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Sinclair Made Dozens of Local News Anchors Recite the Same Script

nytimes.com

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

#311

Post by dang »

trose wrote: post #196
creaghpatr wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>or if the merger with Tribune Media goes through? That's the whole reason this is a story. The viral clip was assembled by far-left think tank ThinkProgress to attempt to torpedo the merger by stirring up public outcry. And of course, the mainstream media, who indirectly compete against these local stations, is happy to support these efforts.

are we getting russian trolls in HN as well? I thought we were here to have intelligent discussions. Not political nonsense about "mainstream media"

It isn't ok to insinuate astroturfing, shillage, etc., in HN arguments. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Please don't do it here, regardless of how much people are doing it everywhere else.

If you have evidence of abuse, or are worried that it might be happening, you can email us at hn@ycombinator.com and we'll take a look. Obviously, if we find abuse we'll deal with it. But not without looking at the data.

What's not ok is to cheaply invoke these categories because someone holds different views from you or posted a bad comment to HN.

I've posted about this a ton if anyone wants to read more: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme....

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

#312

Post by KirinDave »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #259
KirinDave wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You too are collapsing the narrative to "NRA is evil." I'm not sure if the NRA is evil or not. I don't think "evil" is a very good label for Atheists to use, and I count myself among that cohort. I think the NRA's published position matches with my account. I do not think it's a helpful or reasonable position. > Pretending that the NRA is a rogue organization that doesn't represent a huge segment of the population…

>I think the NRA's published position matches with my account. I do not think it's a helpful or reasonable position. The NRA's position is no more unreasonable than forcing Christians to pay for what they believe to be child murder. >Bans on modifications that allow semi-automatic weapons to achieve >2r/s sustained fire rates Actually, after the Las Vegas shooting the NRA came out in favor of banning bump stocks. [0]…

> He was in a position where he was able to go to Congress with a position supporting a path to citizenship for dreamers in exchange for increased funding for border control and some stupid wall funding. And there was hardly any push back from the far right. Giving them a tongue lashing might have made you feel better, but it likely would not have helped the country in any way.

This "Trump is playing 4d hyperchess and can see externalities that by the way didn't actually pan out because not only did DACA not go through, but Trump took it off the table spitefully because he couldn't secure wall funding" argument? Unconvincing at best. I don't believe it because I don't see evidence of it. But I certainly don't think that the desire to appease conservative Americans includes calling people who publicly state their goal is to establish a white ethnostate in the ashes of American democracy "good people." They're literally opposing the institutions and laws he swore to uphold.

> Some crazy right wingers have some crazy conspiracy theories like 9-11 truthers and pizzagate. Some crazy left wingers have some crazy conspiracy theories about GMOs, alternative medicine, vaccines, etc. But this isn't a discussion about who has the craziest crazies, this discussion is about how the mainstream media biases when reporting on all issues including the crazies.

And yet you're seemingly unwilling to quote, engage, or even acknowledge that side of the conversation?

I find that side of the discussion much more interesting.

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

#313

Post by curun1r »

root_axis wrote: post #278
rlindgren wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"👎" to the John Oliver reference. His "reporting" is as biased as it gets. His show is written in a style that convinces the subconscious to accept presented arguments without engaging any serious logical scrutiny. Just try to remember if at any point during any of his broadcasts you actually analyzed the subject of his monologues, rather than simply furthering the thought-process that he was laying out for y…

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

PBS is pretty good, despite attempts by the right to brand them as liberal. Watching the PBS News Hour, you can almost see the anchors gritting their teeth as they give equal respect to guests spouting right-wing fabrications, but they still do it to remain as neutral as possible.

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

#314

Post by verylittlemeat »

logfromblammo wrote: post #243
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.

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.

You're right that a power imbalance caused this but that doesn't let the news anchors off the hook. These anchors know what their talents are. They are trained to speak with confidence and to appear as an information authority to their communities. This isn't some cog in the machine tweaking a spreadsheet in an office building that leads to some guy losing a job 1,000 miles away. These anchors are allowing their faces and their voices and the direct trust vested in their personalities to be abused for propaganda.

These anchors should be pushing back because when the shoe drops (like it is now) they will be taking the heat for being paid stooges. They will be disgraced in their community and just replaced by someone else willing to read whatever they're told until it happens again.

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

#315

Post by losteric »

mistermann wrote: post #307
losteric wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

"Fake news" is a symptom of consumer ignorance, and beneficial for facilitating monopolization.

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

#316

Post by mschuster91 »

anigbrowl wrote: post #272
mschuster91 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 Reddi…

I'm with you on this, but don't count your chickens. Young people are historically crap at voting and there are also structural barriers placed in the way of their doing so in many places (eg not accepting college ID as a valid form of voter ID).

> and there are also structural barriers placed in the way of their doing so in many places

Thanks to the powers of social media, though, this won't be as much an issue as in previous elections - people can share workarounds and actually document stuff happening and spreading the word - worldwide, for free and not (easily) censorable.

