Sinclair Made Dozens of Local News Anchors Recite the Same Script
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
But... looking at the list of stations Sinclair owns[0]... where are the markets that they control all the stations, defined as ABC+NBC+FOX+CBS? I honestly don't see any. Is this more of a concern if they do manage to get all of these, or if the merger with Tribune Media goes through?
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_stations_owned_or_oper...
This is the original: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWLjYJ4BzvI
Besides, the original is Deadspin's article[1]. The video was downloaded and posted on Youtube. The Reddit user said that oneself. Deadspin, of course, also got the idea and news elsewhere, e.g., the linked ThinkProgress video in the article.
[1] https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/how-americas-largest-local...
https://github.com/nemild/hacking-engineers
Examples like this are what I include, about how third-parties can manipulate media sources for their own ends.
How to report the news:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHun58mz3vI
Every TV news report on the economy in one:
Sinclair has taken up the mantle of PR Firm to engage in some preemptive damage control. 15 years ago all you had to say was "Fair and Balanced."
The fact that Sinclair has been growing is evidence of that.
That said, something I'm curious about... how many people still get their news primarily from local tv broadcast in this day and age? And what are the age ranges of those people? Lacking any actual data, I'd suggest by complete conjecture that it's not that many, and they skew much older than the general population. I'd be surprised if anyone under the age of 30 watches local tv news regularly at all.
I know that personally, I watch so little local news that when I do, the cognitive dissonance is kind of jarring. And when do I watch it? Mostly, when visiting my Baby Boomer in-laws...
I looked for Sinclair station ownership in this market and according to The Book of Knowledge (Wikipedia) there is none.
Local news stations receive packages and content with scripts pre-written from national networks and other sources all the time. It's not a conspiracy, and it shouldn't cast doubt on the truthfulness of a story.
Television news is a scripted medium, and most stations don't have the time or talent to write a completely unique script for every newscast from scratch.
When it's a politically charged attack on competitors, it crosses a pretty uncomfortable line.
Says ABC/NBC/Fox - but actually that's just a logo.
Why not have them clearly labeled as Sinclair, then consumer would know. And maybe still be fine with it.
This way it's indeed shady.
The news producers were lazy, too. They'd literally take the script that ENPS pushes out, tweak a few words, and put it on air. I was working in a minor midwestern market (Toledo, Ohio). If you watched the evening broadcasts in the same market and nationally, you'd frequently see the same stories and similar verbiage popping up.
Being surprised by a broadcast group like Sinclair was forcing a narrative is like being surprised that the sky is blue. The "news" is highly filtered and easily controlled. To think otherwise is deliberate ignorance.
The broadcasting industry is corrupt and untrustworthy as all hell. My father worked in it at a high level (owning licenses and stations) and he'd frequently come home from trips either stone faced or frustrated beyond belief: https://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/22/business/media/22spectrum... (he's the stately looking black fella throwing a fit in this piece).
To trust anything the mass media tells you is to severely handicap your intelligence. Unfortunately, large swats of the general public do exactly that.
/rant
If one side says 2+2=4, and the other side said 2+2=6, the truth is not that 2+2=5 and everyone needs to stop being so partisan.
The internet is a wonderful thing.
But the heart of the bias problem isn't that the sources are biased, at least if you stay away from outright nonsense like InfoWars. Rather, the problem is that people are biased, and then start looking for news that reinforces our biases. We can even read the same story and get entirely different interpretations of it (see all the arguing downthread about DACA negotiations).
Facts are (mostly) objective; interpretation is always subjective.
It also depends on what the story involves. The example I gave above—a plane crash—is very objective. Something bad happened, people were likely hurt, authorities are investigating, etc. Where it starts to get murky is when a story taps into an ongoing narrative like gun control.
Notice how the major news networks were (and still are) each pushing their own narrative around the Parkland shooting. The left-leaning media were pushing the need for more gun control and anchoring that to the victims, the right was babbling on about how the left was just trying to steal everyone's guns and why gun ownership is positive. It's where you're being told that one side is "evil" that your antennae should go up.
In situations like these, it's worth considering what is factually true, what is opinion/emotionally-driven bias, and working hard to form your own opinions.
Don't try to claim these are in any way equivalent.
Not my goal (see comment on other reply here). Just pointing out that the media as a whole is not to be trusted in any way shape or form. Like I noted on the other comment above, this situation is far worse than what I saw in the newsroom; just not surprising having seen the machine at work.
I'm a fan of your Dad by the way, I remember that article when it was originally published.
[1]: https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/how-americas-largest-local...
In a way, Sinclair is becoming a TV streaming service.
I sense the badness, but I also think they run the risk of spending a lot of money on a wasted effort.
You can only influence people if they're dumb _and_ watching your news programs. Seems like a dwindling market if you ask me. People already have FOX News and they've reached their ceiling (35% of the population). Sinclair is going to run into the same demographic problem.
The amount of people watching TV is going down, but the proportion of people who think uncritically is skyrocketing.
And while people over 40 are generally in the second half of their lives and heading for the demographic exits, that doesn't mean they're politically irrelevant. They're far more likely to vote, more likely to be homeowners/property tax payers (with the political heft that that gives), and have greater financial and political heft than their younger counterparts. You're naive if you think they're just bumbling along without thinking of much of anything. Just because you find that demographic boring and personally irrelevant doesn't mean they can't exert political power over you int eh aggregate. Many such people are willing to have their opinions shaped or validated by broadcast media and act accordingly.
