Editorial: The Sinclair Propaganda Machine

By Evan Derkacz, AlterNet. Posted December 14, 2004.

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."

Evan Derkacz is a New York-based writer and contributor to AlterNet.

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