Journalism

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai immediately shot down a request to investigate Sinclair Broadcasting Group for distorting the news, and to pause the review of Sinclair's pending acquisition of Tribune Media. Chairman  Pai said the FCC doesn’t have the authority to revoke licenses based on the content of newscasts.

President Trump abruptly issued an executive order demanding an evaluation of the Postal Service’s finances, asserting the power of his office weeks after accusing Amazon, the online retail giant, of not paying its fair share in postage. In the executive order, issued just before 9 p.m., President Trump created a task force to examine the service’s “unsustainable financial path” and directed the new panel to “conduct a thorough evaluation of the operations and finances of the USPS” The president does not mention Amazon in the order, but it is clear that he intends for the panel to substanti

[Commentary] While online rights are coming into question, it’s worth considering how those will overlap with offline rights and civic engagement. We need a conversation about data protections, empowering users with their own information, and transparency — ultimately, data rights are now civic rights.While the US still lacks such data standards, the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), scheduled to take effect in May, demonstrates a path toward reliable online privacy balanced with transparency. 

A dozen Democratic senators are asking the Federal Communications Commission to investigate Sinclair Broadcasting Group for distorting the news. 

The FCC should also pause its review of Sinclair's acquisition of Tribune Media — a merger that could expand the nation's largest broadcaster from 193 stations to 223 stations covering 72% of US homes  — the senators say, to determine whether the deal is in the public interest.

President Trump has long had ties to the nation’s major media players. But his connections with the country’s largest tabloid publisher, American Media Inc., run deeper than most. A former top executive of Trump’s casino business sits on AMI’s four-member board of directors, and an adviser joined the media company after the election. The company’s chairman, David J. Pecker, is a close friend of the president’s.

One of the nation's oldest and most prestigious regional newspapers, The Chicago Tribune, could soon have a unionized staff. On April 11, journalists from its newsroom informed management that they are preparing to organize and that they have collected signatures from dozens of colleagues. This is a historic move at a paper that, for decades, had taken a hard-line stance against unions.

Sinclair Broadcast Group has once again mobilized its local television stations to criticize media competitors, accusing CNN of "dishonesty and hypocrisy."  CNN media reporter Brian Stelter had came down hard on the network for its  mandated messaging condemning "one-sided news stories" and "bias." Many Sinclair journalists weren't happy with their corporate leaders either. Sinclair Chief Executive Chris Ripley tried to reassure employees in an internal memo, writing that local journalists had borne the brunt of the "politically motivated" backlash.

Sinclair Broadcast Group CEO Chris Ripley apologized to employees for having to endure what he called “politically motivated attacks” over the company’s recent promos. In a memo sent to staff, Ripley defended the scripts that anchors at more than 60 Sinclair stations were compelled to read, telling staff that the practice “is not unique to Sinclair, however, the blowback we received for doing so certainly is.” 

Critics have claimed that Sinclair — a company with close ties to the Trump Administration and conservative politicians — is pushing its stations away from local coverage and toward a partisan brand of political reporting on national politics. In new research, we find evidence that that appears to be the case.

Sinclair stands alone in its brazen use of the public airwaves to promote an extreme right-wing agenda to advance its business interests. From its hiring practices to its frequent disregard of journalistic values, the company is an unapologetic outlier among TV station owners. At one time, journalists applying for jobs at Sinclair were questioned by the company’s owners about their views on abortion and other hot-button political issues — and turned down if they were “too liberal.” Sinclair’s news website found a way to get around this time-consuming process by hiring as reporters the Repub