[Ah, the good old days, when we could trust our TV reporters]
Back in November 2017, Ryan Lizza at The New Yorker wrote a story about how a former editor at Russia’s largest state media company had been given clear instructions by the Kremlin during the 2016 U.S. election on how to “show Donald Trump in a positive way, and his opponent, Hillary Clinton, in a negative way.”
That whole issue – Russia’s interference in our elections with all its sordid ramifications of possible collusion and obstruction of justice – is now the subject of intense investigation.
The issue of our media being told what to say, however, should also be investigated.
As far as we know, the Trump “state” is not telling our journalists and reporters what to write or say – yet — albeit many echo Trump’s talking points and, vice versa, Trump get his talking points from trusted, “fair and balanced” Fox News.
But in a chilling development, it appears that your friendly, local anchors at nearly 200 Sinclair Broadcast Group stations are being told exactly what to say in support of Trump’s “fake news” and other dubious rhetoric.
According to CNN, Scott Livingston, Sinclair’s senior vice president of news, “directed stations to have anchors read a script about ‘fake stories’ and ‘personal bias’ plaguing the media.”
This is one of the “scripts” provided to Sinclair stations, according to the New York Times:
The sharing of biased and false news has become all too common on social media. Some members of the media use their platforms to push their own personal bias. This is extremely dangerous to our democracy.
The New York Times adds:
Sinclair has been accused of using connections in the Trump administration to ease regulations on media consolidation. In an effort to expand its reach, the company is seeking approval from the Justice Department and the Federal Communications Commission for a $3.9 billion deal to buy Tribune Media.
This blatant act of putting words in reporters’ mouths and broadcasting them to millions of viewers and listeners has gone viral over the weekend.
Deadspin, in “How America’s Largest Local TV Owner Turned Its News Anchors Into Soldiers In Trump’s War On The Media,” describes “the net result” of Sinclair’s current mandate as “dozens upon dozens of local news anchors looking like hostages in proof-of-life videos, trying their hardest to spit out words attacking the industry they’d chosen as a life vocation.”
In addition, Deadspin has skillfully “stitched” dozens of these pieces of broadcast together into a very telling montage reminiscent of state controlled media.
Watch it below and decide for yourself what is really “extremely dangerous to our democracy.”
Video courtesy of Deadspin
Lead image credit Paul Townsend, “TV Shows We Used To Watch“
