- The main story concerns the potential problems in corporate consolidation of local news
- Sinclair Broadcast Group is the largest owner of local TV stations in the country
- Sinclair is acquiring Tribune Media and its 42 local stations, creating the largest group of television stations in the nation
- Sinclair's content tilts noticeably conservative and they distribute their own commentary segments during local news
- Sinclair has hired conservative commentator Mark Hyman and former Trump advisor Boris Epstein
- Sinclair sometimes dictates the content of local newscasts and provides scripts for anchors to introduce pieces
- This can inject conservative content into local news and influence viewer perception

- Sinclair Broadcast Group regularly sends out "must-run" segments that local news stations are directed to include in their broadcasts
- These must-run segments often have a biased slant and include controversial topics such as race and politics
- The Terrorism Alert Desk is a daily must-run segment that reports on terrorism, even when there is no major news to report
- Some Sinclair stations are pushing back against their parent company and airing must-runs at times of low viewership
- If the Tribune acquisition goes through, more journalists will have to see their work alongside biased content
- Viewers should be aware of who owns their local stations and the potential for biased content
- A video has been created to alert viewers about Sinclair's potential influence and the importance of independent local news.

Sinclair Broadcast Group is the largest owner of local TV stations in the country. That's alarming considering that they often inject political views into local news.

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To the victim's window, pointed the gun right at her face, and told her he wanted her purse, her money, and her cell phone.

That is a great way to make people pay attention to a story they may not be interested in.

And with that in mind, our main story tonight concerns the potential problems in corporate consolidation of local news.

Now, national cable news gets a lot of attention with their big budgets and their fancy graphics packages.

Meanwhile, local news often has to do a lot more with a lot less.

The black bear was roaming through Tina Marison's backyard.

Tina was too stunned to get a picture, but this is what the bear probably looked like, except real.

This recreation identifies how witnesses say the bear escaped into the woods.

Whoever is hiding behind that tiny bear cutout deserves a Pulitzer.

He could have stood up straight and just walked the bear across the garden.

It would've been exactly as convincing, But he didn't do that.

It's easy for me to make fun, but local news fills an important role.

Finding stories that the national news is missing.

Our civil forfeiture piece used outstanding reporting from Tennessee's News Channel 5.

And our piece on problems with 911 used great work from Atlanta's 11 Alive.

In fact, a Pew study last year found that local news is trusted more than national news.

So, yes, when you watch local news, you may see something silly, but you also may see something great.

And there's actually a third option, because in some parts of the country, you might see this.

You, the social justice warrior who whines for trigger warnings and safe spaces.

Not grown up enough to deal with the facts?

Then hunker down in your room and Snapchat the day away with other social justice warriors.

Now, that man is Mark Hyman, with 1 in what I presume is a series featuring titles like, Wake Up, Libtard, Cut Much, You Little Beta Baby, and Knock Knock, Sheeple, It's Me, Truth.

Hyman is a commentator and former executive at Sinclair Broadcast Group.

And Sinclair may be the most influential media company that you've never heard of.

Not only are they the largest owner of local TV stations in the country, they could soon get even bigger.

Sinclair will pay about 4000000000 dollars for Tribune Media and its 42 local stations.

The combined companies will create the largest single group of television stations in the nation.

It is a little disconcerting to learn that something you've only just heard of is throwing around 4000000000 dollars.

It's like finding out that ExxonMobil just got bought and it was by the little twerp who plays the new Spider-Man.

How does Spider-Twerp have the resources to do that?

Now, this acquisition still needs regulatory approval, but it is widely assumed that that will happen.

At which point, Sinclair's reach could expand dramatically.

We did some math, and we found out that when you combine the most-watched nightly newscasts on Sinclair and Tribune stations in some of their largest markets, you get an average total viewership of 2.2 million households, and that is a lot.

It's more than any current prime time show on Fox News, including 5 Idiots Have the Most Intolerable Dinner Party Ever, And that guy from college everyone hated has a talk show now with Tucker Carlson.

And the Fox News parallels don't stop there, because Sinclair's content tilts noticeably conservative.

Sinclair produces those segments and sends them to their affiliates.

As best we can tell, no other major owner of TV stations distributes its own commentary segments to run during local news.

We are threatened by a nasty cancer epidemic.

It is political correctness and multiculturalism.

Words that were once acceptable in polite conversation are no longer.

Handicapped and retarded are now off limits.

