In my eyes, this is a clear set/spike play. A huge corporation, enabled by their corrupt allies in the FCC, buy up hundreds of "local" stations. They then use the local cred/reputation of these stations to suggest that fake news is rampant on other sources (not controlled by Sinclair). They then tilt the dialogue nation-wide. Meanwhile, the average citizen is unaware that their trusted local anchor is bought/sold, they lack education and resources to educate themselves, and they are pushed further towards whatever dialogue the Sinclair executives are paid to push them towards.
Does anyone from either side of the aisle consider a national corporation owning local stations and forcing scripts down their throat a good thing for the marketplace of ideas?
Ajit Pai has been rolling back FCC regulations preventing Sinclair from massively expanding its media empire. In exchange, with Pai acting as a go-between for Trump and Sinclair, Sinclair promised Trump that he'd get better media coverage. [1]
>Does anyone from either side of the aisle consider a national corporation owning local stations and forcing scripts down their throat a good thing for the marketplace of ideas?
Is this like there being only 1 Facebook, 1 Google, and 1 Twitter, all of which have recently begun to "fact check" the content users put on their services?
I think it's important to have a broad dissemination of information about these kinds of things, but if all that is happening here is a targeted freakout because John Oliver did a story, then no thanks.
The only reason this is getting so much press is because it was favorable to Trump. If we look at left leaning abuses of "news", it gets buried in downvotes and derided as "both sides".
If you really want to combat the problem, you need to attack the root of the problem - for-profit 'news' organizations.
There should be regulations around ownership and foreign funding of anything that labels itself "news" or "journalism".
No for-profit news organizations? That don't take money in exchange for delivering consumers eyeballs to advertisers I presume?
I hope then that you subscribe to your public broadcasting stations (read: fund PBS and NPR news reporting--are you OK with that?) and have told your representatives to fund those organizations.
If not, then you're looking for something that cannot be achieved and will forever be moving the goalposts. Media in the US or anywhere else, even when it is best, has never been un-biased. But it has been more honest and fair.
How is that any different from major news organizations like CNN with a national reach clearly pushing biased anti-Trump news constantly?
It's funny: Trump attacks CNN for being fake, biased news, then CNN responds by focusing all of their negative reporting on Trump, becoming exactly what Trump says they are. People would have had much more respect for CNN if they had stuck to the middle path in the face of Trump's insults.
We should not turn a blind eye towards some instances of bias in media simply because they reinforce our own values and beliefs.
> It's funny: Trump attacks CNN for being fake, biased news, then CNN responds by focusing all of their negative reporting on Trump, becoming exactly what Trump says they are.
CNN reporting negatively on Trump doesn't make them "fake". He's a bad president and a bad leader; reporting on that means you're telling the truth. Fake mean lying, not reporting truth you don't want to hear.
Have you read their editorials? They're so biased and poorly written that I can no longer regard CNN as a good news source.
It's a case of "two wrongs don't make a right." Lowering reporting standards because the other side lowered reporting standards means we have no good news.
Not being able to trust the media (both CNN and Faux news) is a bigger problem than electing a lousy president.
That's not derailing, you are trying to split hairs to stifle discussion. Global media is pretty clearly biased against the current administration. It seems that Sinclair is the asymmetrical response. Discussing them in the larger context of the US news is completely valid.
It's hilarious. Just like Facebook privacy issues only blew up when it might have benefited Trump, but it was fine when Obama used that data (on a much larger scale), it's funny that NYT is suddenly paying attention to this coordinated reporting campaign when they and the national TV media parrot Media Matters all day, every day. It's easy to find a dozen examples of national TV talking heads all using the same phrases and vocabulary to report on some pro-left or anti-right issue.
The data that the Obama campaign used, and the one that the Trump campaign may have used (it is clear they had it, unclear that they used it) were very different both in collection and in scope. The Obama campaign asked supporters which of their FaceBook contacts they thought were likely to be receptive to messages from the team, and only collected the FaceBook handles. The information shared with the Trump campaign was collected (not by the Trump campaign) was far more reaching than just the FaceBook name, including a lot of personal information both about the people who installed the "personality test" app, and the personal information of all of their FaceBook "friends".
Trying to equate these two is just not honest.
Separately I would expect the same phrasing and vocabulary to emerge in the media. They are all talking to the same general pool of sources, and listening to each other. What I do not expect (and smacks of authoritarianism) is for them to all be reading from the exact same script.
MIT technology review, July 2012 on Obama app implies that it could've collected more than just 'facebook handles', where does that information come from?
"
The app’s avowed task is to give people a quick and easy way to access the volunteering and organizing functions that worked so well for Obama in 2008. But the permission screen that comes with the app makes clear that it has another purpose as well. When I installed the app, I noticed that it said it would grab information about my friends: their birthdates, locations, and “likes.”
"
CNN doesn't stand up and say "we're devoting our reporting resources to all things anti Trump, this is our bias, it's not secret". They simply report the news they choose to report.
Just like Sinclair.
People watch the news hoping to get an accurate depiction of reality. When only one side of a multifaceted situation is reported on, the depiction becomes distorted.
