A Final Update

This blog post isn't quite on topic. It will deal marginally about corruption, but that's not its primary topic. Instead, I'll be talking about something equally dangerous to our democracy (although one that is perfectly legal by the virtue of the First Amendment): propaganda.

Perhaps you have seen the terrifyingly uncanny videos of local news anchors reading off the same script, word-for-word, about misinformation and bias in the media. If you haven't, or if you want to revisit the particular sort of horror that accompanies the downfall of democracy, I've linked a CNN clip about it below. (Watch the video from about :28-:50 for the clips).

(I apologize for the irony found in the listing of a CNN video on an article about bias in media, since it is known to wax liberal, but it was the best recording of this bizarre occurrence).

What made such a large group of local anchors, partnered with a variety of parent companies and in stations around the country, all say the same speech? The answer lies with a company that was, until recently, little-known (although it is no longer so, thanks largely to John Oliver and recent reports of this bizarre occurrence) company known as Sinclair Broadcast Group.

Sinclair Broadcast Group is something of an oxymoronic company. They own a number of local news stations (currently just shy of 193, and that number is slated to grow if their merger with another such company, Tribune Media, is approved (but more on that later). This in and of it self seems strange at the surface, as the idea behind local news is that it is run on a community level for the benefit of the town or county in which it is located, but there's nothing illegal or inherently wrong about it, and there are a number of similar such companies around the United States.

The problem is that Sinclair Broadcast Group happens to take a rather active part in the programming of its owned stations. They will oftentimes mandate that certain segments be run or stories be read on their affiliated new programs, including the story reported in the above clip. Once again, there is not anything inherently wrong with this practice. It'd be difficult to object to a company mandating that its stations cover, say, the presedential election results (although I wouldn't see why it would ever be necessary to do so). 

Sinclair's mandatory coverage isn't generally on such obviously important issues, however, nor do these messages generally convey unbiased information. Instead, these stories tend to be made up almost entirely of conservative talking points and heavily biased news coverage disguised as fact. This is incredibly alarming, especially because of the apparent source of the news (as perceived by the average viewer). Since ABC, CBS, and NBC are generally trusted to carry unbiased news (as opposed to the well-known biases of CNN or FOX), and since these networks are general what the source of the news reports seems to be, those watching their local news will see these propaganda pieces as the sort of objective facts often reported by the major news networks.

This is not the only example of such propaganda disguised as news broadcast by Sinclair, but it is perhaps the most egregious, partially because of its word-for-word repetition and partially for its ironic subject matter (193 biased media stations reporting about how media is sometimes biased, with the implication that news other than the local news stations are the biased sources). More alarmingly, though, it seems that more Americans will be exposed to this same sort of propaganda-as-news than ever before, thanks to a proposed upcoming merger with Tribune Media. This merger would give Sinclair control over 72% of households' local news, allowing them to spew their falsehoods to a ludicrously large number of American families.

Now you might be thinking "Surely there's a rule against this!" And there is. Or rather, there was. It seems as though the merger is going to go through anyway. If it does, it represents another example of our current FCC caving to corporate interests (remember that my first post documented another example). 

In order to not leave on such an unhappy note, I'd like to close this blog by telling you that all is not lost. There are actions that you can take to fight the corruption that threatens to take over our country and destroy everything that we stand for. First, remember to stay informed, and do so through legitimate sources (the major networks, BBC, the Guardian, the Post and the Times, and Reuters, among others). Second, use this information to make decisions about voting so that you can effectively remove those who propagate corruption from power. It is within our ability to fight corruption by the means I've described, and because we can, and because the alternative is unthinkable, we must.