[Mb-civic] Editorial: The Sinclair Propaganda Machine

Thu Dec 16 18:42:09 PST 2004

Editorial: The Sinclair Propaganda Machine

By Evan Derkacz, AlterNet
 Posted on December 14, 2004, Printed on December 16, 2004
 http://www.alternet.org/story/20743/

Set aside "values" and voter fraud for a moment and just take a look at
Sinclair Broadcasting Group. If the nation's largest owner of TV stations
didn't actually help reelect George W. Bush it wasn't for lack of effort.
Their message to America now: Our man won, deregulation will continue and
we've only just begun ... to expand.

First a recap, then a fresh glimpse inside Sinclair. Back in April, Sinclair
ordered its ABC affiliates not to air an episode of Nightline during which
host Ted Koppel planned to simply read the names of the fallen soldiers 
around 700 at the time. When pressed to explain this unprecedented move,
denounced sharply by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) among others, Sinclair's CEO,
David Smith, responded: "ABC is disguising political statements as news
content."

In early October, less than a month before "the most important election of
our lives," Sinclair brazenly ordered its 62 TV stations (including several
in the major swing states of Ohio and Florida) to preempt regular
programming to air, just days before the election, a documentary attacking
John Kerry.

Not only was the documentary, "Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal,"
created by a Bush family friend, but it was filled with demonstrable lies.

Yet Sinclair's VP, lobbyist and one of the nation's most high-profile
conservative commentators, Mark Hyman, responded (reportedly with a straight
face): "This is a powerful story... The networks are acting like Holocaust
deniers and pretending [the POWs] don't exist."

Former FCC chairman Reed Hundt, not quite your average flaming liberal, was
flabbergasted: "Ordering stations to carry propaganda? It's absolutely off
the charts." Even Sinclair's own Washington bureau chief, Jon Leiberman,
called it "biased political propaganda, with clear intentions to sway this
election." He was promptly fired.

Those incidents have been publicized. What goes on in Sinclair's daily
operations, however, is something many of us know little about.

"More Aggressive Than Fox"

For starters, a single studio at Sinclair's home office in suburban
Maryland, known as "NewsCentral," creates news segments which are then mixed
with live broadcasting at the 62 stations to create the "illusion of local
news," as Paul Schmelzer put it in an AlterNet article from late October. He
went on: "In some cases, personnel at the local station have to coach on-air
personalities at Sinclair central casting on tough regional pronunciation of
town names."

The Sinclair story reads like a cautionary tale about media consolidation.
The centralized and hierarchical structure allows a tiny editorial team in
Maryland to fundamentally control the news that reaches nearly 25 percent of
the American audience. The product, says media critic Jay Rosen, is "more
aggressive than Fox News Channel."

Or, straight from the horse's mouth, ex-Washington bureau chief Lieberman:
"(N)ewsroom leaders (at the encouragement of Hyman) started suggesting
pro-administration story ideas. They made sure that every political story
had a comment from the Bush administration... But I know in my heart what
they're doing is wrong. It's not fair and balanced ... It's pure propaganda,
and they're trying to shoehorn what should be a format for editorials or
commentary into news,"

It's enough to make Rupert Murdoch blush.

Which brings us to Sinclair's pride and joy, a nightly editorial broadcast
called "The Point," produced and delivered by none other than Sinclair V.P.
and lobbyist, Mark Hyman. Ironically, these one-minute segments are a
shameless attempt, as Sinclair's CEO so eloquently said of Nightline, at
"disguising political statements as news content."

Media Matters for America, a New York-based not-for-profit progressive
research center, analyzed all segments of "The Point" between Nov. 2 and
Dec. 1, and concluded this: "'The Point' contains a steady stream of
one-sided anti-progressive and pro-Bush rhetoric that is broadcast without a
progressive counterpoint."

Samples from "The Point" bear an uncanny resemblance to Republican talking
points:

    €     On Oct. 25, Hyman claimed that Kerry earned the Silver Star for
killing a "wounded man as he retreated from battle." Dick Cheney's vaunted
factcheck.org had already debunked that charge.

    €     On Oct. 26, just a week before the election, Hyman echoed the
Swift Boat liars' Kerry smear: "13 American POWs... rebutted Kerry's claims
that his 1971 testimony accusing American servicemen of 'war crimes' ...
harmed no one." Hyman also referred to the POWs' claim in "Stolen Honor"
that Kerry's actions worsened the POWs' treatment: "[T]hey say ... Kerry's
testimony was used by their Communist captors."

    €     On Nov. 15, Hyman claimed that the Democratic Party is in "the
clutches of the Angry Left" and that "Mainstream America will not vote for a
party run by Hollywood liberals, greedy trial lawyers and clueless
academia."

