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Sinclair Responds to Criticism of Its ‘Fake News’ Promos

Apr 3, 2018  •  Post A Comment

After coming under fire over its promos about “fake news,” the Sinclair Broadcast Group defended itself with a press release issued Monday under the headline “Sinclair Responds to Unfounded Media Criticism.”

As we reported Monday, the promos have apparently led to tensions between local stations and corporate management. Sinclair is said to be requiring its local TV anchors to deliver a so-called “journalistic responsibility message,” which some observers are calling pro-Trump propaganda.

Here’s Sinclair’s full statement:

“Sinclair Broadcast Group, Inc. (Nasdaq: SBGI) (‘Sinclair’) today responded to a series of media reports attacking the Company’s recent promotional announcement for its local news. These announcements were responding to the public’s distrust in news generally, confirmed just today by this Monmouth University poll, and spoke to our commitment to avoid such inaccurate reporting. 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.’”

5 Comments

  1. Oh my god. So glad o don’t work for that pos company man. Feel sorry for those who do. Sheesh..

  2. Holy Joses…PR hack actually said “..our award-winning news programming.” The shill will be joining the Trumpy admin as soon as he can to address all the fake news coming out of the Idiot in Charge’s tweets.

  3. Trump is a soon-to-be hasbeen in the trash heap of bad history and
    bad memory … Sinclair, please take the opportunity to better yourselves
    and get away from the two cent tyrant and all of his BS …

  4. Sinclair: Repeat the same lie over and over and people will eventually believe it.

  5. The Sinclair stations annually receive many awards for their local news coverage. It is unfair to those hard-working reporters and technical people to take out your frustration with Trump by making the statements above. I know that the local Sinclair anchors in my home market (Seattle) are not fans of Trump and make it clear regularly during their broadcasts.

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