There is 1 step that's proven to dramatically reduce domestic violence.

I am now a proud Washington Redskins fan.

And the opinion that only black people can legitimately have an afro?

Someone should tell that to American folk singer, Art Garfunkel.

-♪ Art Garfunkel ♪ -♪ Art Garfunkel

As I believe Paul Simon once said, there's no need to involve Art Garfunkel in any of this.

And the thing is, Hyman is not Sinclair's only conservative voice.

Just recently, they hired a man named Boris Epstein, a former Trump advisor who you may remember from multiple TV appearances last year, where he made wild claims like this 1.

Barack Obama won in 2008 North Carolina due to illegal voting.

Barack Obama won in North Carolina because of voter fraud?

5 percent of voting in North Carolina may have been by people who are non-citizens, who should not have been voting, and swung North Carolina to Mr.

Now, obviously, that is nothing even resembling a fact.

The claim he's making received a pants-on-fire from PolitiFact.

And even if it were true, which again, it isn't, Obama still would have beat McCain by 162 electoral votes.

Which raises the question, do Trump surrogates even know why they are lying?

Or are they driven by some vague instinct, like when a cat sits inside a box?

There's just something inside me that tells me I should.

be a better man ♪ And yet, and yet, Epstein is now Sinclair's chief political analyst and has a regular segment called Bottom Line with Boris.

Let me show you a recent 1 concerning a retracted story on CNN.

CNN, along with other cable news networks, is struggling to stick to the facts and to be impartial in covering politics in general and this president specifically.

That could not be more pot calling the kettle black if he said, the bottom line is, CNN is a rejected extra from The Sopranos in a JCPenney's tie, whose voice sounds like Sylvester Stallone with a mouthful of bees.

But Sinclair doesn't just lean right with its commentators.

Even its ad breaks sometimes put a thumb on the scale.

In 2010, Sinclair's Pittsburgh affiliate pulled a 30-second Democratic ad off the air after they received a complaint and found that some claims in the ad were unsubstantiated.

It is good that they were willing to take a stand to ensure nothing inaccurate made its way on air.

Although, just a few months later, that exact same station and multiple other Sinclair outlets aired a 25-minute attack ad on Democrats featuring assertions like this.

During his presidential election, he wound up with a record-shattering $750 million in his campaign.

To this day, he refuses to report from whence it came.

1 reason might be that some of it originated from the terrorist group Hamas.

Look, look, if you are going to make up scary donors to the Obama campaign, why stop with Hamas?

1 reason may be that it originated with this gang of coyotes that has made billions selling human babies to other hungrier coyotes.

And look, if the opinions were confined just to the commentary or to the ad breaks, that would be 1 thing.

But Sinclair can sometimes dictate the content of your local newscast as well.

And In contrast to Fox News, a clearly conservative outlet where you basically know what you're getting, with Sinclair, they are injecting Fox-worthy content into the mouths of your local news anchors.

The 2 people who you know and who you trust, and whose on-screen chemistry can usually best be described as 2 people.

And the thing is, you may not realize it's happening, because Sinclair and its digital news subsidiary, Circa, not only produce and send packages to their stations, they even write scripts that local anchors can use to introduce the pieces.

For example, just this Tuesday night, anchors at Sinclair stations all over the country introduced a story about Michael Flynn like this.

Did the FBI have a personal vendetta in pursuing the Russia investigation of President Trump's former National Security Advisor, Michael Flynn?

Did the FBI have a personal vendetta in pursuing the Russia investigation of

President Trump's former national security advisor, Michael Flynn.

Did the FBI have a personal vendetta in pursuing the investigation?

Yeah, but you could say it could very well be true about anything.

Are all peanut M&Ms just snake eggs painted different colors?

Do foxes walk on their hind legs when no 1 is looking?

Is there really only 1 Olsen twin who's moving back and forth at superhuman speed to trick the human eye into seeing 2 of them?

All of those things could very well be true, and aside from that 1 about the Olsen twins, none of them are.

Now, the story they were teasing was that Michael Flynn had apparently spoken up on behalf of a former FBI agent in a gender discrimination suit against the agency.

But it is a huge stretch to get from there to an agency-wide conspiracy to bring him down.

The problem is, there is real power in hearing your trusted local newscasters using FBI and personal vendetta in a sentence.

If those same newscasters somehow use the words Daniel Stern and explosive ejaculation in the same sentence, you could never watch Home Alone the same way again.