    €     On Nov. 18, Hyman claimed: "Religion, particularly Christianity,
has been under attack by the left for several years. And the presidential
election results have already led to increased attacks."

But here's the most precious:

    €     Complaining of "liberal media bias," Hyman said: "Observing the
national news networks report on this year's presidential race is like
watching a set of referees tackling the visiting team in a football game.
They've definitely chosen sides."

But none of this should come as a shock from a corporation in which the
owners  David D. Smith and his three brothers  and their executives made
97 percent of their political donations during the 2004 election cycle to
Bush and the Republicans. The brothers alone have given $121,000 to the
Republican Party since 1999, and each of them contributed the maximum $2,000
to the 2004 Bush campaign.

Yet "Sinclair is barely profitable and laden with debt," says USA Today. So
why would successful businessmen throw so much money at it? Surely
right-wing ideology only goes so far?

In fact, Sinclair believes its right wing ideology will pay dividends.

Political Interests v. Shareholder Value

Bill Carter, writing in The New York Times, cited what's known as "the
Sinclair payback provision." Sinclair put stockholders at risk in its
attempt to become a "king maker." The idea was to support Bush and his
crusade to further deregulate media consolidation. After all, Sinclair
already engages in questionable practices like having the CEO's mother buy a
station in a market where Sinclair already owns the legal maximum of one.
And Kerry had promised to halt deregulation.

So now that Bush is re-elected, what would stop Sinclair from continuing its
pro-Bush campaign, a la Fox News? The good news is, Sinclair is vulnerable.
Following it's plan to air the anti-Kerry "attack-umentary," progressive
groups went into overdrive, complete with blogs like DailyKos and Democratic
Underground, listing some of Sinclair's advertisers. Then came a website,
Boycottsbg.com, with a complete list of advertisers and their contact info.
Before long, according to Media Matters, over 150,000 phone calls had been
made prompting several sponsors to pull their ads. Within a week the
corporation's stock dropped 10 percent resulting in a $60 million loss in
value.

As the threat of shareholder lawsuits loomed, Media Matters Senior Fellow
David S. Bennahum commented: "Sinclair's decision to air 'Stolen Honor:
Wounds That Never Heal' places partisan political interests ahead of
shareholder value by jeopardizing the renewal of FCC licenses, stimulating
grassroots advertiser boycotts and triggering potential investigations into
the company's misuse of its licenses to use the public airwaves."

Although it portrayed itself as an embattled casualty of attempts to
suppress free speech in an on-air editorial, Sinclair was ultimately forced
to air a far more balanced program that included only snippets of "Stolen
Honor," as well as bits of the pro-Kerry "Going Upriver."

With the reelection of George W. Bush, however, Sinclair is emboldened. The
steady stream of one-sided editorials signal that rather than give up, the
media giant is redoubling its efforts  and so are its critics. FCC
commissioner Michael Copps noted, with remarkable foresight, in a 2001
decision to fine Sinclair for willfully exceeding the commission's
one-TV-station-per-market limit: "Sinclair has crossed the line into
behavior that the majority has found to violate the commission's rules. In
assessing a fine on Sinclair for this violation, the majority purports to
stop the expansion of Sinclair's forays... but in fact it merely points out
that lines have been crossed, while allowing Sinclair to run over those
lines and to continue its multiple ownership strategy."

Now, a new coalition called Sinclair Action has emerged with a mission to
"Protest Sinclair Bias and Misuse of Public Airwaves." AlterNet is a
founding member of the group, which includes: Media Matters for America,
Outfoxed creator Robert Greenwald, MoveOn.org, MediaChannel.org, Free Press,
Working Assets, and the Institute for America's Future.

At 10:30 A.M. (EST) today, three things will happen. First, the coalition
will send a letter to Sinclair's CEO, David D. Smith, urging him to adhere
to traditional broadcasting standards: "We believe that you are falling
short of your own standards  standards that news broadcasters should
certainly uphold... The fairest way to remedy this situation is for Sinclair
to provide a meaningful opportunity for those with an opposing point of view
to respond to editions of the 'The Point.'"

A second letter will be sent to major sponsors of the station making them
aware of Sinclair's inability to meet traditional broadcasting standards and
asking that they work with the members of Sinclair Action to urge Sinclair
to balance its perspective.

Finally, David Brock of Media Matters, Timothy Karr of MediaChannel.org and
Robert Greenwald will hold a press conference to announce the launch of a
nationwide campaign aimed at drawing attention to the conservative slant in
Sinclair Broadcasting's "The Point" because, as Sinclair has said, "We do
not believe political statements should be disguised as news content."

We couldn't have said it better ourselves.

An analysis of Sinclair's "The Point" is available at SinclairAction.com,
along with video clips of "The Point," a discussion forum for Americans to
share their views on the subject, and a mechanism to track and contact
advertisers appearing on Sinclair's news broadcasts.