The chairman of Sinclair Broadcast Group is standing behind his company requiring stations to broadcast an anti-fake news message.
David Smith spoke out Wednesday amid renewed backlash following a viral video from Deadspin over the weekend showing multiple local anchors reading the same script about “biased and false news.”
“You cant [sic.] be serious!” he wrote in an email to the New York Times. “Do you understand that as a practical matter every word that comes out of the mouths of network news people is scripted and approved by someone?”
Smith defended the “must run” segments and compared them to late-night shows that are broadcast on their local affiliates.
“Not that you would print it, but do you understand that every local TV station is required to ‘must run’ from its network their content, and they don’t own me,” he said. “That would be all their news programming and other shows such as late-night talk, which is just late-night political so-called comedy.”
Critics of the message have claimed that Sinclair, a media company that leans right and owns or operates 193 TV stations, say the message in the script panders to President Trump’s attacks on “fake news.” MSNBC host Joe Scarborough called the message was “Trumpian.”
“The sharing of biased and false news has become all too common on social media,” the anchors say in the message. “More alarming, some media outlets publish these same fake stories, stories that just aren’t true, without checking facts first. Unfortunately, some members of the media use their platforms to push their own personal bias. This is extremely dangerous to our democracy.”
Earlier this week, Sinclair said the message was part of the company’s “corporate news journalistic responsibility promotional campaign.”
“The critics are now upset about our well-researched journalistic initiative focused on fair and objective reporting,” Sinclair Senior Vice President of News Scott Livingston wrote in a memo, according to CNN. “For the record, 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. We are focused on fact-based reporting,” he added. “That’s our commitment to our communities.”
Sinclair has a major defender in Trump, who argued on Twitter that Sinclair was “far superior” to news organizations such as CNN and “Fake NBC.”
“So funny to watch Fake News Networks, among the most dishonest groups of people I have ever dealt with, criticize Sinclair Broadcasting for being biased,” Trump tweeted on Monday. “Sinclair is far superior to CNN and even more Fake NBC, which is a total joke.”