The "old generation" simply has accepted being more or less denied their right to vote, the current young generation has the willpower and the resources to actually fight back... where the biggest and most effective resource is creating outrage on social media.

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

#317

Post by koheripbal »

WhompingWindows wrote: post #73

In my eyes, this is a clear set/spike play. A huge corporation, enabled by their corrupt allies in the FCC, buy up hundreds of "local" stations. They then use the local cred/reputation of these stations to suggest that fake news is rampant on other sources (not controlled by Sinclair). They then tilt the dialogue nation-wide. Meanwhile, the average citizen is unaware that their trusted local anchor is bought/sold, th…

The only reason this is getting so much press is because it was favorable to Trump. If we look at left leaning abuses of "news", it gets buried in downvotes and derided as "both sides".

If you really want to combat the problem, you need to attack the root of the problem - for-profit 'news' organizations.

There should be regulations around ownership and foreign funding of anything that labels itself "news" or "journalism".

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

#318

Post by mschuster91 »

robotrout wrote: post #226
mschuster91 wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This person took the opportunity to level multiple refutable accusations at Trump, on a topic that had nothing to do with Trump. Of course this topic has to do something with Trump. In fact, Trump is at the core of it given the role of his administration in the upcoming merger of Sinclair to include even more local stations! As for "multiple refutable accusations", I could provide you with many examples for each on…

You and I would never agree on "racist policies". One mans border control is another mans racist, apparently. I am curious about these "misogynistic policies" though. What policy is that, exactly? I suspect I'll be told about locker room talk he did in private, but maybe you have some actual misogynistic policies to share that his past history of hiring many women into executive positions belies.

> but maybe you have some actual misogynistic policies

I was talking about rhetoric (where "grab em by the p...y" is sufficient proof of DJT not respecting women, no matter if private or not - but if that is not sufficient, look at the countless allegations of rape or other sexual misconduct), but if you want policy examples, for example take a look at staff pictures. Most old white men. The only 3 women in his cabinet are Chao (Transportation), DeVos (Education) and Nielsen (DHS). Not exactly positions of power.

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

#319

Post by Consultant32452 »

KirinDave wrote: post #312
Consultant32452 wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think the NRA's published position matches with my account. I do not think it's a helpful or reasonable position. The NRA's position is no more unreasonable than forcing Christians to pay for what they believe to be child murder. >Bans on modifications that allow semi-automatic weapons to achieve >2r/s sustained fire rates Actually, after the Las Vegas shooting the NRA came out in favor of banning bump stocks. [0]…

> He was in a position where he was able to go to Congress with a position supporting a path to citizenship for dreamers in exchange for increased funding for border control and some stupid wall funding. And there was hardly any push back from the far right. Giving them a tongue lashing might have made you feel better, but it likely would not have helped the country in any way. This "Trump is playing 4d hyperchess an…

>This "Trump is playing 4d hyperchess and can see externalities

Whether or not Trump's behavior is intentional or accidental, the outcome is the same.

>And yet you're seemingly unwilling to quote, engage, or even acknowledge that side of the conversation?

As I acknowledged multiple times in this thread, I'm not even arguing my own position. I'm pointing out that there are other ways of seeing the world, other axioms that can be accepted which make the mainstream media look very biased. I don't need to engage in an argument about whether neo-Nazis are worse than Antifa because it's irrelevant to our conversation. The topics I brought up were pretty mainstream things like abortion, gun rights, etc. You have brought the conversation to the fringe. But this isn't about the fringe. It's about the middle. Of course the bias is expressed in how the media talks about the fringe too, but again that's irrelevant. We probably agree on many if not most of these issues, but conservatives are not crazy in seeing that the mass media doesn't represent them fairly, or in many cases doesn't represent them at all.

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

#320

Post by fncypants »

koheripbal wrote: post #317
WhompingWindows wrote: post #73

In my eyes, this is a clear set/spike play. A huge corporation, enabled by their corrupt allies in the FCC, buy up hundreds of "local" stations. They then use the local cred/reputation of these stations to suggest that fake news is rampant on other sources (not controlled by Sinclair). They then tilt the dialogue nation-wide. Meanwhile, the average citizen is unaware that their trusted local anchor is bought/sold, th…

The only reason this is getting so much press is because it was favorable to Trump. If we look at left leaning abuses of "news", it gets buried in downvotes and derided as "both sides". If you really want to combat the problem, you need to attack the root of the problem - for-profit 'news' organizations. There should be regulations around ownership and foreign funding of anything that labels itself "news" or "journal…

No for-profit news organizations? That don't take money in exchange for delivering consumers eyeballs to advertisers I presume?

I hope then that you subscribe to your public broadcasting stations (read: fund PBS and NPR news reporting--are you OK with that?) and have told your representatives to fund those organizations.

If not, then you're looking for something that cannot be achieved and will forever be moving the goalposts. Media in the US or anywhere else, even when it is best, has never been un-biased. But it has been more honest and fair.

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