Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Sinclair Made Dozens of Local News Anchors Recite the Same Script

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 344 posts

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

#301

Post by logfromblammo »

anigbrowl wrote: post #253
logfromblammo wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are insulting the wrong people. Please do not blame the victims for choosing not to walk willingly into homelessness and financial ruin. Blame those that allow such gross power imbalances to occur.

How are we to know who they are when they have effective control of the media? homelessness and financial ruin News anchors in the Bay Area are paid about $4-500k. They may be operating under onerous contracts with clawbacks, but they could budget strategically or fight those contracts in court to expose how bad they are, either personally or via their union. Very few people have that kind of financial room to maneuv…

SF is not a typical market.

https://www.bls.gov/ooh/media-and-communication/reporters-co...

Median pay for on-screen television news talent is less than $40k/year. That encompasses everyone, not just the anchors (aka "broadcast news analysts"), but the number for them is about $57k/year. The typical career progression is for people to move to larger cities, with larger and richer media markets, to earn higher pay.

The majority of Sinclair-owned stations are not in San Francisco.

But you are otherwise correct, the union hasn't been earning its dues here, and the highly-paid anchors haven't assumed leadership roles against the Sinclair contracts, either. Most individual anchors are not in a position of power with respect to their own employers. They may have a position of power over other people's employers, but they emphatically cannot run a critical piece on their own bosses and expect to keep sitting behind that broadcast desk, or any other.

Acting as anonymous source for a print news journalist (working for a different media conglomerate) is probably the best they can do.

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

#302

Post by ModernMech »

rlindgren wrote: post #284
root_axis wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give me an example of unbiased reporting on television?

I would say that hacker news is actually a fairly objective aggregator. It's also participatory, which hopefully checks bias at some level. But, as this isn't television... it's not a valid example, in response to your question. Also, hacker news isn't ad-supported, which is nice.

But there is still bias here. Bias in the stories submitted, in that they're skewed toward the I interests of white male 20-30 somethings. Not a lot of diversity of opinion and point of view here, which is another way of saying prevailing bias.

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

#303

Post by codezero »

rufus_2 wrote: post #244
codezero wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe symbolic here means that it won't actually function to deter illegal immigration, at least not proportionally to spending that money on other efforts.

Is Israel's border wall symbolic or physical?

I am not sure what your point is. A thing can be both symbolic and physical. Let me know what you want me to clarify. I thought I was pretty clear in the above comment.

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

#305

Post by chc »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #298
chc wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Newspapers pay Reuters for access to their stories because Reuters has pretty good writing on offer for less than it would cost the paper to do the work itself. They can choose what stories they want to put their name on, and they are even free to modify a story from Reuters if they want to. Reuters doesn't tell the newspapers want to print. It's not even a little bit similar to what people are talking about here.

Then I think the discussion should reflect that. So what has changed is that now there's apparently an explicit rule that news stations must continue to follow the behavior they've been exhibiting for decades. Also, there's a little more structure to it now.

No? A corporation forcing news outlets to issue editorial statements (and without disclosure) isn't remotely the same thing as a newspaper voluntarily paying Reuters for access to its reporting. It's like the difference between buying an apple at the farmer's market and having somebody pour bleach in your eyes. There's a level of abstraction where you could describe those two things in similar terms ("oh, you're just having a substance enter your body"), but they are not at all the same in any meaningful way.

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

#306

Post by squozzer »

A certain conservative radio talk show host has a hobby of stringing together identical-sounding phrases from various sources in the establishment media, as if they all read from the same memo. It seemed certain someone had coordinated their talking points.

Is the Sinclair issue that much different?

Presumably the former example was performed by a group of like-minded individuals operating under some flavor of free will, who arrived at a consensus. But we can't be sure that was the process. They might have been coerced, or merely chose to parrot each other regardless of circumstance, because they found themselves so well aligned.

Sinclair, on the other hand, assumed obedience by virtue of signing the checks.

That said, I don't know if this situation is as scary as it used to be, now that we've had some experience with the power of more monolithic-appearing news sources such as FB and Google.

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

#307

Post by mistermann »

losteric wrote: post #265
mistermann wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Monopolization is highly beneficial to facilitating fake news, you don't see that?

It's the other way around. Fake news is selective ignorance that distracts from the cancer eating away at our formerly-educated electorate.

One entity owning multiple outlets and therefore having the ability to broadcast a consistent message, as literally shown in the video, not only does not facilitate fake news, but can not? It acts as an antidote to fake news, in all cases?

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

#308

Post by Consultant32452 »

chc wrote: post #305
Consultant32452 wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then I think the discussion should reflect that. So what has changed is that now there's apparently an explicit rule that news stations must continue to follow the behavior they've been exhibiting for decades. Also, there's a little more structure to it now.

No? A corporation forcing news outlets to issue editorial statements (and without disclosure) isn't remotely the same thing as a newspaper voluntarily paying Reuters for access to its reporting. It's like the difference between buying an apple at the farmer's market and having somebody pour bleach in your eyes. There's a level of abstraction where you could describe those two things in similar terms ("oh, you're just…

I understand what you're saying, I'm just more cynical about old media than you are. Technically old media in the 80s could have theoretically expressed unique opinions that didn't toe the company line of the wealthy establishment, they just coincidentally never did. Now many of them are owned by the same company and use the same language.

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

#309

Post by digitaltrees »

dahdum wrote: post #295
digitaltrees wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open boarders worked well in the early united states. I don't want to go back to closed boarders between New York and New Jersey.

Uncapped unskilled immigration works great when you have jobs available, and early America had plenty of those. Coupled with zero entitlement programs it was a perfect recipe for growth. Doesn't work so well now, it would put enormous pressure on social programs already near their breaking point, and drive unemployment sky high as unskilled jobs are diminishing. Crime would increase as poverty is positive correlated.…

Rome had more than one tier of member of society, (eg citizen and non citizens) you could tie social benefits to certain social performance expectations such as military service, length of residency. I am not advocating open boarders or a multi tier citizen status structure merely showing possible solutions.

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

#310

Post by braderhart »

saturdaysaint wrote: post #275
rhapsodic wrote: post #93

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.

Or maybe they had families and mortgages and student loans that they couldn't drop on a dime because they got asked to do something basically unheard of on the nightly news? Sinclair affiliates are primarily NOT located in the kind of metropolises where a journalist could expect to get a job the next week, either.

I know homeless people with better morals than these people, and some of them are homeless for that reason, but still chose the high road. These people are not struggling that much. They usually have new cars, homes that they own and take a lot of vacations... I guess I those things may be important enough to sacrifice morals, but it isn't like they are willing to step down to the level of people that have to go to pantrys, because they are too "good" for that.
Post reply on HN