Take Fox News; it's easy to make fun of their audience, because who int heir right mind would take people like Sean Hannity seriously? And yet millions do, and their existence and hostility cannot be wished away.
Incidentally, just "getting your news from the web" is no guarantee of objectivity either. Come on, we live in a society where people in high places tweet links to Infowars or Qanon conspiracy theories non-ironically.
We're on the verge of a Spotify for TV where you can pick your own channels, including which "local" channel you want. Some people may still pick the Sinclair run station and be influenced, but my point is that we're reading this Sinclair deal in the context of the past.
And people have an interesting habit of recognizing when they're being manipulated and they call B.S.
First West Virginia, now Oklahoma where school teachers are fed up with tax cuts that only benefit corporations and the wealthy and end up taking away from teachers and students.
We have a tragic and unexpectedly organized and mature set of Florida teenagers that are giving the NRA a run for their money. They may have knocked a Fox News mainstay off the air by forcing most of her advertisers to bolt.
My sense, and it's just intuition based on the news of the day, is that people are just starting to push back. Sinclair probably needed the FCC changes 10 years ago. I think it's probably just too late.
You may also want to reconsider that only dumb people can be influenced by this or other means of manipulation.
And... if you can influence 35% of the population, it is fairly easy to get a voting majority from that point given participation rates. Especially, as others have said, if you are influencing the rather large and active over 40 population.
I think it's reasonable to conclude that POTUS likes that Sinclair compels local news anchors to recite scripts that present a favorable impression of, support for, his policies or him personally.
This is the American crony capitalism version of what Putin did with his state media in order to gain and retain control of the country, and destroy his adversaries. Trump won't have to have his adversaries poisoned. He's poisoning the ability for people to triangulate. And near as I can tell this is what people who support him want. They do not want contrary opinions. They want an autocrat.
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.
[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/these-6-corporations-control-...
Can you cite that? It sounds like prime material for Reddit's /r/TrumpCriticizesTrump/
In fact, Trump just stated he supports Sinclair's monopolization.
Bernie talking about it in 1988 as mayor of Burlington: https://youtu.be/KIQ_Kj7uBeg
For example, in a pure democracy, gay marriage would not be a thing, because the majority voted against it. However, because we are a republic, and the government is compelled to recognize the minority and protect their rights, gay marriage is now legal.
I don't think this distinction is "splitting hairs," since it is of vital importance to the minority.
The case of Phil Donahue indicates otherwise.
But I haven't seen evidence for it as the norm. Obviously this piece was published by the New York Times, for example.
You might like Spin, a 1995 documentary composed of unauthorized behind the scenes footage of the political maneuverings of newscasters and politicians.
Why would this be classified by Sinclair a MUST run segment for likely one reason? Easy: to curry favor with the White House to clear the path for further consolidation. Trump speaks glowingly of Sinclair,[1] despite what others consider to be anti-competitive acquisitions and mergers and detrimental to a healthy free press.[2] Yet, Trump has taken action to prevent CNN from merging with Time Warner which is currently being tried in a courtroom.[3] The difference is that CNN's news reporting is very unfavorable to this White House.
This is not how a democracy remains healthy, or, really, how one continues to exist.
[0] https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2017/05/07/sin... [1] https://www.politico.com/story/2018/04/02/trump-defends-sinc... [2] https://www.vox.com/2017/5/15/15598270/sinclair-broadcast-im... [3] http://money.cnn.com/2017/11/21/media/trump-comments-att-tim...
There's no such thing as straight news. It's all spin, one way or the other.
Here's Politico's take on the Trump speech lockstep reaction: https://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/trump-convention-spee...
Does anyone from either side of the aisle consider a national corporation owning local stations and forcing scripts down their throat a good thing for the marketplace of ideas?
It's funny: Trump attacks CNN for being fake, biased news, then CNN responds by focusing all of their negative reporting on Trump, becoming exactly what Trump says they are. People would have had much more respect for CNN if they had stuck to the middle path in the face of Trump's insults.
We should not turn a blind eye towards some instances of bias in media simply because they reinforce our own values and beliefs.
National news programs are a separate issue from secretly biased local news.
Just like Sinclair.
People watch the news hoping to get an accurate depiction of reality. When only one side of a multifaceted situation is reported on, the depiction becomes distorted.
It's never OK to do this, regardless of whose side you're on.
Do you believe that?
And if everybody has a bias, it also shouldn't be a big deal for me to ask you: What's yours?
> What's yours?
That's the thing about bias: It's multifaceted, and often subconscious. I could list some biases I'm suspicious I have, but this list would be incomplete and inaccurate.
The problem is not the bias. The problem is the deception about who is responsible for the content. And yes, this falls into the same category as government employees in St. Petersburg masquerading as US citizens while publishing political propaganda.
The truth isn't biased, so if the news reports the truth, "x said y" and we have evidence that x said y, then it is not biased and therefore all new is NOT biased.
This simple ad by The Guardian on perspective shows how news can easily show biases [1].
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3h-T3KQNxU&list=LL8yCOjMrFJ...
