[mejin]

Sinclair owns those companies. How is that any different than, let's say cnn, telling it's reporters what they can report on? I think it's bad that 6 corporations own 90% of the media, but until this changes don't expect the owners of those corporations to not inject their (left or right) bias to those stations.

[derefr]

I guess the bit of cognitive dissonance is just coming from "local news stations" having megaconglomerate ownership at all. Of course CNN is going to have a policy for its reporters, but I'd be surprised to find out that my town-of-50k-people's nightly news is "part of" CNN and following their policies.

[Digory]

CNN is in the business of orchestrating local news, though the local station is arguably 'subscribing' to those stories/policies.

One of Conan's recurring bits is anchors reading prepackaged scripts.[0]. They're all packages by CNN for local affiliates,[1] one of several similar services (including Fox).

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TM8L7bdwVaA

[1] http://thedesk.matthewkeys.net/2013/12/heres-how-conan-obrie...

[krastanov]

Most reputable news sources claim to have a "firewall" between owners and editors/journalists, i.e. they claim the owners can not tell the reporters what to do. While it is fair to be somewhat jaded, organizations like NPR and NYT uphold this ideal most of the time. (NPR being publicly funded is a weirder case)

[dogruck]

Note that NPR gets much of its funding from underwriting agreements (aka commercials). It's not accurate to describe NPR as "publicly funded."

Also, I think it is naive to claim that the NYT manages to achieve some holy grail of independence from its ownership. Remember that this is the organization that recently eliminated their fairly short-lived position of Public Editor.

[mejin]

Thank you for the response. I was unaware of the firewall concept. That does make what Sinclair is doing hypocritical, assuming that they claim to have a firewall (which the media should strive for).