Portside

With the presidential contest in full swing, the Sinclair Broadcast Group appears to be ramping up its right-wing propaganda again.

While millions of Americans are subjected to the TV network’s electioneering, few know it. That’s because, like a chameleon, Sinclair blends into the woodwork.

Turn on your local news and you may well be watching a Sinclair station, even though it appears on your screen under the imprimatur of a major network like CBS, NBC or Fox.

Here in the DC area, I occasionally tune into the local ABC affiliate, WJLA. Its newscasters are personable, and I like the weather forecasts. But then I remember that WJLA is owned by Sinclair.

I know this only because I’m a weirdo who follows Sinclair, not because there’s any obvious on-air sign the network owns WJLA—there isn’t. That’s why Sinclair’s propaganda is so hard to detect.

Hijacking trust

A video collage of dozens of Sinclair anchors reading a script warning that “some members of the media use their platforms to push their own personal bias and agenda.”

While trust in the media has cratered in recent years, there’s a notable exception. “Seventy-six percent of Americans say that they still trust their local news stations—more than the percentage professing to trust their family or friends,” the New Yorker (10/15/18) reported.

Smartly, Sinclair leaves its affiliates alone long enough for them to develop a rapport with their audience. “In a way, the fact that it looks normal most of the time is part of the problem,” said Margaret Sullivan (CJR, 4/11/18), former public editor of the New York Times. “What Sinclair is cynically doing is trading on the trust that develops among local news people and their local audience.”

By hijacking this trusting relationship, Sinclair is able to sneak its propaganda into millions of American homes, including in presidential swing states where Sinclair owns more stations than any other network.

Sinclair does this by requiring its affiliates to air the right-wing stories it sends them. Because these segments are introduced or delivered by trusted local hosts, they gain credibility.

Mostly Sinclair’s sleight of hand goes undetected. But in 2018, the network pushed its luck by requiring anchors at stations across the country to read from the same Trump-like anti-media script. A video compilation of dozens if not hundreds of Sinclair anchors voicing the same “Orwellian” commentary went viral.

Despite the occasional brush up, Sinclair carries on largely under-the-radar, quietly gobbling up stations, mainly in cheaper markets. “We’re forever expanding—like the universe,” said longtime leader David Smith, who’s turned Sinclair into the country’s second-largest TV network. (See FAIR.org, 5/13/24.)

An anchor jumps ship

Popular Information (7/23/24) reported that Sinclair anchor Eugene Ramirez quit in part over a requirement that he air at least three stories from the network’s “Rapid Response Team” nightly. “The RRT has produced 147 stories this year that portray Democrats in a negative light,” Popular Information found, “and just seven stories that portray Democrats positively.”

Of the 294 TV stations that Sinclair owns or operates, at least 70 of them air Sinclair’s in-house national evening news broadcast. For a year and a half, this broadcast was anchored by Eugene Ramirez, but he resigned in January, and it’s not hard to see why.

Each night Ramirez was given a list of four stories produced out of Sinclair’s Maryland’s headquarters. From these, Ramirez had to select at least three to air. Often these stories were little more than writeups of press releases from right-wing politicians and groups, as Judd Legum and Rebecca Crosby report at Popular Information (7/23/24). One recent headline read, “Trump PAC Launches New Ad Hitting Democrats on Border: ‘Joe Biden Does Nothing.’”

Sinclair frequently booked far-right guests to appear on Ramirez’s broadcast, and he was “instructed not to interrupt them,” according to Popular Information. “Many of Sinclair‘s affiliates were not in big cities,” Ramirez was told, “and the content of the broadcast had to reflect the sensitivities of those viewers.” Progressive guests rarely if ever appeared.

Legum and Crosby also found that Sinclair requires around 200 of its affiliates to air its “Question of the Day,” which has included gems like, “Do you think former House Speaker Pelosi deserves some of the blame for January 6 riot?” But other questions are less obviously biased.

It’s one thing when a blowhard on Fox News asks, “Are you concerned violent criminals are crossing the border?” But it’s quite another when the same question is asked by a familiar and trusted local anchor.

The power of Sinclair is that questions like these are being posed not just by one trusted anchor, but by a small army of them in communities across the country every day. Elections are won and lost on less.

Pete Tucker is a journalist based in DC. He writes at petetucker.substack.com.

FAIR, the national media watch group, has been offering well-documented criticism of media bias and censorship since 1986. We work to invigorate the First Amendment by advocating for greater diversity in the press and by scrutinizing media practices that marginalize public interest, minority and dissenting viewpoints. As an anti-censorship organization, we expose neglected news stories and defend working journalists when they are muzzled. As a progressive group, FAIR believes that structural reform is ultimately needed to break up the dominant media conglomerates, establish independent public broadcasting and promote strong non-profit sources of information.