.

In the case of Boeing, the pressure to make more money caused executives to decide to implement a half-assed upgrade rather than do the new design work and have to recertify the safety of the new plane.

It seems that the pressure to increase profits frequently overrides integrity. I don't know how you're going to change that, because executives are only rewarded for making more money, not for integrity or anything else.

One option would be to place these executives in prison for endangering public safety. That's not going to resolve the core structural issue of profit conflicting with safety.

Regardless of the intended outcome, this will be the actual outcome for at least ~1/3 of viewers, although given the history of Sinclair broadcast group I don't think it is a very large leap at all to speculate about it also being the intent.