Take for instance every time the POTUS makes a speech, and I'm talking about presidents long before Trump; as soon as they stop speaking, every new station cuts to a group of pundits to tell you how you should interpret what the president just said. It's not journalism at all, and anyone who pays attention to politics a lot would be just as qualified to be a pundit. Why should anyone trust that level of bias over what was actually said? If the opinions of political junkies are more important than what was said, then we're basically screwed because it's not the people who decide how to view events, but it's news organizations who pay people to dictate opinion that create the narrative around events.
Yes, you can certainly sift through bias using critical thinking skills, but this only gets you so far when the news itself becomes more bias than actual reporting. We don't live in a perfect world where everyone is capable of critical thinking. If we did, then almost everyone would shut off the TV as soon as the president is done speaking. Instead, we live in an imperfect world where having highly biased news is really dangerous for a society that hasn't proven to be capable of coming up with its own perspectives when other perspectives are being foisted upon them by the press and the state.
I disagree entirely. That is the essence of journalism. Not to tell you what to think, but to provide context that helps interpret.
For example, reporting that people at a Trump rally were shouting "Lugenpresse" is one thing. Providing the historical context that such language was used by the Nazi's as a pretext for cracking down on the free press and on Jews is another. Just hearing the first may make you aware of a fact, but the second tells you the truth.
CNN is not dictating what its personnel report and it's certainly not coordinating forced fake "reporting" in unison by dozens of TV stations, or forcing anyone to air Sebastian Gorka, etc.
Come now, you think managers and executives at CNN are just playing board games all day?
No, they're crafting policy and setting the direction of news room reporting.
Obvious cognitive dissonance tell right here.
this is incredibly naive.
>it's certainly not coordinating forced fake "reporting"
CNN itself may not be the coordination center, but leftist media does coordinate its reporting, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JournoList
Debate questions are not some big secret surprise; the candidates drill for MONTHS on all the likely sorts of questions that could be asked. And there weren't any "gotcha" questions asked in the debate in question; just straight-up stuff that any prepared candidate could answer in his/her sleep.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/donna-brazile-finally-adm...
There is an obvious difference between knowing the range of questions vs knowing the exact questions on, eg, a qualification exam. The full list of questions is usually public beforehand, the exact questions you get is not.
The same logic applies to the debate. Knowing the exact questions gives an advantage, allowing one side to tailor and concentrate their message. Once you know what is going to be asked, you can prep more extensively in that space, while the other side is spreading out their efforts, being less efficient.
Just because you've covered the material doesn't mean there's not a distinct advantage in knowing the questions ahead of time.
Further, it is one thing for them to use the same script. It is entirely another thing for the script to be "you can't trust any other news outlet because they all report fake news with no research or verification. YOU CAN ONLY TRUST US". I have never seen that message on CNN. You may not like CNN's coverage of Trump, but they do not undermine every other media outlet.
Give me a break. You don't remember "This an Apple", one of the most elitist, pretentious advertising campaigns in recent times:
""This is an apple. Some people might try to tell you that it's a banana. They might scream, 'Banana, banana, banana,' over and over and over again. They might put banana in all caps. You might even start to believe it's a banana, but it's not. This is an apple."
Trying to equate these two is just not honest.
Separately I would expect the same phrasing and vocabulary to emerge in the media. They are all talking to the same general pool of sources, and listening to each other. What I do not expect (and smacks of authoritarianism) is for them to all be reading from the exact same script.
" The app’s avowed task is to give people a quick and easy way to access the volunteering and organizing functions that worked so well for Obama in 2008. But the permission screen that comes with the app makes clear that it has another purpose as well. When I installed the app, I noticed that it said it would grab information about my friends: their birthdates, locations, and “likes.” "
No, that's not it.
A free press is "free" because it's unconstrained by a Government or capricious regulation, not because it "goes against the government's views". Sometimes members of a free press will support the government, other times they won't.
It's not a priori virtuous to go against the Government's views. Sometimes the Government is right and sometimes it's not. Like everyone else.
You're right it's not inherently virtuous to go against the Government's views. But it is inherently bad to push government views in exchange for preferential treatment which is what appears to be happening here and with the National Enquirer.
If you are concerned about a free press, you should be equally concerned about the commingling of government and press such that the government captures certain media properties and converts them to state run media. Free press means a separation of government and press; any governmental involvement damages a free press.
Add to that monopolistic corporate power.
Stations have obligations in return for their licensing. Some of which require them to serve the public good. Local newscasting falls in that category.
Sinclair is turning that "public good" into propaganda. This is counter to the license terms. At least, in my opinion. Maybe we'll see that addressed, in court, at some point.
There are also marketshare caps, created to prevent this kind of bias from gaining dominance of the broadcast market. Sinclair has been lobbying and buying its way towards circumvention of those caps.
Numerous studies indicate that, with all the changes in media, many people still go to their local broadcast news station for their news, and that they have a higher level of trust in it than in other sources.
Arguably, when you turn on CNN or Fox -- networks, that cable and satellite providers can choose to carry along with however many other channels they want to sell you -- you know what you're getting.
This, by contrast, is a creeping menace of bias, masked as your trusted local news source. (And as other "public service" broadcasting. Whereas people reasonably argue that the demonstrated bias to one political agenda, as well as the masking of the source of said programming, is not "public service".)
