Sinclair Broadcasting asks newsroom managers to contribute to conservative PAC - Entrepreneur Generations

Sinclair Broadcasting Group, the nation's largest owner of TV stations, is asking some of its executives and newsroom managers to contribute to its conservative political action committee, which journalism ethics experts say is highly unusual and unethical.

Sinclair owns 173 news outlets, and will become even larger after its pending $3.9 billion purchase of Tribune Media, which owns or operates 42 stations. "The company is fighting to preserve an arcane rule adopted by the Republican-dominated Federal Communications Commission last year that effectively enabled it and other big media companies to buy more stations. If Congress were to restore the old limits, or if a pending court challenge succeeds, it could complicate Sinclair’s acquisition of Tribune," Paul Farhi reports for The Washington Post.

Rebecca Hanson, Sinclair's senior vice president of strategy and policy, said the request for PAC funding wasn't unethical because it was only sent to newsroom managers, not reporters or anchors. The news directors "were solicited as a result of being part of our managerial level, not because of their role in editorial," Hanson told Farhi, and added that "participation is completely voluntary. There is no corporate pressure to participate and no consequence for not participating. It doesn’t put them in any ethical bind whatsoever."

But University of Wisconsin journalism professor and former TV news producer Lewis Friedland said the policy "violates every standard of conduct that has existed in newsrooms for the past 40 or 50 years" and said that news directors who donate are tacitly supporting the company's political agenda. "It would cause people to ask whether they’re being fair and balanced in their coverage," Friedland said. And news directors might feel pressured to contribute, and worry that refusal would be seen be company superiors as disloyal, said Mark Feldstein, a broadcast journalism professor at the University of Maryland.

Sinclair has been criticized for partisan news coverage in the past. In 2004 Sinclair wanted to air a documentary critical of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry the night before Election Day, but backed off after complaints. In 2012 it aired a half-hour news special that criticized President Obama. In 2016 it reportedly ordered its stations to air news stories favorable to Donald Trump. In 2017 a Sinclair station in Montana refused to cover the story of U.S. Rep.-elect Greg Gianforte attacking a reporter, saying that the reporter worked for a politically biased publication. And today, stations are told to air conservative-leaning commentaries from Sinclair executive Mark Hyman and former Trump aide Boris Epshteyn.

from The Rural Blog http://ift.tt/2HeKRFL Sinclair Broadcasting asks newsroom managers to contribute to conservative PAC - Entrepreneur Generations

Posted by Entrepreneur Generations

Tweet