Donald Trump is trying to secretly brainwash the American people, or that is what the mainstream media themselves is trying to brainwash you with. Deadspin which is a sports news website released a compilation video of news anchors from local television networks who are part of the Sinclair Broadcast Group delivering the same journalistic responsibility message.
In the United States network television is delivered through local affiliates rather than a central network that is the case in Australia. Many local news stations are owned by major news networks or a media corporation and as a result, they pool resources and at times use the same promotional material and messages. Local news departments all air what is termed “must run” news items about major stories. This is what the Sinclair stations did with this promotional message.
But because Sinclair Broadcast Group has had a history of promoting conservative political views and helped facilitate election messages from the Trump campaign in the 2016 presidential election this script against fake news, despite not mentioning Trump by name, or naming any fake news story in particular the story is Sinclair Using It’s News Anchors As Soldiers In Trump’s War On The Media.
In response to the absurd allegations it was acting on a directive from Trump himself Scott Livingston, senior vice president of news at Sinclair put out a memo specifying “the stories we are referencing in this campaign are the unsubstantiated ones (i.e. fake/false) like ‘Pope Endorses Trump’ which move quickly across social media and result in an ill-informed public. Some other false stories, like the false ‘Pizzagate’ story, can result in dangerous consequences”.
If the script had been delivered by CNN or NBC News nobody would complain, they would, in fact, congratulate them for their stance against fake news. But Sinclair’s slight conservative bent has led other news anchors such as MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough to call the promos “Trumpian” and that they “smack of state-run media for an autocrat”. CNN called it “pro-Trump propaganda” published an op-ed claiming we should be terrified of Sinclair’s fake-news zombies who are practising “Orwellian” doublespeak.
Trump himself pointed out the irony of CNN and NBC complaining about alleged bias.
Of course the left believe that news which has a leftist worldview is balanced, and anything outside of that is far-right propaganda. But the main reason this should be a non-story is that there are no substantive allegations put forward that Sinclair has tried to mislead their viewers and engage in fake news themselves, same can’t be said of CNN and NBC News.