And Sinclair's content can often not be optional.

They regularly send out what are called must-runs, segments that station managers are directed to work into their broadcasts.

Both Boris Epstein and Mark Hyman segments are must-runs, and so are some news segments.

In fact, Let me give you a taste of a must-run story that ran just a month before last year's election.

How can Americans, especially blacks and Latinos in America, support Hillary Clinton?

It's a surprising message coming from a black pastor.

But Evangelical Bishop Aubrey Shines is spreading a message of why he believes Hillary Clinton's Democratic Party isn't good for black Americans.

Just hold on a second there, because first, Democrats gave this country slavery?

It's a little more complicated than that.

Sure, someone gave me this haircut, but I'm accountable for being comfortable with it, liking it, and keeping it around for a morally repugnant amount of time.

Look, and you can maybe, maybe, see why that could be news in Florida.

But that piece ran in Columbus, El Paso, Omaha, Syracuse, Seattle, Green Bay, Tulsa, and stations all over the country.

And to be fair, Sinclair didn't let all that pastor's assertions go by completely unchecked.

They did have the brief appearance of balance by bringing in this political scientist to fact-check the video, but he was given far less screen time than the pastor, and the voiceover undercut him at every turn.

Bullock says that Shines cherry-picked his history.

But if you have the whole context of history, and where these, the things are mentioned, where they actually miss pieces, then you would not be persuaded at all.

So about that history, when it comes to the KKK, historians generally agree it was created in post-Civil War reconstruction by Democrats, and later, Southern Democrats were behind the Jim Crow laws.

And as I've mentioned, over time, those parties have actually shifted in terms of what their membership base is.

I absolutely love his frustration as he tries to explain that now is not 100 years ago.

You almost expect him to say, I'll prove it.

Neither of us are wearing bowler hats, and that woman over there has a job.

All of which supports my theory that, as I've mentioned, now is not 100 years ago.

The must-runs are not just individual pieces, they are also recurring features, like poll questions, which can range from benign to pretty leading.

What did you think of today's Comey testimony?

Do you think it was all about substance or theater?

Do you think enough is being done to battle street gangs in the U.S.?

Do you trust information from unnamed sources in the Washington Post stories?

Why are cable news channels airing so much coverage of the Trump-Russia story?

It's bias against the president, for higher ratings, or it's a really important story.

There is a clear slant to those questions and answers.

How would you describe the way Donald Trump looks in athletic wear?

A, Adonis-like, B, Herculean, C, striking for a man of his age, or D, not my thing, but I'd still hit it.

But perhaps the most troubling thing of all is that Sinclair has a daily must-run segment called the Terrorism Alert Desk.

They report on terrorism every single day, whether there is something major to report on or not.

Which means that sometimes, the updates contain things like this.

The company in charge of security for the Wimbledon tennis Tournament says the ringleader of the London Bridge attack did apply for a job.

Now, he was not interviewed, and no interview was scheduled.

He just filled out an online application.

An ISIS flag was found hanging in a neighborhood in New Hampshire.

It was taken down, and police are looking into who put it there.

From the Terrorism Alert Desk in Washington, I'm Lindsay Masters.

In other alerts, my grandma heard a loud noise, a man with a beard asked me when the next bus is coming, and Iran still exists.

From the terrorism alert desk in Washington, I am just about done with this shit.

And look, look, there is no doubt that the terror alert desk has also featured some truly terrifying stories.

ISIS has carried out a gruesome public execution in Iraq.

They sliced 9 teens in half with a chainsaw.

Now, that caught our attention, because it feels like the sort of thing we'd have seen reported elsewhere.

So we tried to track down that story, and it originated with an anonymously sourced report on something called Iraqi News.

We weren't able to find any outlet that had independently verified it.

And even when it was picked up by British tabloids and Breitbart, they were careful to distance themselves with language like, it has been claimed and reportedly.

And I did not know it was possible to dip beneath the journalistic standards of Breitbart.

That's like being too bad a chef to work at a carnival food cart.

Look, your fried ham is unimaginative and bland, and we cannot have that.

And what was perhaps even weirder about that chainsaw segment was the story that closed it out.

And mayors in 22 French towns are ignoring a high court's ruling that says banning burkinis is illegal.

More than 30 towns initially outlawed the swimwear worn mostly by Muslim women.

From the Terrorism Alert Desk, I'm Michelle Marsh.

