Sinclair's Conservative Slant
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The New York Times has finally gotten around to covering the story that FTVLive has been telling you for years.
The Times came out with a story about Sinclair's conservative leanings and how they are mandated to run in their station's newscasts.
The Times writes, they are called “must-runs,” and they arrive every day at television stations owned by the Sinclair Broadcast Group — short video segments that are centrally produced by the company. Station managers around the country are directed to work them into the broadcast over a period of 24 or 48 hours.
Since November 2015, Sinclair has ordered its stations to run a daily segment from a “Terrorism Alert Desk” with updates on terrorism-related news around the world. During the election campaign last year, it sent out a package that suggested in part that voters should not support Hillary Clinton because the Democratic Party was historically pro-slavery. More recently, Sinclair asked stations to run a short segment in which Scott Livingston, the company’s vice president for news, accused the national news media of publishing “fake news stories.”
Livingston rebuffed suggestions that Sinclair pushed right-leaning views. “We work very hard to be objective and fair and be in the middle,” he said. “I think maybe some other news organizations may be to the left of center, and we work very hard to be in the center.”
He said multiple times that local news was “at the heart of Sinclair” and that the company was committed to its communities.
Many staffers at KOMO in Seattle think Livingston is "talking out of his ass" saying that the company does not lean hard right.
Many staffers at KOMO in Seattle have spoken up at how the company's must run stories are bad for their overall news product. The Times says that the journalists at KOMO described small acts of rebellion, like airing the must run segments at times of low viewership or immediately before or after commercial breaks so they blend in with paid spots.
They all spoke on condition of anonymity to the Times, citing fear of reprisal from the company.
Sinclair is a company that will launch investigations into leaks from inside. They will scour through employee's emails and phone records to try and find out how a story was leaked to FTVLive or another outlet.
Sinclair will also take actions to try and silence critics. A media company that tries to silence the media? And sadly, they see nothing wrong with that.
