About

Sinclair Broadcast Group is an American media conglomerate. The company has been at the center of numerous controversies for both purchasing a large number of local news stations and requiring them to air must-air segments that espouse conservative political views. Those segments have also been criticized for their legitimacy and accuracy.

History

Launching in 1971, under the name "Chesapeake Television Corporation," Sinclair Media Group grew in notoriety, in part, because of their purchasing of local news stations. As of 2019, they own 193 stations in more than 100 markets in the United States. This amounts to more than 40% of the market.^[1]

Reception

Controversies

Last Week Tonight Segment

On July 2nd, 2017, the late-night news comedy series Last Week Tonight With John Oliver aired a lengthy segment criticizing the content used in Sinclair's must-air segments. In particular, Oliver focused on segments featuring Boris Epshteyn, a former aide to President Donald Trump. When published on YouTube, the segment received more than 9 million views (shown below).

Sinclair Broadcasting Local News Script

On March 30th, 2018, ThinkProgress^[2] posted an article reporting that local news stations owned by Sinclair were being forced to read scripts prepared for them. They also created a video which spliced together different newscasters reading from the same script (shown below).

The following day, the video was uploaded to Reddit ^[3] by Redditor patientbearr. Within two years, the video became the most popular in Reddit's history, receiving more than 280,000 points (97% upvoted) and 11,000 comments.

Code Red Day

On June 6th, 2019, Redditor^[4] justinisntfunny posted a video entitled "My local weatherman calls out corporate forced 'Code Red Alert' To Viewers." The post received more than 17,200 points (96% upvoted) in 24 hours.

In the video, which has since been removed from YouTube, meteorologist Joe Crain, who is a weatherman for WICS-TV in Springfield, Illinois, criticized the "Code Red" system, which was implemented by Sinclair. He argues that, unlike the guidelines presented by the National Weather Service, labeling storms "Code Red" is not "perfect." He said:

A lot of people [are] not very happy with this over the last few months since we've implemented it on Storm Team 20. That's evident by the thousands of comments on social media, letters to the editor, frequent calls to local talk radio shows. We've heard you and yes, we realize you have some very strong and passionate views about it.

When you hear Code Red you think… as they say, 'feces is about to hit the fan.' We understand your concerns and we want you to know that we take them very seriously… I don't take myself very seriously, but I do take my job seriously, and my responsibility to the public.

That day, Twitter user @217Problems shared the video (shown below).

Joe Crain video pic.twitter.com/TkY9MXtpHw

— 217Problems (@217Problems) June 6, 2019

Sinclair defended the system. They said in a statement,^[4] "The outbreak of severe weather events across the country in recent weeks makes clear that Code Red alerts serve a critical function in keeping viewers informed of potential danger and threats to their safety. The decision to issue these alerts is made by our local meteorologists and we will continue to trust our local experts to know when to… announce these warnings."

As of Thursday morning, Crain's photograph and biography had been removed from the WICS website. Crane said, "I'm employed by WICS and have no comment to offer."

On June 7th, Redditor^[5] SmilinBob82 asked about "Code Red Day" on the /r/OutOfTheLoop subreddit. Redditor mckenner1122 answered:

Sinclair Media (a large media company that owns many news stations, particularly in rural and small markets) has created a Weather Warning system that they require the local weather forecasters to use that does not line up with the warnings from the National Weather Service.

In this instance, a weatherman was required to use the Scary Sounding “CODE RED” for a weather system that was not particularly dangerous. This kind of cry-wolf forecasting could lead to people ignoring ACTUAL dangerous systems and could cost lives.

Search Interest

External References