CNN reporting negatively on Trump doesn't make them "fake". He's a bad president and a bad leader; reporting on that means you're telling the truth. Fake mean lying, not reporting truth you don't want to hear.
It's a case of "two wrongs don't make a right." Lowering reporting standards because the other side lowered reporting standards means we have no good news.
Not being able to trust the media (both CNN and Faux news) is a bigger problem than electing a lousy president.
I used to get most of my news from CNN, and the amount of "bad" anti-trump editorials they publish really scared me. CNN has a lot of anti-Trump articles that take a trolling tone.
We (me and CNN) didn't vote for Trump, and we (me and CNN) don't like him, but that's no excuse for bad journalism. Part of a democracy is getting along when you loose the election.
Ajit Pai has been rolling back FCC regulations preventing Sinclair from massively expanding its media empire. In exchange, with Pai acting as a go-between for Trump and Sinclair, Sinclair promised Trump that he'd get better media coverage. [1]
Reddit had a large thread about this video over the weekend. Most of the comments were the usual garbage, but there was some good stuff in there: https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/88ll08/this_is_what...
[1]: https://gist.github.com/shakna-israel/a5df6c9c70ccfce3ad3c27...
Is this like there being only 1 Facebook, 1 Google, and 1 Twitter, all of which have recently begun to "fact check" the content users put on their services?
I think it's important to have a broad dissemination of information about these kinds of things, but if all that is happening here is a targeted freakout because John Oliver did a story, then no thanks.
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".
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.
As he is primarily known as a comedian, there is no way to confuse him as a journalist doing "news reporting". This calibrates the critical thinking dial in my brain.
> Given that he throws a joke from time to time, does it mean that it's less reporting and more comedy?
Have you watched the show? The joke to content ratio is very high.
The President is watching this same garbage and making policy decisions based on it. Let that sink in for a moment.
In fact the wall would have been physical, rather than 'symbolic'
A wall symbolizing keeping out foreigners without actually doing anything useful to do so is pretty much the definition of symbolic.
I’m all for increased immigration and amnesty, but I’m not in support of open borders, so a compromise for increased border security sounded like good policy to me.
Despite also supporting amnesty, chain migration, and increased visa quotas I’ve been told I’m racist for wanting a secure border. Racist for not supporting border policies that create an underclass of undocumented, helpless workers.
Is that a new term for nautical piracy now that “piracy” has been stolen for copyright infringement?
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.
However, if you make it past that initial surge, the 2nd generation could provide an enormous boost to the economy as long as education was prioritized.
Compare to uncapped skilled immigration and it's a much higher risk.
> The left refused that compromise
Why was a compromised needed again? Every congressperson, R and D, when asked said they supported a permanent DACA fix. Why should Democrats be willing to compromise on something like lowering the number of legal immigrants admitted for something everyone claims they want. Why should the left compromise to fund a useless wall the President insists will be paid for by Mexico? Problem seems to be Republicans don't really want to admit they're in favor of deporting in all-but-legal-status Americans from their home land.
> Since he has twice been rebuffed on his compromises, he's going the other way. That seems reasonable to me.
Sarcasm? That's what's known as cutting off your nose to spite your face, assuming trump was sincere at all about DACA in the first place, which is highly questionable.
Any politician that compromises an inch these days will be portrayed as an immoral enemy and attacked by some vocal part of their own base.
Wish congress would have moved forward and put a bill on his desk, despite his statements he would have had to sign it or lose face.
[0] http://www.politifact.com/california/statements/2017/sep/19/...
'68 percent of Americans said they oppose "the lottery that randomly picks 50,000 people to enter the U.S. each year for greater diversity.' https://www.npr.org/2018/01/23/580037717/what-the-latest-imm...
Family based (chain migration) is more evenly split according to article.
He is pretty clear about what he wants to see, and I’m pretty sure that he sees no deal as better than a bad deal. He’d rather keep the issue in play through mid-terms, or collect some additional policy points (gun control?) that he can throw in the mix to ultimately craft a bill that achieves his core policy objectives around national defense and immigration.
I think immigration policy will be the big issue for the midterms, it will be interesting to see it all play out.
Going to have to disagree on that. At best, his policy positions can be described as tenuous... more typically, amorphous.
"Key immigration reforms" is a great way to spin additional constraints on legal family-reunification, that exact program which allowed Melania's family to join her here in this country. He's closing the doors that he and his family used to come here and amass wealth.
No question Trump represents a large segment of Americans who want to see less immigration overall, and more selective granting of visas and green cards.
The doors, so to speak, would remain decidedly open, to the tune of about a half million green cards per year. Historically average.
There is plenty to question here. Given the CA news and additional leaks regarding the campaign he ran, Trump does not in fact represent a large segment of Americans. At best, he represents a well-targeted, vocal minority.
Specifically, with his actions and his words he is representing and providing a megaphone for the worst xenophobic elements of our society [1].
>The doors, so to speak, would remain decidedly open
Speak to anyone with DACA or TPS, those doors are decidedly closed.
1. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/08/trump-d...
Oh and the “Trump Defends White Nationalists” trope? Here’s the video [1] and here’s the quote;
“You had some very bad people in the group. But you also had people, that were very fine people, on both sides.... So you know what, you’re changing history, you’re changing culture, and you had people, and I’m not talking about the neo-nazis or the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally, but you had many people in that group other than neo-nazis and white nationalists, okay, and the press has treated them absolutely unfairly.”
