Sinclair it's okay, you can admit it.

[A Black Falcon]

We have a Sinclair station here in southern Maine. Two, specifically, the local CBS and Fox stations. The more notable of the two is CBS, aka WGME 13. And their current ownership situation, that is being owned by Sinclair, is a really sad situation, because that has always been my favorite of the local news stations. Now, there are effectively three local news broadcasts here, on NBC, CBS (/ Fox, as they also do an hour of news on that channel with the same people), and ABC. And since 1989, the ratings situation has been the same -- the three go in the order I listed, with NBC most popular, CBS not too far behind, and ABC in last. Personally though, partially because for a few years in the mid '90s the only TV stations we got were PBS and CBS and just because I liked their newspeople better, in the rare occasions I watch local news, I've always preferred CBS. They've had the same people for a long time too -- their main newscaster, Kim Block, has been with the station since the early '80s, well before Sinclair bought the station. Their newscasters are good and have been there for a long time. It's a good broadcast... except for the required right-wing segments Sinclair forces them to air, including Mark Harmon's, etc. I remember them always playing those before ad breaks and not referencing them in the actual newscast, though, so it was sort of partitioned off... (so no "and now, the Terrorism Alert Desk" or what have you) though it has been some time since I watched TV news much, so I'm not sure if it is still like that.

This latest thing though, with all of Sinclair's stations having to all record that message about how "dangerous for our democracy" fake news -- and by this Sinclair obviously means liberal news -- is, is worse than any of that other stuff because it's the local news hosts saying this stuff, people you might trust. Apparently a lot of Sinclair stations are much less successful than ours is here, in ratings and local popularity and trust, so maybe in other places it wouldn't be quite as meaningful, but regardless it's really nasty stuff. Sure, this message on its own isn't the worst as they aren't saying "the Democrats are terrible" or something, but if Sinclair keeps pushing on this front it'll get bad. And even this is pretty bad; it wasn't in the Deadspin video, but I looked it up and yup, there is a video of Kim Block and Gregg Laugerquist saying that same exact text, modified slightly for the two speakers. They also mention both channels in the video so it's for both stations at once. It's pretty sad, and awful, that Sinclair is forcing quality journalists to damage their reputations by making these mandatory videos!

But really, right now what can you do? Ajit Pai of the FCC is very close to Sinclair, and Trump's a fan because they like him, so right now there isn't much of a recourse except for trying to publicly shame them as Deadspin has. I really hope that somehow the pressure works, however unlikely that is, because Sinclair needs to be stopped.