That is not about terrorism, it's just about Muslims.

By that definition, terrorism is anything a Muslim does.

Tonight, Mahershala Ali on the cover of GQ, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar sneezed in an airport, and happy birthday to Fareed Zakaria.

Now, to their credit, in the face of all of this, some Sinclair stations are fighting back against their parent company.

For instance, their station in Seattle, Como, has engaged in clever acts of rebellion, like airing must-runs at times of low viewership.

In fact, their only airing of the story about the New Hampshire ISIS flag was at 4.54 a.m.

So it was basically only seen by people in hospital waiting rooms, customers at 24-hour 7-Elevens, and Craig.

But the truth is, if you work at a Sinclair station, there is only so much that you can do.

And should this Tribune acquisition go through, there are gonna be even more good journalists having to see their hard work placed alongside TerraDesk nonsense.

Just as there'll be even more unsuspecting audience members who'll be getting a heaping dose of Sinclair's content, possibly without realizing it.

So you should find out who owns your local stations and bear that in mind as you watch.

And for any Tribune station that could soon be taken over, we've produced a little video so you can alert your viewers.

Don't think of it as a must-run, Think of it more as a probably should-run.

Hello, I'm Steve Schripper from The Sopranos.

And I'm probably not the last guy with an accent, wearing a cheap tie, standing in front of a green screen that you're going to see on this channel.

This station could soon be owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group.

And if you do, just know, that wasn't produced by this station.

Because the people at this station know that local news should never be about cheap scaremongering or advancing a political agenda.

It should only be about weather, sports, I-team investigations, and human interest stories featuring cute animals, like this pot-bellied pig.

Anyway, I'm Steve Schirrupper telling you, if this becomes a Sinclair station, good luck with that shit.


Speaker 0: To the victim's window, pointed the gun right at her face, and told her he wanted her purse, her money, and her cell phone. Holy shit!

Speaker 1: You have got to hand it to him. That is a great way to make people pay attention to a story they may not be interested in. And with that in mind, our main story tonight concerns the potential problems in corporate consolidation of local news. Don't you dare change the channel! Now, national cable news gets a lot of attention with their big budgets and their fancy graphics packages.

Meanwhile, local news often has to do a lot more with a lot less.

Speaker 2: The black bear was roaming through Tina Marison's backyard. Tina was too stunned to get a picture, but this is what the bear probably looked like, except real. This recreation identifies how witnesses say the bear escaped into the woods.

Speaker 1: Know what? Whoever is hiding behind that tiny bear cutout deserves a Pulitzer. Oh, sure, sure. He could have stood up straight and just walked the bear across the garden. It would've been exactly as convincing, But he didn't do that.

He hunched down because he cares. That man is a journalist. And look, it's easy to make fun. It's easy for me to make fun, but local news fills an important role. Finding stories that the national news is missing.

This show uses local news all the time. Our civil forfeiture piece used outstanding reporting from Tennessee's News Channel 5. And our piece on problems with 911 used great work from Atlanta's 11 Alive. In fact, a Pew study last year found that local news is trusted more than national news. People absolutely love it.

So, yes, when you watch local news, you may see something silly, but you also may see something great. And there's actually a third option, because in some parts of the country, you might see this.

Speaker 3: I've got a message for certain students. Listen up closely, Snowflake. Yes, I'm talking to you. You, the social justice warrior who whines for trigger warnings and safe spaces. Not grown up enough to deal with the facts?

Then hunker down in your room and Snapchat the day away with other social justice warriors. College isn't a babysitting service. It's time to grow up, snowflake.

Speaker 1: Now, that man is Mark Hyman, with 1 in what I presume is a series featuring titles like, Wake Up, Libtard, Cut Much, You Little Beta Baby, and Knock Knock, Sheeple, It's Me, Truth. With Mark Hyman. Hyman is a commentator and former executive at Sinclair Broadcast Group. And Sinclair may be the most influential media company that you've never heard of. Not only are they the largest owner of local TV stations in the country, they could soon get even bigger.

Speaker 3: Sinclair will pay about 4000000000 dollars for Tribune Media and its 42 local stations. The combined companies will create the largest single group of television stations in the nation.

Speaker 1: Wow. It is a little disconcerting to learn that something you've only just heard of is throwing around 4000000000 dollars. It's like finding out that ExxonMobil just got bought and it was by the little twerp who plays the new Spider-Man. What? How's that possible?