If you have an issue with DACA maybe talk to your congressman. Trump’s been trying to get a legal fix for DACA for months now.
As far as TPS is concerned, maybe the “T” doesn’t stand for what I think it does, but 2001-2018 seems pretty generous for the Salvadorans. Unless you’re telling me those countries are still too ravaged from natural disasters over a decade ago to return to?
But I’ll stand by the assertion that while we do have borders and we do enforce immigration law, we also provide entry for half a million immigrants a year. It seems like you’re claiming that because you can cite a specific special interest that isn’t being granted special citizenship outside the legal system that has existed for decades, therefore the doors are closed and that’s somehow xenophobic. I personally think that’s inaccurate and perhaps hyperbolic. While you’re entitled to your opinion, I think a large portion of the country will continue to have reasonable and open debate as to what levels of immigration is right for the country, and how we should select for those immigrants, without resorting to calling it xenophobic.
You should recall what the rally was about, and what "that group" was trying to accomplish. That group was opposing the removal of monument to a general that fought a treasonous war against our country over the right for humans to keep other humans enslaved. Heather Heyer, an anti-racist protester, was murdered by a member of "that group" that ran her over with a car.
>Trump’s been trying to get a legal fix for DACA for months now.
Trump has been using these children as pawns in a ploy to close doors for legal immigrants. He does not offer fixes, the conman only offers cons.
> As far as TPS is concerned, maybe the “T” doesn’t stand for what I think it does
TPS was a compromise reached with a cadre of powerful xenophobes. It in no way excused or repaired the damage done to El Salvador by the civil war promulgated by the US-backed right-wing government[1]. The people that were displaced by the war and earthquake should have been granted asylum and a path to full citizenship, instead they were left in limbo and abandoned by our leaders, on both sides of the aisle.
Democrats are in the minority though, not the majority like the Republicans had during Obama's tenure. If they want something done then they can do it.
Look at how polarized politics has gotten. It's happening right here.
We have media mega-businesses now which are feeding total garbage to people, astroturfing it so that viewers feel like they're getting information from someone they can trust, and we have a President that is getting information from the same kind of sources and is citing that when announcing policy decisions.
I don't care which "side" you're on, I think that's wrong, corrupt, and terrifying. If it were a Democrat doing it, hell, even citing NPR, I'd still be horrified.
Some of Trump's base thinks there's some kind of deep state thing going on, where there are people in government that are controlling things behind the scenes, independent of whatever administration is in office at the time. You know what? They're absolutely right, save for one little thing: the people doing the controlling aren't in government, they're in offices in shining skyscrapers, and they own the news.
And they would really appreciate it if we wouldn't talk about that, and instead just continue to argue about the stupid wall.
The media controls the conversation, and at the very top, I believe that's driven primarily by business interests — not political beliefs.
That's called negotiating in bad faith.
Who knows what Trump really wants? One day he says generous things about DACA, the next he wants to kill it. I think it depends whether he watched Fox news in the interim. Or spoke to Stephen Miller.
He did the same thing with gun legislation. Says promising things in front of the camera, but then kills anything meaningful after checking in with the NRA and/or Fox news.
I wish I was kidding.
You sit in Thailand, contracted to a client headquartered in San Francisco, whose servers you solely work on sit in Montreal, and the team you work with offices in Berlin; if you try to go legal in such a situation, you will either quickly go broke on attorney, CPA and FX fees, the taxes every jurisdiction levies because there are no reciprocity agreements for many of those inter-relationships yet, or both. The situation is ugly even in supposed "streamlined" situations like NAFTA between the US and Canada; I've seen firms with offices in both nations, employees in both nations, and employees from one are still denied entering the other to do face-to-face work with co-workers, and it's gotten to such a ridiculous level that Legal just verbally signs off on a "don't ask don't tell" policy to declare upon entry that the visit is only for a (or series of) business meetings.
It's not difficult to perform the physical expatriation act. It's difficult to navigate the logistical tail of expatriation though, because movement of labor is still far more constrained than capital movement. Time-wise, it is like 2-3 orders of magnitude. I can flip a year's worth of even high-end labor in USD to CNY under all the capital controls in both host nations in 10 days give or take and make the transfer permanent. Whereas permanently moving my labor in compliance between the same nations is on the order of thousands of days, semi-permanently (residency) moving the same labor is on the order of hundreds of days, and moving labor within 90 days involves all sorts of strings attached that capital doesn't bother with. Issues surrounding healthcare, education (if you have or intend to start a family), cultural and social fit, language, taxes, housing, transportation, forex, etc. pop up when you really dig into the expatriation process, and an amazing amount of what you put up with are purely political constructs and not intrinsic to the actual move itself. So the question becomes not "What are my best and quickest options...", but more "here is my situation and anticipated future desires in lots of pretty intimate personal detail, now what are my options?"
I used to subscribe to the Church of Globalization, but once I delved into the actual practice of expatriation and realized just how much capital movement is favored over labor movement, that was the start of the crack in that edifice, and now I want Capital Globalization rolled back to reciprocity with Labor Globalization, and then roll both forward in tandem. When it gets as easy to move around the world and vote with your feet as with your financial tokens, then I'm fully on board with progressing globalization.
