Sinclair Broadcast Group: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

“Our democracy has been hacked.” is something that resonates with me very well. A select group of people have mastered media manipulation and are now acting as puppeteers while we are all in a state of confusion, no longer able to discern truth from disinformation. It is not classic censorship that worries me anymore. It is this constant bombardment with questionable data that we need to figure out how to battle, as it is our biggest enemy now. We need some way to get out of the disinformation bubble and be able to see the real picture. BTW this article reminded me of a great show[1] that Last Week Tonight did, about how local news outlets in US are used to manipulate the masses. [1] [this video]

From the article: > "The moves, which include easing a cap on how many stations a broadcaster can own, have opened up lucrative opportunities for Mr. Smith, among them a $3.9 billion bid to buy Tribune Media, another large owner of stations." > "Associates say both men believe that local television stations, which fall under the commission’s rules because they broadcast over federally owned airwaves, are at a disadvantage when competing against cable companies and online streaming services like Comcast and Netflix." > "Loosened regulatory requirements, Sinclair executives said, will help even the playing field and benefit millions of Americans who rely on broadcast stations for news and entertainment by allowing the companies to invest in new equipment and technology." I don't watch (local) TV, but the Jon Oliver piece [1] on Sinclair was eye-opening. I understand how larger companies can invest in new technology. However, cable and broadcasting companies have historically not done this [2] because they are near monopolies (or duopolies). These deregulations make things less competitive, not more. I don't understand how conservative voters who support these moves and the magic of the free market at the same time do not see this. There's no leveling the playing field here, unless it's in the sense of bulldozing all the players out to make room for a few giants who are cooperating on some occasions to avoid competing. > “I’ve been listening carefully to what you have to say,” M

Yeah in the US system thanks to some old competition requirements the Affiliate Network gets most of the name recognition and provides most of the prime time entertainment content (a few other content blocks), but the stations under that network have their own owners that can be more or less damaging, especially in news content, and more or less "invisible" in that maybe you only see their name in the fine print at the end of credits or copyright statements. One other notorious example is Sinclair Broadcasting [1]. Sinclair-owned stations include all of the major Affiliate Networks in the US and some of the minor ones, but are known for how much they farm politically-biased news content across their platforms, including trying to pass off editorial content as news content. (ETA: Which is to say that yeah a FOX affiliate gets entertainment programming from what is left of Rupert Murdoch's empire, but could be getting news content from all sorts of places from home-grown proper local journalism to content farms from their real owners.) [1] A humorous rant on it: [this video]

It is not a proposal to kill entertainment media, it is a proposal to make it easier to make informative journalism. The theory being that a plurality of information sources leads to a better informed population and that if newspapers have less to worry about satisfying shareholders or advertisers, they will do a better job. I think that the most important point for the US situation is the non-concentration condition, preventing one person or company from owning several information media posing as different entities, masking the lack of plurality. It would prevent this kind of things: [this video] Arguably this is more a solution to the situation we have in France. In the US it looks like you have people like the Koch brothers who would not mind running newspapers at a cost to promote propaganda. It would still make it more expensive as it would have to compete against people who would have little costs and privileged access to primary sources. It does not solve all the problems of society and information though. IMO, the fact that so many Americans confuse information and entertainment is an education problem, not a media one.