Pulling strings: Sinclair Broadcasts fake news scandal, The Listening Post

The Sinclair Broadcast Group has come under fire following the spread of a video showing anchors at its stations across the United States reading a script criticising fake news stories. Typically, the Sinclair editorials do not make much of an impact. But when Timothy Burke, a video editor in Tampa, Florida, collected 44 versions of that editorial from 44 local news markets, and lay them side by side, allowing Americans to play them back, word for word, the effect was chilling. The reaction was: just what is Sinclair Unlike Fox News, CNN and MSNBC, Sinclair does not own a national news network so its brand is not that well known. But it does own 173 local TV stations, covering 40 percent of American households. Since those channels are affiliated with national broadcasting brands, ABC, NBC and CBS they display those logos rather than their parent company s. Up until now, Sinclair sent editorials from the company s headquarters in Maryland that their channe