The big problem in much of the modern world is that capital is free to move, but labour is not. This leads to a corporate beauty pageant, run by governments against one another to collect mobile tax revenues. This causes problems in richer nations (such as Britain and the US), which leads to lots of unusual political decisions (rather like the eponymous president at the top of this thread), while the corporations make out like bandits.
I personally believe that as the poster above, we should ensure that both labour and capital are equally mobile, as this will lead to better long-term outcomes. I make no representations as to the goodness of the short-term outcomes, however.
https://twitter.com/mattdpearce/status/980800914423406592
https://twitter.com/mattdpearce/status/980811757726810112
Essentially, if they were to chose to leave, they'd owe 40% of their base pay prorated by the remainder of their contract, as-well as the potential requirement to return some bonuses received. Vacation days are lost, and there are typically non-competes within the same region.
The conspiracy theorist in me feels that the chilling effect this would have on the independence of news anchors was intentional.
That's entirely beside the point. They freely entered into those contracts. Now that push has come to shove, they chose money and personal well-being over their integrity and beliefs. (Or maybe they were OK with the message they were ordered to read, in which case their integrity is intact.)
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 maneuver or the public following that would bring a sympathetic audience for a legal battle.
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.
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.
Headquartered in Hunt Valley, Maryland, the company is the largest television station operator in the United States by number of stations, and largest by total coverage; owning or operating a total of 193 stations across the country (233 after all currently proposed sales are approved) in over 100 markets (covering 40% of American households), many of which are located in the South and Midwest.
Those topics are likely the only ones with concrete evidence.
Those segments are, overwhelmingly, right-wing talking points.
In many markets they're the sole source of local news.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-07/sinclair-...
http://www.businessinsider.com/these-6-corporations-control-...
Would you call reporting on, say, The Mai Lai Massacre or the Kent State shootings "anti-american"? How about Monica Lewinsky or Watergate?
Questioning authority is absolutely the most appropriate task for the free press. IMO at least this part is not "anti-american".
Let's further the discussion -- take a look at http://lite.cnn.io/en -- there's about 40-50 stories there. Please pick the top five or ten and help illustrate which among those demonstrate the bias you refer to. Or if the problem is less widespread, please indicate which among the 40-50 there illustrate the bias.
See, everyone can play this game in the Postmodernist world.
Was it voting rights? Is voting rights scary? Or perhaps universal health care? Is that scary? Or a public education? Wooow that's REALLY scary!
Come on.. scare us! We liberals love a good scary story!
Or that they're pushing government to limit your rights to free speech or religion.
Where did Disney & CNN say government should limit your rights to free speech & religion?
The major media companies including CNN heavily toed the government line that religious groups do not have the right to avoid paying for child murder on religious grounds.
Government funded public universities regularly hassle, cancel, and provide insufficient security for conservative speakers. This is government funded censorship and the media has carefully avoided putting it in those terms because they support the position of censoring conservatives.
Well, the problem with that narrative is that most of the center-left is quite happy to find a comprimise. It seems like arms dealers are too, actually. It's mostly the NRA unable to disengage its PR machine from collapsing the entire narrative to "you'll take our guns" vs "total gun freedom".
So that itself is a good thing to bring up: it's impossible to disassemble with facts because it's already counterfactual.
Similar things can be said of the freedom of association and freedom of religion arguments. They're currently fixed by a narrative of constant assault that most folks freely admit is poorly supported in their daily experience, but that they're convinced (by media groups coordinated by Sinclair) are just over the horizon coming from them.
It's certainly fair to claim left wing media has bias. We should always be watchful for bias and unfairness in our media. It's just that right now, unless you believe in hidden child porn rings in pizza shops being shut down by a secret Trump task force (the Storm, a literal extension of pizzagate), potential influence from demons/lizard people in the democratic party (Alex Jones pushes this narrative), or a global Jewish coordinated conspiracy that reaches down to the level of each individual life on the planet, and that ever Muslim is part of a coordinated global conspiracy to "end whitness"... Well you get the picture. Unless you believe in the output of this machine coordinated to spread this disinformation (and I say machine because we've got people freely admitting part of it is theirs, e.g., Cambridge Analytica), facts and uncharitable readings are sufficient from the left wing media.
A centrist or even a libertarian should have no problem picking their poison in the marketplace of ideas, unless they're genuinely bought into these increasingly absurd conspiracy theories that put 9/11-truther levels of weird to shame.
>Well, the problem with that narrative is that most of the center-left is quite happy to find a comprimise. It seems like arms dealers are too, actually. It's mostly the NRA unable to disengage its PR machine from collapsing the entire narrative to "you'll take our guns" vs "total gun freedom".
You too are collapsing the narrative to "NRA is evil." The power that the NRA has is that it can mobilize countless voters who support what the NRA does. Pretending that the NRA is a rogue organization that doesn't represent a huge segment of the population is disingenuous.
>A centrist or even a libertarian should have no problem picking their poison in the marketplace of ideas, unless they're genuinely bought into these increasingly absurd conspiracy theories that put 9/11-truther levels of weird to shame.