How does Spider-Twerp have the resources to do that? I only just found out he existed. Now, this acquisition still needs regulatory approval, but it is widely assumed that that will happen. At which point, Sinclair's reach could expand dramatically. We did some math, and we found out that when you combine the most-watched nightly newscasts on Sinclair and Tribune stations in some of their largest markets, you get an average total viewership of 2.2 million households, and that is a lot.

It's more than any current prime time show on Fox News, including 5 Idiots Have the Most Intolerable Dinner Party Ever, And that guy from college everyone hated has a talk show now with Tucker Carlson. And the Fox News parallels don't stop there, because Sinclair's content tilts noticeably conservative. Remember that Snowflake guy? Sinclair produces those segments and sends them to their affiliates. And that in itself is already unusual.

As best we can tell, no other major owner of TV stations distributes its own commentary segments to run during local news. And Hyman's opinions hew hard right.

Speaker 3: We are threatened by a nasty cancer epidemic. It's a danger to our nation. It is political correctness and multiculturalism. Words that were once acceptable in polite conversation are no longer. Handicapped and retarded are now off limits.

There is 1 step that's proven to dramatically reduce domestic violence. Marriage. I am now a proud Washington Redskins fan. And the opinion that only black people can legitimately have an afro? Someone should tell that to American folk singer, Art Garfunkel.

-♪ Art Garfunkel ♪ -♪ Art Garfunkel

Speaker 0: ♪

Speaker 1: What are you talking about? As I believe Paul Simon once said, there's no need to involve Art Garfunkel in any of this. And the thing is, Hyman is not Sinclair's only conservative voice. Just recently, they hired a man named Boris Epstein, a former Trump advisor who you may remember from multiple TV appearances last year, where he made wild claims like this 1.

Speaker 4: Barack Obama won in 2008 North Carolina due to illegal voting. Go ahead, Jake, sorry.

Speaker 1: Boris, Where are you getting that from? Barack Obama won in North Carolina because of voter fraud?

Speaker 4: 5 percent of voting in North Carolina may have been by people who are non-citizens, who should not have been voting, and swung North Carolina to Mr. Obama.

Speaker 1: Now, obviously, that is nothing even resembling a fact. The claim he's making received a pants-on-fire from PolitiFact. And even if it were true, which again, it isn't, Obama still would have beat McCain by 162 electoral votes. Which raises the question, do Trump surrogates even know why they are lying? Or are they driven by some vague instinct, like when a cat sits inside a box?

Why are you doing that? I have no idea. There's just something inside me that tells me I should. -♪ I should be

Speaker 4: a better man ♪ -♪ I should

Speaker 1: be a better man ♪ And yet, and yet, Epstein is now Sinclair's chief political analyst and has a regular segment called Bottom Line with Boris. Let me show you a recent 1 concerning a retracted story on CNN.

Speaker 4: The bottom line is this. CNN, along with other cable news networks, is struggling to stick to the facts and to be impartial in covering politics in general and this president specifically.

Speaker 1: Oh, come on. That could not be more pot calling the kettle black if he said, the bottom line is, CNN is a rejected extra from The Sopranos in a JCPenney's tie, whose voice sounds like Sylvester Stallone with a mouthful of bees.

Speaker 0: -♪ ♪ -♪

Speaker 1: But Sinclair doesn't just lean right with its commentators. Even its ad breaks sometimes put a thumb on the scale. In 2010, Sinclair's Pittsburgh affiliate pulled a 30-second Democratic ad off the air after they received a complaint and found that some claims in the ad were unsubstantiated. And look, that's a good thing. It is good that they were willing to take a stand to ensure nothing inaccurate made its way on air.

Although, just a few months later, that exact same station and multiple other Sinclair outlets aired a 25-minute attack ad on Democrats featuring assertions like this.

Speaker 5: During his presidential election, he wound up with a record-shattering $750 million in his campaign. To this day, he refuses to report from whence it came. 1 reason might be that some of it originated from the terrorist group Hamas.

Speaker 1: Oh, my God! Look, look, if you are going to make up scary donors to the Obama campaign, why stop with Hamas? Just keep going. He won't say where the money came from. 1 reason may be that it originated with this gang of coyotes that has made billions selling human babies to other hungrier coyotes.

