Map showing local Sinclair TV affiliates
Sinclair won't say a negative word about this mental misfit
We now have new evidence to explain why Joe Biden's approval and poll numbers continue to remain underwater despite a host of positives, i.e. inflation down, stock market up 10 % for year, more infrastructure projects with jobs etc. The keyfactor to explain his 38% approval? The insidious propaganda spewed by over 100 local stations now owned by Sinclair Broadcasting Group, as pointed out by Joy Reid recently, e.g.
‘Nefarious’:
Fake news on Biden's age pumped through local outlets by right-wing controlled
Sinclair - YouTube
As one of her guests (Brian Stelter) noted, it's equivalent to not merely putting the proverbial thumb on the scale in an election year, but a whole hand on the scale. Sinclair especially keeps priming the "pump" about Biden's age, as if he is a totally mentally incapacitated toddler. Most recently, they just grabbed a recent hit piece off The Wall Street Journal about Biden "slipping" (based on one dubious source, the coward and dimwit Kevin McCarthy who couldn't even keep his House Speaker's job). The despicable aspect it that all the local Sinclair -owned stations ran with this hogswill, thereby reinforcing the meme Biden is "too old" for the job.
The map at top - showed as part of Joy Reid's MSNBC segment, shows the extent of the Sinclair owned stations which must now be regarded as propaganda outlets, for Trump and the RNC. Indeed, every last one ought to feature a screen warning advising "Your mental health and decision making in the November election could be at risk by watching."
As noted by Joy's guest, Molly Jong-Fast, the reinforcement is the key given the vast Right wing echo chamber in which this crap percolates. So the spurious baloney first emerges in the New York Post or the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal, then it migrates to FOX News (also owned by Rupert Murdoch like the WSJ) then it is copied and recycled by the spin meisters in the other Sinclair stations.
As Ms. Jong -Fast put it:
"The fact that this gets into the local news where people are just trying to get the weather and the traffic seems particularly nefarious."
Given the propaganda is piped into 186 local stations it means that people who aren't even watching FOX and may have no interest in its lies, are still being fed lies by the anchors in the local affiliates. These folks aren't doing it on their own like Sean Hannity or Laura Ingraham, but they are under orders to read the prepared script (compliment of Sinclair boss man David Smith)
Worse, the FOXite and Sinclair stations won't even play Trump spiels or speeches any more because they've become too deranged. But they will play loops of Biden flubbing words in a talk or maybe stumbling a bit, to try to impose the image of a doddering elderly incompetent. As Reid guest Matt Dowd put it:
"I've come to the conclusion that what Sinclair is doing is far more dangerous than what FOX is doing. This is because we already know FOX is going to be right wing slanted so we filter it through that lens. The problem is that people don't have that filter on when they watch the weather, local sports or any of that and also the local news. And when you look at the level of trust local news is trusted far more than other news."
We now know this no longer can be "taken to the bank". If your local news outlet is owned and operated as a Sinclair affiliate, viewer beware. To use the words of LA Times columnist Michael Hiltzik (in describing RFK Jr's vaccine BS), "We've allowed this dangerous hogwash to be mainstreamed into the body politic like an IV drip of strychnine.”
In this case, the brains of that body politic are being disabled and incapacitated by that toxic "IV drip" and they may not even be aware of it. They need to be. The alternative is the autocratic nightmare of Project 2025 if Traitor Trump rises to power again.
by Thom Hartmann | June 21, 2024 - 6:04am | permalink— from The Hartmann Report
In less than a month, Republicans will meet in Milwaukee to crown Donald Trump as their Emperor King and Sun God. But the real powers behind the GOP — the billionaires and their institutions that created Project 2025 as a how-to manual to convert American democracy into something like the old Confederacy — don’t much care about poor old Donald.
Sure, they want him to be the nominee because NBC trained him well in the dark art of playing a successful businessman on television. He brings in the rubes like nobody since Huey Long; he’s a singularly brilliant politician, much as Putin, Hitler, Orbán, and Mussolini are and were.
But he can also be irrational, impulsive, disloyal, dishonest, and unpredictable, qualities that make the men who want to revive the Confederacy to replace our republican form of government wary. They have big plans — far bigger than Trump’s tiny dream of vengeance — and don’t want him screwing things up.
See Also:
by Maya Boddie | June 21, 2024 - 6:12am | permalink— from Alternet
Former President Donald Trump took the stage at the conservative Turning Point USA "People's Convention" last week, led by far-right activist Charlie Kirk, which Politico reported is currently "pouring tens of millions of dollars into an ambitious get-out-the-vote operation in three battleground states."
A devout Trump supporter, Kirk took to social media Thursday to point out what he believes is a fluke on Fox News' part — and fellow MAGA faithful Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) agreed.
“Okay, I’ve been studying this new FOX NEWS poll, and I have concluded it’s a complete outlier,” Kirk wrote via X (formerly Twitter.
"They have Joe Biden winning rural voters 50-48% over Trump. There is no way that’s possible. Zero," the far-right activist continued.
And:
by Thom Hartmann | June 18, 2024 - 5:42am | permalink— from The Hartmann Report
Hitler’s brilliant propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, famously told the Fuhrer, “Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth.” Donald Trump and the MAGA faction of the Republican Party have taken Goebbels’ advice to heart, and it’s going to make this fall’s election one like we’ve never seen before.
Already they’ve been lying so often and so effectively that nearly all Republicans, and majorities or near-majorities of Americans, believe:
— the GOP lie that we’re in a recession (we’re in better shape, in most ways, than any time since the 1960s and inflation last month was zero while Ronald Reagan never got it below 4.1% in his entire eight years);
— Republican lies about crime being up (it’s down dramatically since Trump);
— their lies that “Democrats want elective abortion up to the moment of birth” (none have ever said that);
— Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was “stolen” from Trump by “voter fraud”;
— GOP lies that the southern border is “wide open”;
— the Republican lie that Social Security is on the verge of bankruptcy and must be saved by privatization or benefits cuts;
— their vicious lie that queer people are pedophiles targeting America’s schoolchildren; and
— their NRA lie that more and more deadly guns will keep our kids safe.
And:
by Henry Giroux | June 21, 2024 - 5:41am | permalink
"If you’re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing."
– Malcolm X
Bearing witness is a crucial marker of a responsible press and media. It brings to light the unnecessary suffering and hardship of those rendered voiceless and disposable, as well as the underlying forces that produce such conditions. It also serves to challenge those who “wallow in willful ignorance.”[1] Shattering the lies concealed by claims of innocence is a powerful weapon for holding power accountable, making it visible and subject to exposure and resistance. Bearing witness does not guarantee justice, but it provides the awareness necessary to turn propaganda against itself and mobilize people to function as a collective force of resistance.
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