Tell me again how Trump is a fascist and neo-Nazis are taking over the country. And further that Trump who bombed the shit out of a major Russian ally (Syria) is under the thumb of Russia because of pee-pee tape in the same breath that you make fun of Trump for being a germaphobe (part of why he eats so much fast food).
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 is disingenuous.
Quite the contrary, I think the NRA represents a rather small segment of the population. They're trying to broaden that segment with significant cash outlay and with very misleading arguments that turn things like, "Bans on modifications that allow semi-automatic weapons to achieve >2r/s sustained fire rates" into "They hate our freedom and they're coming for our guns and it's time to strike back." That's a chartiable reading of NRATV's current message.
> Tell me again how Trump is a fascist and neo-Nazis are taking over the country.
"Taking over" is certainly not the word. "Have always been here and are increasingly more exposed." Unless of course we ignore the continued defense of openly self-labeled neo-nazi groups right out of Trump's own mouth, this is a factual reading of the situation.
> is under the thumb of Russia because of pee-pee tape
Any president would fall prey to this rumor. It's hilarious. I wish Obama had a pee-pee tape scandal. It's quintessentially American.
What's I hope less so is the direct and numerous conflicts of interest that have been poorly handled by the Trump admin, the numerous (denied) allegations of campaign finance violations that were then not only proven, but plead guilty to by Trump's cohort.
Again: you're equivocating based on utterly meaningless and boring things. Sure, some leftits are dumb. For the most part, the center-left media ignores the majority of these stories after they come out (as has been pointed out in other places, Fox brings up the pee tape more over time than any other outlet). Nor have I actually ever even heard the phrase, "Trump is a germophobe" come up except as a refutation.
All this is smoke and mirrors, and an attempt to deflect from the truly frightening admissions that folk who ran the Trump campaign's media have made. They're literally suggesting the use of human trafficking to run a sex entrapment extortion game on politicans and you're like, "Well the libs believe in a peepee tape." I'm sure some libs believe in UFOs too, but this doesn't dismiss or excuse the facts at hand.
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]
>"Have always been here and are increasingly more exposed." Unless of course we ignore the continued defense of openly self-labeled neo-nazi groups right out of Trump's own mouth, this is a factual reading of the situation.
Yep, they've always been there and while there's fluctuations the general trend is there are fewer and fewer of them. The largest neo-Nazi gathering in ages was a year or two ago and they managed to get a few hundred people to show up. The outsized media attention on these crazy people is to attempt to associate them with the approximate half of the country which happens to vote Republican. In contrast you can look at the media coverage of Antifa and other far left groups that have set fires and killed people over the last few years. It's very different and it's easy to understand why.
It's also important to look at the big picture here. Rather than condemning the alt-right he said there were "good people" on both sides of a rally where someone was killed and one of those sides was the alt-right. But do you know what that allowed him to do? 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.
>All this is smoke and mirrors, and an attempt to deflect from the truly frightening admissions that folk who ran the Trump campaign's media have made. They're literally suggesting the use of human trafficking to run a sex entrapment extortion game on politicans and you're like, "Well the libs believe in a peepee tape." I'm sure some libs believe in UFOs too, but this doesn't dismiss or excuse the facts at hand.
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.
[0]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/top-house-republica...
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.
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.
I'm uninterested in continuing with you in any capacity. Thank you for your time, but we won't speak again while you use this name. Goodbye.
>It's easy if you just blindly accept the axioms of one of the groups. You accept the axioms of left wingers, so it doesn't seem scary to you. I'm not a right winger but they could just as easily say: murdering millions of unborn children, robbing us of our right to defend ourselves, denying the right to freedom of association, infringing on our freedom of speech, infringing on our freedom of religion, etc. Those are all pretty scary.
The whole point of the discussion is to point out that the world looks differently if you accept different axioms. I'm sorry if it bothered you that I wasn't willing to debate the merits of your views vs the views of the imaginary third party I described, but I think my intentions were clear here.
Disney is now left wing. Yep.
If you look globally, we don't have a Right/Left in the USA, we have an EXTREME right in power and a moderate left in minority. The GOP is the only party in the world whose stance is that climate change is a hoax. We withdrew from the Paris accord while Syria and North Korea have joined it. That is despicably anti-scientific. If you compare Obama's middle of the road left-ism to Trump's extreme right stances, its quite shocking. There can be no false equivalence between the R and L in this country, one is evidently far more extreme.
I don't care so much about the ideological positions. What I care about is the constant, systemic undermining of science.
Take your comment, for instance. You throw about the notion of 'scientific truth', as if this is even a thing. Science does not deal in truth. Truth is for the priests and the philosophers. This 'Temple of Science' American Leftists have attempted to create, where all beliefs of the American Left (like climate change, organic food, socialism, tabula rasa, and Boasian anthropology) are enshrined as 'Science', unassailable to criticism (criticizing them means you are 'not educated' or 'don't understand science') regardless the flimsiness of the papers published to support those positions, makes science a partisan field.
The American Right has been trained to hate and distrust science. They hate it. They think scientists are all frauds. Why? Because 'scientists', they are told, again and again, support all these Leftist ideological bents that are not science, and that those on the Right know, at some level, are not science.