And look, if the opinions were confined just to the commentary or to the ad breaks, that would be 1 thing. But Sinclair can sometimes dictate the content of your local newscast as well. And In contrast to Fox News, a clearly conservative outlet where you basically know what you're getting, with Sinclair, they are injecting Fox-worthy content into the mouths of your local news anchors. The 2 people who you know and who you trust, and whose on-screen chemistry can usually best be described as 2 people. And the thing is, you may not realize it's happening, because Sinclair and its digital news subsidiary, Circa, not only produce and send packages to their stations, they even write scripts that local anchors can use to introduce the pieces.

For example, just this Tuesday night, anchors at Sinclair stations all over the country introduced a story about Michael Flynn like this.

Speaker 6: Did the FBI have a personal vendetta in pursuing the Russia investigation of President Trump's former National Security Advisor, Michael Flynn? Did the FBI have a personal vendetta in pursuing the Russia investigation of

Speaker 3: President Trump's former national security advisor, Michael Flynn.

Speaker 1: Did the FBI have a personal vendetta in pursuing the investigation?

Speaker 6: It could very well be true.

Speaker 1: Yeah, but you could say it could very well be true about anything. Are all peanut M&Ms just snake eggs painted different colors? Do foxes walk on their hind legs when no 1 is looking? Is there really only 1 Olsen twin who's moving back and forth at superhuman speed to trick the human eye into seeing 2 of them? All of those things could very well be true, and aside from that 1 about the Olsen twins, none of them are.

Now, the story they were teasing was that Michael Flynn had apparently spoken up on behalf of a former FBI agent in a gender discrimination suit against the agency. But it is a huge stretch to get from there to an agency-wide conspiracy to bring him down. The problem is, there is real power in hearing your trusted local newscasters using FBI and personal vendetta in a sentence. If those same newscasters somehow use the words Daniel Stern and explosive ejaculation in the same sentence, you could never watch Home Alone the same way again. And Sinclair's content can often not be optional.

They regularly send out what are called must-runs, segments that station managers are directed to work into their broadcasts. Both Boris Epstein and Mark Hyman segments are must-runs, and so are some news segments. In fact, Let me give you a taste of a must-run story that ran just a month before last year's election.

Speaker 3: How can Americans, especially blacks and Latinos in America, support Hillary Clinton?

Speaker 7: It's a surprising message coming from a black pastor. But Evangelical Bishop Aubrey Shines is spreading a message of why he believes Hillary Clinton's Democratic Party isn't good for black Americans.

Speaker 3: Party that gave this country slavery. The KKK. Jim Crow laws.

Speaker 1: Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on. Hold on. Just hold on a second there, because first, Democrats gave this country slavery? It's a little more complicated than that. Sure, someone gave me this haircut, but I'm accountable for being comfortable with it, liking it, and keeping it around for a morally repugnant amount of time.

Look, and you can maybe, maybe, see why that could be news in Florida. Tampa pastor makes crazy video. But that piece ran in Columbus, El Paso, Omaha, Syracuse, Seattle, Green Bay, Tulsa, and stations all over the country. And to be fair, Sinclair didn't let all that pastor's assertions go by completely unchecked. They did have the brief appearance of balance by bringing in this political scientist to fact-check the video, but he was given far less screen time than the pastor, and the voiceover undercut him at every turn.

Speaker 7: Bullock says that Shines cherry-picked his history.

Speaker 8: But if you have the whole context of history, and where these, the things are mentioned, where they actually miss pieces, then you would not be persuaded at all.

Speaker 7: So about that history, when it comes to the KKK, historians generally agree it was created in post-Civil War reconstruction by Democrats, and later, Southern Democrats were behind the Jim Crow laws.

Speaker 8: Yes, that was the party of the South. And as I've mentioned, over time, those parties have actually shifted in terms of what their membership base is.

Speaker 1: I absolutely love his frustration as he tries to explain that now is not 100 years ago. You almost expect him to say, I'll prove it. Neither of us are wearing bowler hats, and that woman over there has a job. All of which supports my theory that, as I've mentioned, now is not 100 years ago. And here's the thing.

The must-runs are not just individual pieces, they are also recurring features, like poll questions, which can range from benign to pretty leading.

Speaker 6: What did you think of today's Comey testimony? Do you think it was all about substance or theater?

Speaker 9: Do you think enough is being done to battle street gangs in the U.S.?

Speaker 6: Do you trust information from unnamed sources in the Washington Post stories?

Speaker 10: Why are cable news channels airing so much coverage of the Trump-Russia story? So here are the options. It's bias against the president, for higher ratings, or it's a really important story.