It's never OK to do this, regardless of whose side you're on.
This actually isn't remotely comparable to what Sinclair is doing. Not remotely. I am tempted to say that you know it's not comparable and that you're simply outright lying, but I'll restrain myself, and instead just note that you're completely and outrageously incorrect.
CNN is not dictating what its personnel report and it's certainly not coordinating forced fake "reporting" in unison by dozens of TV stations, or forcing anyone to air Sebastian Gorka, etc.
Anyone who thinks that this "rigs" a debate in any meaningful way is watching too much Hannity.
Debate questions are not some big secret surprise; the candidates drill for MONTHS on all the likely sorts of questions that could be asked. And there weren't any "gotcha" questions asked in the debate in question; just straight-up stuff that any prepared candidate could answer in his/her sleep.
There is an obvious difference between knowing the range of questions vs knowing the exact questions on, eg, a qualification exam. The full list of questions is usually public beforehand, the exact questions you get is not.
The same logic applies to the debate. Knowing the exact questions gives an advantage, allowing one side to tailor and concentrate their message. Once you know what is going to be asked, you can prep more extensively in that space, while the other side is spreading out their efforts, being less efficient.
>I am tempted to say that you know it's not comparable and that you're simply outright lying, but I'll restrain myself, and instead just note that you're completely and outrageously incorrect.
This is a more insidious problem than any one media property because the very structure of the local news organization -being small and distributed - gives them a unique credibility for most viewers because they assume that their local news team is more closely align with their local beliefs, values, and interests. People do not assume every word from a local news anchor is the exact script for the entire country.
Further, it is one thing for them to use the same script. It is entirely another thing for the script to be "you can't trust any other news outlet because they all report fake news with no research or verification. YOU CAN ONLY TRUST US". I have never seen that message on CNN. You may not like CNN's coverage of Trump, but they do not undermine every other media outlet.
Give me a break. You don't remember "This an Apple", one of the most elitist, pretentious advertising campaigns in recent times:
""This is an apple. Some people might try to tell you that it's a banana. They might scream, 'Banana, banana, banana,' over and over and over again. They might put banana in all caps. You might even start to believe it's a banana, but it's not. This is an apple."
IIRC this ad campaign wasn't a "trust only us" campaign; it was a direct response to the never-ending calls of "fake news" from the president and right-wing against CNN. In a world where the the president literally sends out his press secretary to lie on Day 1 about the size of his inauguration crowd, this is a reasonable (though I suspect utterly useless) response.
All news is based. Anyone telling you otherwise (that they are fair and balanced and unbiased) is lying to you. I don't need CNN to explicitly tell me their biases, because they are not my only source of news. It's not CNN's job to make sure i get unbiased news. It my job to make sense of biased news and weave it into a consistent mental model of the world. This let's me do things like watch CNN and Fox News and recognize when they're not telling me the full story. That's the only way to fight this kind of thing.
It's one thing to put your message out there without having to constantly inform everyone you're biased, as CNN does. It's quite another to put your message out there and insist that everyone else is biased and therefore unfair and untrustworthy. This is what Fox News and Sinclair are doing. They don't want you to watch anything else, because it gives away the con.
> What's yours?
That's the thing about bias: It's multifaceted, and often subconscious. I could list some biases I'm suspicious I have, but this list would be incomplete and inaccurate.
If they had to put a disclaimer in front of every local news anchor saying "the following content was produced by Sinclair Corporation in collaboration with President Trump", there would not be a problem. Just like we do with other kinds of political advertisements.
The problem is not the bias. The problem is the deception about who is responsible for the content. And yes, this falls into the same category as government employees in St. Petersburg masquerading as US citizens while publishing political propaganda.
Because nothing in the world is perfect, and by acknowledging that you and others all have implicit and explicit biases you can use your critical thinking skills to learn about the world without blindly accepting other people's biases as your own?
When people say something is biased, they usually mean to an unreasonably high degree. As you say, the nature of the universe dictates that everything is biased in some way. While a news source inevitably has to pick and choose what stories it's going to report, most people would not consider it "biased" if it simply reported what events occurred and did not take place in writing opinion pieces. On the other hand people consider news to be biased when it skews too far towards editorializing content and telling people how they should interpret reality.
Take for instance every time the POTUS makes a speech, and I'm talking about presidents long before Trump; as soon as they stop speaking, every new station cuts to a group of pundits to tell you how you should interpret what the president just said. It's not journalism at all, and anyone who pays attention to politics a lot would be just as qualified to be a pundit. Why should anyone trust that level of bias over what was actually said? If the opinions of political junkies are more important than what was said, then we're basically screwed because it's not the people who decide how to view events, but it's news organizations who pay people to dictate opinion that create the narrative around events.
Yes, you can certainly sift through bias using critical thinking skills, but this only gets you so far when the news itself becomes more bias than actual reporting. We don't live in a perfect world where everyone is capable of critical thinking. If we did, then almost everyone would shut off the TV as soon as the president is done speaking. Instead, we live in an imperfect world where having highly biased news is really dangerous for a society that hasn't proven to be capable of coming up with its own perspectives when other perspectives are being foisted upon them by the press and the state.
