Freedom of the Press

I was always under the assumption that a journalist is a person who is a curious independent soul who investigates the who, what, where, when and why of a news story.  That was the mantra I learned from my first day in J-school at the University of Florida.  It was the journalist’s creed to find the truth and speak the truth in an unbiased way.

Our democracy has depended on the ‘Fourth Estate’ to be the voice that speaks to power.  In times when politicians and those who want to influence public opinion and behavior work hard to make us believe a particular point of view, the journalist has been the ‘vox populi’ that exposed corruption and shined the light of veracity on any issue that was of public importance.  An independent press has been the backbone of our democracy. 

There is no better example of the degrading of that concept than what is happening today in the age of Trump.

While Trump rages on and on about the ‘fake news’ and demeans the media by calling them the ‘enemy of the people’, those of us who are journalists know what he is attempting to do.  Our mission becomes more important and vital to the survival of our free society and the rule of law.  His attempts to shape current events by elevating the half-truths and outright lies, especially promoted by the Fox News organization, only redouble the efforts of a free press to speak truth to power.

Now comes a more insidious threat to our democracy.  The Sinclair Broadcast Group, a collection of stations owned by the family of Julian Sinclair Smith is the largest station group in the country with over 200 stations owned in over 100 markets covering over 40% of the country.  The company has always expressed a conservative bent, supporting Trump during the 2016 campaign.  Sinclair is also trying to increase its holdings and stations to reach more and more of our population.  In its effort to buy more stations it is doing the Trump administration’s conceptual and political bidding to expedite its acquisition approvals by the FCC.

Sinclair often mandates its stations to air specific reports, segments, and editorials, referred to as "must-runs". The practice has been criticized by some of Sinclair's stations' news staff due to the viewpoints they propagate.  In April 2017, Sinclair announced it had hired Boris Epshteyn, who was briefly the White House assistant communications director for surrogate operations for the Trump administration, and a senior advisor of Donald Trump's presidential campaign, as chief political analyst.  All Sinclair stations are required to air Mr. Epshteyn's commentary nine times per week.  This month Sinclair ordered its stations to deliver an "anchor-delivered journalistic responsibility message" during their newscasts. The wording of the mandated script was criticized by some station news staff and outside pundits for its discussion of "fake news", with some critics arguing that the message used similar language and rhetoric to that of Donald Trump.  Here is a video showing how the on-air ‘journalists’ were mandated to parrot the script supplied to them by the management of the network:

The segment ends with the clarion call, “This is extremely dangerous to our democracy!”  No kidding!

This is just another glimmer of the kind of creeping authoritarianism that is threatening our democratic experiment in America.  The effort to corrupt the tenets of a free press by Sinclair is made even worse by the complicity of the on-air journalists!  For the most part the people in the previous video example are supposed to be seasoned journalists.  Where is their integrity?  How is it that they can justify this blind acceptance of a policy that is reminiscent of state media control practiced by countries like Russia??  It is a sad consequence of the constant barrage of accusations against the free media promoted by the Trump administration, Fox News, and now Sinclair Broadcasting.  Moreover it is a frightening abandonment of the integrity these individuals are supposed to live their professional lives by.  I am really surprised that not one of these people values a free press more than their paycheck.  I can forgive the young first timers, but the veterans should be ashamed of themselves.

The more we surrender our minds to those who do not honor and respect the truth, the closer we careen toward the abyss of autocracy.

If you are a watcher of any of the Sinclair stations, I would urge you to not patronize their sponsors and call them out for their desertion of perhaps one of our most cherished traditions….freedom of the press!