Speaker 1: Okay. There is a clear slant to those questions and answers. I can't wait for the inevitable poll. How would you describe the way Donald Trump looks in athletic wear? A, Adonis-like, B, Herculean, C, striking for a man of his age, or D, not my thing, but I'd still hit it.

Speaker 0: -♪ ♪ -♪

Speaker 1: But perhaps the most troubling thing of all is that Sinclair has a daily must-run segment called the Terrorism Alert Desk. That is right. They report on terrorism every single day, whether there is something major to report on or not. Which means that sometimes, the updates contain things like this.

Speaker 6: The company in charge of security for the Wimbledon tennis Tournament says the ringleader of the London Bridge attack did apply for a job. Now, he was not interviewed, and no interview was scheduled. He just filled out an online application. An ISIS flag was found hanging in a neighborhood in New Hampshire. It was taken down, and police are looking into who put it there.

From the Terrorism Alert Desk in Washington, I'm Lindsay Masters.

Speaker 1: In other alerts, my grandma heard a loud noise, a man with a beard asked me when the next bus is coming, and Iran still exists. From the terrorism alert desk in Washington, I am just about done with this shit. And look, look, there is no doubt that the terror alert desk has also featured some truly terrifying stories.

Speaker 9: ISIS has carried out a gruesome public execution in Iraq. They sliced 9 teens in half with a chainsaw.

Speaker 1: Now, that caught our attention, because it feels like the sort of thing we'd have seen reported elsewhere. So we tried to track down that story, and it originated with an anonymously sourced report on something called Iraqi News. We weren't able to find any outlet that had independently verified it. And even when it was picked up by British tabloids and Breitbart, they were careful to distance themselves with language like, it has been claimed and reportedly. And I did not know it was possible to dip beneath the journalistic standards of Breitbart.

That's like being too bad a chef to work at a carnival food cart. Look, your fried ham is unimaginative and bland, and we cannot have that. We're Uncle Sticky's discount ham wagon. But they reported it like it was a fact. And what was perhaps even weirder about that chainsaw segment was the story that closed it out.

Speaker 9: And mayors in 22 French towns are ignoring a high court's ruling that says banning burkinis is illegal. More than 30 towns initially outlawed the swimwear worn mostly by Muslim women. From the Terrorism Alert Desk, I'm Michelle Marsh.

Speaker 1: What the fuck? That is not about terrorism, it's just about Muslims. By that definition, terrorism is anything a Muslim does. Tonight, Mahershala Ali on the cover of GQ, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar sneezed in an airport, and happy birthday to Fareed Zakaria. This has been your terrorism alert desk.

Now, to their credit, in the face of all of this, some Sinclair stations are fighting back against their parent company. For instance, their station in Seattle, Como, has engaged in clever acts of rebellion, like airing must-runs at times of low viewership. In fact, their only airing of the story about the New Hampshire ISIS flag was at 4.54 a.m. So it was basically only seen by people in hospital waiting rooms, customers at 24-hour 7-Elevens, and Craig. Just go to bed, Craig.

Get your shit together and go to bed. But the truth is, if you work at a Sinclair station, there is only so much that you can do. And should this Tribune acquisition go through, there are gonna be even more good journalists having to see their hard work placed alongside TerraDesk nonsense. Just as there'll be even more unsuspecting audience members who'll be getting a heaping dose of Sinclair's content, possibly without realizing it. So you should find out who owns your local stations and bear that in mind as you watch.

And for any Tribune station that could soon be taken over, we've produced a little video so you can alert your viewers. Don't think of it as a must-run, Think of it more as a probably should-run. Take a look.

Speaker 11: Hello, I'm Steve Schripper from The Sopranos. And I'm probably not the last guy with an accent, wearing a cheap tie, standing in front of a green screen that you're going to see on this channel. And I'll tell you why. This station could soon be owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group. So you might see this fucking guy.

With this fucking logo. Or this fucking desk. And if you do, just know, that wasn't produced by this station. Because the people at this station know that local news should never be about cheap scaremongering or advancing a political agenda. It should only be about weather, sports, I-team investigations, and human interest stories featuring cute animals, like this pot-bellied pig.

Look at this little guy. He's called Porkchop. Anyway, I'm Steve Schirrupper telling you, if this becomes a Sinclair station, good luck with that shit.

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Sinclair Broadcast Group: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)