Sinclair Tries to Deny Deal with The Donald.....But
/Sinclair spent much of yesterday trying to deny that they had any deal with Donald Trump during the Presidential campaign.
On Friday, Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner told people that they had cut a deal with Sinclair to give Trump more and favorable coverage during the campaign.
Yesterday, Sinclair spent the day saying it wasn't true.
But, people inside Sinclair tell FTVLIve that it was true. A Producer at a Sinclair station tells FTVLIve that he ran a story in his show that negative to Trump, after the show he was approached by his Executive Producer. "The EP told me that they were going to get in so much trouble because the company told the stations our Trump coverage needs to be nicer towards Trump," the Producer said.
Sinclair did offer Hillary Clinton a chance to speak to them and her campaign declined.
“We offered both major presidential candidates the same opportunities to be interviewed by our local anchors on a regular basis. There was no ‘deal’ on the tone, tenor, or subject of the interviews,” said Scott Livingston, the group’s VP of news. “We did not offer favorable or preferential treatment to either candidate, nor did we ever waiver from our commitment to provide rigorous, thoughtful, and thorough coverage to the millions who rely on local television.”
But, let's look at an interview that was done by a Sinclair station with Trump. I think anyone would agree that none of the questions asked were "tough" and certainly appeared to be scripted. Despite what Trump said, the Reporter never followed up and just dove to his script for the next softball question.
Seriously, it was like these questions came straight from Trump himself.
Sinclair is now trying for full damage control after a Trump family member and close advisor stepped forward and said they made a deal with Sinclair.
Why would they say it, if it wasn't true? Where was any gain in that?
Also, let's look at commentaries done by Sinclair's Vice President for Corporate Relations, Mark Hyman.
Hyman's "Behind the Headlines" aired across Sinclair stations and they were very anti-Hillary Clinton very often.
Hyman took on the Clinton Foundation, the email scandal, but never seemed to say a negative word about Trump. Nothing on Trump's admission that he likes to grope women or his lie that he would release his taxes.
Now if you were the Clinton campaign and you had a Vice President at Sinclair attacking you, while saying nothing negative about your opponent...why would agree to talk to such a one sided operation?
Sinclair can claim that they had no deal with Trump and some people might actually buy that. But, a number of people that work inside Sinclair stations do not.
And if the people that work there aren't buying it....why should we?
