March 31, 2018

This Chilling Video Shows How Local TV Stations Across America Are Parroting Pro-Trump Propaganda

Sinclair Broadcasting is on its way to reaching three-quarters of US homes.

President Trump makes a speech during the Speaker's Lunch on Capitol Hill. Niall Carson/Zuma Press

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You might know Sinclair Broadcasting, the largest owner of local TV stations in the nation, from 2004, when it required its affiliates to air an anti-John Kerry propaganda film as a news segment and then fired one of its employees who spoke against it. Or from last year, when Last Week Tonight‘s John Oliver bludgeoned it in an 18-minute segment. Or from earlier this month, when CNN’s Brian Stelter discovered that it would be forcing its anchors to record “media bashing” promos that parallel President Donald Trump’s incendiary complaints about the “fake news” media—”a promotional campaign,” as Stelter puts it, “that sounds like pro-Trump propaganda.”

As Mother Jones‘ Andy Kroll has reported, Sinclair Broadcasting is well on its way to reaching three-quarters of all American homes. “The most important force shaping public opinion continues to be local, over-the-air television,” Andrew Jay Schwartzman, a senior attorney at Georgetown’s Communications and Technology Law Clinic, told Kroll last year.

Now, the media-bashing promos are in, and Deadspin put together a terrifying 98-second video that shows how far Sinclair Broadcasting is willing to go to bring right-wing propaganda into your living room. Take a look:

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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