Sinclair Broadcast Is Forcing Local News Anchors to Parrot Trump and Attack the Media

While Donald Trump spends so much time lying about the national press, it's easy to forget that there's also a longer-term conservative assault against local news stations. Sinclair Broadcast Group, which now owns more than 200 stations across the country, has been obligating anchors to run news segments and opinions pieces designed to push far-right agendas. These segments are presented alongside real news (often forcing stations to cut local reporting), usually with no indication to viewers that what they're seeing wasn't produced by the station. The goal is to force propaganda on audiences that are choosing to not watch Fox News.

But Sinclair has gotten even bolder now that they acquired Tribune Media. So instead of just running stories that overblow the terrorist threats, they're now sending scripts to news stations and requiring anchors to attack "fake news" and mimic Donald Trump. How shameless and overt is this whole deal? Well, just check out this chorus, helpfully compiled by Deadspin:

What makes this more distressing is that Ajit Pai, the head of the FCC under Trump, has used a loophole to allow Sinclair to reach 72 percent of U.S. homes, up from the Congressionally-mandated cap of 39 percent. So this anti-news propaganda is beaming into three quarters of the country thanks to the guy who thinks you're too stupid to know what net neutrality is.