PBS NewsHour
1 HN recommender · recommended in 4 months, 2020–2026
4:48 · 781K views · Apr 3, 2018
A PBS NewsHour report on a viral compilation of local TV anchors reading identical scripts, which raised concerns about Sinclair Broadcasting mixing partisan opinion into local news. It also covers Sinclair's reach and its bid to grow larger.
Cited as a short, concrete example of consolidated media ownership pushing coordinated messaging through local news.
4 comments from Hacker News
I could not agree more with this approach. The Economist is excellent, and because they are a weekly publication, their reporting can be more thoughtful and detached from the outrage du jour. They also have excellent podcasts: the daily Intelligence and, for those interested in US politics, the weekly "Checks and Balance". Supporting local news has become so much more important here in the U.S., as more and more independent local newspapers are shutting down, even in medium-sized metro areas. In addition, a lot of "Local" TV stations are owned by, and puppets of, corporations with political agendas like Sinclair[1]. From the linked article: > About 39% of Americans are within range of a Sinclair-owned TV outlet, most of them unwittingly, because local TV stations typically use the logos of national networks with which they are affiliated, like NBC, CBS and Fox [...] Last year 37% of Americans got their news from local television, according to the Pew Research Centre, compared with 28% who got news from cable networks [...] EDIT adding a link to 2018 reporting on Sinclair from PBS: this video (less than 5 minutes) [1] [LINK]
>And, as usual, "risk/threat to democracy" is used to mean "support for parties I don't like" It can also mean highly influential support for ideologies I don't like - like fascism, authoritarianism and ultranationalism. > many of those complaining now were quite happy to endorse the right of private companies to promote/suppress speech at will A few years ago, bog-standard content moderation was limiting the reach of enormously+reasonably unpopular ideologies like fascism, authoritarianism and ultranationalism. Groups who were profoundly unhappy with these limits would bullhorn complaints of intentional suppression and censorship. With the release of the Twitter Files (which exposed content moderation), it became clear that many folks were unable to differentiate between actual, long-established content moderation methods and actual directed suppression and censorship.¹ This deep misinterpretation seemed to flow from the ignorance of what content moderation looks like at scale. That core misunderstanding was often amplified and made worse when historically-moderated individuals filled in that vacuum with their long standing preconceptions. The upshot are today's efforts to raise the visibility of far-right viewpoints thru coordinated crafted messaging² and thru actual suppression of non-right viewpoints thru new controls over platforms and thru often unaccountable misuse of governmental powers. Our present conditions seem to well reflect and align with the article author's a
And there's the rub. What is "quality investigative reporting" in an objective sense, when most of the MSM outlets are owned by oligarchs, or simply "toe the line"? In theory I would gladly support the theory of "quality investigative reporting", but the reality is a propagandist machine where opinion pieces replaces actual unbiased, adjective-free objective news. Some examples of "oligarch news": this video [LINK] As a former developer who worked closely on Thomson Reuters News feed (in the 00's), I've seen how there is almost zero fact checking for the information that appears on news feeds. Instead, news outlets trust the 'upstream' feeds and then quote the reports verbatim. To be fair, there are those who are really awesome at doing research and releasing information that are part of the MSM. Unfortunately, there are plenty others who are not affiliated with MSM news outlets and hence aren't regarded as "reporters" per-se. These latter ones are regularly attacked via "fact checking" websites as a way to discredit them. An article on the latter is here: [LINK] In short, there's a bunch of information out there and without each and every news report clearly citing original sources, then MSM or not, it must be regarded as suspect. So for "quality investigative reporting", the actual reports must rigorously cite objective sources.
Public radio and local broadcasting has been gobbled up by right-wing sources, including Sinclair Watch this clip: this video