>as soon as they stop speaking, every new station cuts to a group of pundits to tell you how you should interpret what the president just said. It's not journalism at all
I disagree entirely. That is the essence of journalism. Not to tell you what to think, but to provide context that helps interpret.
For example, reporting that people at a Trump rally were shouting "Lugenpresse" is one thing. Providing the historical context that such language was used by the Nazi's as a pretext for cracking down on the free press and on Jews is another. Just hearing the first may make you aware of a fact, but the second tells you the truth.
That's not necessarily what I am implying. I'm challenging the idea that, if all news is biased(beyond simply picking and choosing stories), one can reliably find the truth by essentially making a Venn diagram between biased sources and analyzing overlaps. I neither believe nor disbelieve that it's a pathway to truth. I have my skepticism because it provides no form of validation; if all sources are too highly skewed, any overlap becomes highly suspect and simultaneously difficult to test.
I am a roboticist, so I view this as an exercise in signal processing. A news agency is like a sensor, reporting that an event happened. We don't know what or how or when, so we use different signals and fuse them to arrive at a better understanding of "truth". The nice thing about sensor fusion, is even without external validation as to the truth, you can still approximate it with certainty using otherwise very noisy sources that may be biased one way or another. That's how I view watching the news.
That's an interesting perspective. Do you think that humans are capable of similar sensor fusion? If so, then does that mean that we shouldn't be worried about bias?
I think some humans are capable of this, but most aren't. We should be worried! But the answer to handle bias isn't to eliminate it, but to account for it appropriately.
The truth isn't biased, so if the news reports the truth, "x said y" and we have evidence that x said y, then it is not biased and therefore all new is NOT biased.
Right, so how do you determine how much you have to say to tell the "truth"? If someone makes a claim about an economic policy, is it "lying by omission" to not talk about the impact previous similar policies have been enacted? Or is that inserting your bias? If you aren't telling people the facts behind the claims then are you telling the truth? Which facts you decide to share or not share can be biased.
You still think the truth is objective after a year+ living in this alternative fact world? There is no such thing as a "truth" anymore. Even cold hard figures are negotiable. Remember "The employment rate was fake news before but it's very real now"
It's not that lies are getting to me, it's that I've changed my view about the all-convincing nature of facts. I never before understood how easy it is for people to just pick and choose a set of base facts to support whatever reality they want to live in.
Stations have obligations in return for their licensing. Some of which require them to serve the public good. Local newscasting falls in that category.
Sinclair is turning that "public good" into propaganda. This is counter to the license terms. At least, in my opinion. Maybe we'll see that addressed, in court, at some point.
There are also marketshare caps, created to prevent this kind of bias from gaining dominance of the broadcast market. Sinclair has been lobbying and buying its way towards circumvention of those caps.
Numerous studies indicate that, with all the changes in media, many people still go to their local broadcast news station for their news, and that they have a higher level of trust in it than in other sources.
Arguably, when you turn on CNN or Fox -- networks, that cable and satellite providers can choose to carry along with however many other channels they want to sell you -- you know what you're getting.
This, by contrast, is a creeping menace of bias, masked as your trusted local news source. (And as other "public service" broadcasting. Whereas people reasonably argue that the demonstrated bias to one political agenda, as well as the masking of the source of said programming, is not "public service".)
I'm disappointed that the above comment got so many downvotes. It's an important observation in the bigger context.
I used to get most of my news from CNN, and the amount of "bad" anti-trump editorials they publish really scared me. CNN has a lot of anti-Trump articles that take a trolling tone.
We (me and CNN) didn't vote for Trump, and we (me and CNN) don't like him, but that's no excuse for bad journalism. Part of a democracy is getting along when you loose the election.
Well, for one: CNN isn't getting a sweet new FCC head honcho to shape policy to benefit them. Second: do you understand the difference between a free press and a propaganda machine, right? One goes against the government's views, the other one pushes it.
"One goes against the government's views, the other one pushes it."
No, that's not it.
A free press is "free" because it's unconstrained by a Government or capricious regulation, not because it "goes against the government's views". Sometimes members of a free press will support the government, other times they won't.
It's not a priori virtuous to go against the Government's views. Sometimes the Government is right and sometimes it's not. Like everyone else.
Your definition of free press ignores the impact of government involvement in the press and preferential treatment it confers on specific organizations. Where the government favors one media/press organization and gives preferential treatment, every non-preferred media outlet is less free because they are constrained in ways the preferred outlet is not.
You're right it's not inherently virtuous to go against the Government's views. But it is inherently bad to push government views in exchange for preferential treatment which is what appears to be happening here and with the National Enquirer.
If you are concerned about a free press, you should be equally concerned about the commingling of government and press such that the government captures certain media properties and converts them to state run media. Free press means a separation of government and press; any governmental involvement damages a free press.
Does anyone from either side of the aisle consider a national corporation owning local stations and forcing scripts down their throat a good thing for the marketplace of ideas?