Journalism

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

The chairman of Sinclair Broadcast Group met President Donald Trump at the White House during a visit to pitch a potentially lucrative new product to administration officials. David D Smith briefed officials in 2017 on a system that would enable authorities to broadcast direct to any American’s phone. Smith said his White House meeting was not financially motivated. The Federal Communications Commission decided in November 2017 to make incorporating chips voluntary.

[Commentary] Democrats -- and much of the “liberal” media Trump frequently attacks -- continue to obsess over clumsy Russian efforts to interfere with our elections as the challenge of our times to American democracy. But they could pay more attention to this ongoing assault on two of our most precious rights, enshrined in the Constitution and fundamental to the functioning of any free Republic: the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of expression and the Fifth Amendment’s protections against government taking of private property without due process of law.

[Commentary] Is it time to recognize that Facebook, and ‘Big Tech’ at large, may be a bug in our democracy? In Part 1, I examined how the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica story illustrates the harmful effects of “Surveillance Capitalism.” The erosion of our privacy is contributing to the declining health of our democratic discourse.  Moreover though, Facebook has facilitated the proliferation of hate speech, fake news, and international electoral interference.

In the alternate reality constructed by some of President Donald Trump's media boosters, the big question Zuckerberg must answer is not about privacy or propaganda but about Facebook's alleged bias against conservatives. To scrutinize Facebook on the matters of principal interest to members of Congress would be to contribute to doubts about whether Trump won on his own. So, as Zuckerberg prepares to testify before the Senate Commerce and Judiciary committees and the House Commerce Committee, pro-Trump voices in the media are obscuring the main subjects.