Sinclair Issues Response To Promotional Announcement

In March, TV anchors at broadcast stations across the U.S. began reading from an identical script passed down to them by their owner — Sinclair Broadcast Group.

"We're concerned about the troubling trend of irresponsible, one-sided news stories plaguing our country," the anchors said, reading from the script.

"Unfortunately, some members of the national media are using their platforms to push their own personal bias and agenda to control ‘exactly what people think’ ... This is extremely dangerous to our democracy," the script continued.

NBC News reports the segments drew the ire of media journalists and watchdogs, many of whom were already closely watching Sinclair for its ties to President Donald Trump and its ambitions to expand its already-sizable U.S. audience.


But the segments didn't receive widespread attention until Saturday, when the website Deadspin published a 98-second video montage of the TV segments that went viral.



Sinclair Broadcast responded to a series of media reports attacking the Company’s recent promotional announcement for its local news.

Sinclair stated the promos served no political agenda, and represented nothing more than an effort to differentiate our award-winning news programming from other, less reliable sources of information.

“We aren’t sure of the motivation for the criticism, but find it curious that we would be attacked for asking our news people to remind their audiences that unsubstantiated stories exist on social media, which result in an ill-informed public with potentially dangerous consequences,” commented Scott Livingston, Sinclair’s Senior Vice President of News.

“It is ironic that we would be attacked for messages promoting our journalistic initiative for fair and objective reporting, and for specifically asking the public to hold our newsrooms accountable. Our local stations keep our audiences’ trust by staying focused on fact-based reporting and clearly identifying commentary.”