Chutzpah can be defined by partisan leftist media outlets decrying conservative media outlets as tremendously biased. The Washington Post can't abide Sinclair Broadcasting owner David Smith purchasing the Baltimore Sun, which was apparently "nonpartisan" when it was a Democrat rag. Media reporter Sarah Ellison uncorked this thesis:
Sinclair’s recipe for TV news: Crime, homelessness, illegal drugs
The local news powerhouse, whose chairman recently bought the Baltimore Sun, focuses on fear in broadcasts that often align with Donald Trump’s view of cities
The Post puts the idea of a conservative newspaper under the "Democracy In America" tag -- as if conservative media are the opposite of democracy. Ellison summarized her findings:
Crime, homelessness, illegal drug use, failing schools and other societal ills have long been core elements of local TV news coverage. But on Sinclair’s growing nationwide roster of stations, the editorial focus reflects Smith’s conservative views and plays on its audience’s fears that America’s cities are falling apart, according to media observers, Smith associates, and current and former staffers who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal company matters.
Current and former Sun staffers are going to be a pile of liberals! This is the first unlabeled media observer:
“Sinclair stations deliver messages that appeal to older, White, suburban audiences, and they play up crime stories in a way that is disproportionate to their statistical presence,” said Anne Nelson, a journalist and author of Shadow Network: Media, Money and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right. “All of it is fearmongering and feeds into a racialized view of cities.”
Every local TV station is going to do stories on homelessness and crime, but the problem is "context," which is a weasel word for left-wing bias:
A recent dispatch from [Sinclair's] Project Baltimore noted that “Baltimore is a tough city. Nearly a quarter of its residents live in poverty. The murder rate is one of the highest in the nation. And schools are not immune to the city’s failures.”
While none of that is false, Fox45’s reporting can leave out context, said Liz Bowie, a former Sun education reporter who is now covering the same topic at the Baltimore Banner, a not-for-profit newsroom that launched in 2022 and hired much of its staff from the Sun.
“Many of their education stories lack context, and therefore the public gets a very different impression of the school system in Baltimore,” said Bowie, who wrote about education for the Sun for more than 20 years.
Liberal papers are upset if the public gets a "different impression" than the narrative they're forcing on people. The article ends with extreme Trump hater David Zurawik, a regular fear-mongerer on Brian Stelter's canceled Reliable Sources program. Zurawik argued Sinclair is a political tool, not journalism:
“These guys were more likely to threaten you when you called than talk to you,” said David Zurawik, a longtime media critic at the Sun who is now a professor at Goucher College. “It’s a Fox News wannabe. That’s their model, a political tool rather than a journalistic platform.”
What was CNN under Trump? The essence of nonpartisan news? The Left can't stand one of their platforms being bought out.