Anthropogenic global warming, as an example, is utter nonsense. Without NOAA, NASA, and GHCN doing heavy manipulation of the raw data before the thousands of scientists who work on it ever see that data, you don't have climate change.[1] Without concealing historical sea ice data, these agencies don't have anything abnormal to report on that front.[2]
Right now, you have a situation in America where a bunch of zealots have claimed science as their own, to push their decidedly non-scientific, partisan ideologies... and the other bunch of zealots on the other side of the aisle have disclaimed science as full of shills and charlatans hoaxing the public for tax dollars.
I don't know if you actually care about science. I suspect you don't - otherwise you wouldn't be using 'scientific truth' (no such thing) as a shield for your ideology.
But I do, and frankly, when I see one side of the most powerful nation on Earth using science as its meat shield and the other side concomitantly coming to view science with hostility and suspicion, when science used to be an apolitical source of wonderment for people from all ideological backgrounds in that same country half a century ago, I am deeply afraid for the future of real scientific investigation.
[1] https://realclimatescience.com/100-of-us-warming-is-due-to-n...
[2] https://realclimatescience.com/government-arctic-sea-ice-fra...
1 - https://ei.marketwatch.com/Multimedia/2016/12/15/Photos/NS/M...
- a single corporation owns a fuckton of those local stations
- the same corporation writes a script to broadcast on every station
- media hosts or journalists can't say "no". Do the job or lose your job. They're not free to report news without bias
- you don't know everything about everything, so you're inclined to trust the news because they're supposed to be neutral and report facts
- ultimately you internalize a biased opinion that was poured down onto you by the will of a handful of shareholders
Why can't you see the problem?
There used to be actual regulations on the books that prevented this type of consolidation from happening. Then, sometime circa. the 1980's, those laws were tossed out, leading to today where one single corporate parent controls nearly 200 local broadcasters in a very direct way.
Standard advice is check multiple sources. This pretends to be "multiple sources" when really it's just one.
Sinclair is effectively and echo chamber on TV. Web standards, don't like it, navigate else where. TV Standards, change the channel, get the same stuff. See how that is much more dangerous?
I know I sound cynical, but does any thinking person actually believe that? That strikes me as incredibly naive.
You're taking this out of context. You come to know your local news reporters, learn their biases, and they build some kind of trust with them. You might even see them at events or having a meal with their family and have a personal relationship with them. As stated a few times in this thread, Sinclair bought this trust & is violating it.
they're supposed to be neutral and report facts
It's not naive to think this. News shows and publications generally have a clear divider between "reporting" and {"opinion"|"editorial"|"analysis"}. I'd also like to think most people can tell the difference, regardless, between and opinion, "immigrants are good for the country" and declarative statements, "Obama deported more illegal immigrants than any President before him".
Now, if the guy behind the desk on your 11 O'Clock news incorrectly reports that the the head of the local hospital personally leads a "death panel" that decides if your grandmother gets to live, you can easily march down there and sort it out yourself, hell you might even know the head of that hospital and know right off that this is factually false. Soon, you won't trust this lie peddling news outlet again, and they'll have to make some sort of change.
Of course, there are organizations out there that lie when making declarative statements, like the "death panel" example above, but those are generally on the national/Internet level, because someone in Jacksonville, FL can't reasonably verify a story about what's happening across the country or in DC like they can with a story about the Jaguars, so there's always some shadow of doubt...
The key here truly lies in buying up local news outlets.
It betrays that their indignation isn't so much over dangers to democracy as it is their loosening grip on the ability to frame the discussion of any given day.
You can't say Sinclair is "combating the national news broadcasters"; they themselves are a national news broadcaster. They just happen to like branding themselves with local faces.
Audience numbers for local TV news (not to mention national TV news) is shrinking across the U.S. Younger people in particular will not sit down to watch a 30 minute talking-heads newscast stuffed to the gills with car, telecom, and insurance ads.
See: https://www.poynter.org/news/new-pew-study-says-local-tv-new...
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 Reddit I have read that from now until the elections this fall there will be 4 million young people turning old enough to vote (sounds about right, given ~4M births per year in the US). That's a massive block of voters and most of them will either vote Democrat or some of the fringe parties.
The ones that vote will probably tend to vote as you indicate.
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.
Suppose I am a political bad actor and want o manipulate an election. I study precinct records (and have a small army of motivated assistants) and identify key places where a small change can make a big difference. Of course, my opponents have poll watchers out looking for such shenanigans, and I suspect they may try to disrupt my shenanigans by rallying people to protest them. So I just implement shenanigans at more locations than I need, and ideally im places that are easy for my opponents to get to but where I don't actually have any hope of affecting the outcome. With luck they'll declare victory on my false target while never noticing what's going on at my real one.
The basic weakness of swarm tactics is that whoever has the best information operation can easily divide and conquer over a short timeframe.
So yeah people are more motivated and more aware than in previous elections, which is definitely a good thing, but stay alive to the fact that a political opponent is equally capable of iteration and has motivated activists of their own.
Young people famously just don't consistently get out to the polls in the way that much older people do. There might be a day when TV news just doesn't matter (it's certainly mattered little to me since sometime in the 90s), but it might take until the generation that grew up with the rise of the internet is approaching retirement.
Last week, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer published a copy of the speech and reported that employees at a local news station there, KOMO, were unhappy about the script. CNN reported on it on March 7 and said Scott Livingston, the senior vice president of news for Sinclair, had read almost the exact same speech for a segment that was distributed to outlets a year ago.