Channel 10’s Pro-Trump Segments Raise Concern Among Journalists

One commentator rails against ‘snowflakes’ and ‘social justice warriors,’ proposes marriage as a solution to domestic violence and laments that people can’t say ‘retarded’ anymore. Another rants against fake news. It might seem like a typical night on Fox News, but it’s actually programming that you might have seen locally on Channel 10.

These “must-run” segments are produced and distributed to local television outlets across the country by the Sinclair Broadcast Group, whose ownership of 173 stations in the United States makes them “the most influential media company you’ve never heard of,” according to HBO’s John Oliver, who ran an expose of the company’s pro-Trump tilt last summer. The segments, which also include a sensationalized Terrorism Alert Desk, attracted the attention of The New York Times, Politico, and GQ earlier this year.

The editorialized segments have raised concern with media experts.

“It should never be appropriate to inject editorial content in news programming,” said Linda Levin, a professor and former chair of the journalism department at the University of Rhode Island. Levin said corporate owners should have “no say” over local news programming.

One veteran local television reporter agreed. “I realize the media world has changed dramatically from even 10 or 15 years ago, but no, I don’t believe corporate officials from miles away should be trying to dictate content in local newscasts,” said Jim Hummel, a former reporter at ABC6 and currently the executive director and senior investigator for The Hummel Report.

Hummel and Levin said editorial commentary may still be acceptable under some circumstances. Levin recalled a local newscast that read an editorial expressing the views of the station owner. She said this segment was less problematic because it was clearly identified as such during the broadcast.

Hummel also recalled segments airing the opinion of a general manager or an ombudsman in segments that came at the end of the main newscast. “But to have regular conservative editorials with no balance from a more liberal voice to me is irritating. I don’t ever recall in my 13 years at ABC6 (from 1995-2008) the station running an editorial,” Hummel said.

Most local television news is a combination of gritty local crime reporting, general local news and hard-hitting local investigative pieces — such as the ones for which Hummel is known and the Target12 pieces on WPRI.

To have national editorial segments is ‘unusual’ and does not appear to be the practice of other media conglomerates, according to Oliver’s report on HBO. The segments appear to be of recent vintage. Sinclair, which acquired Channel 10 in 2014, started mandating daily clips from the Terrorism Alert Desk in November 2015, according to The New York Times. The Bottom Line with Boris, featuring the opinions of former Trump adviser Boris Epshteyn, appears to have debuted after the election. Another regular Sinclair commentator is Mark Hyman, a former company executive.

The commentators tend to reiterate Fox News or Breitbart News talking points. In one, Epshteyn defends Trump’s voter fraud commission. In another, he defends the president’s widely panned response to the Charlottesville protests. Hyman — whose jeremiad against snowflakes and social justice warriors is quoted above — also has complained about the number of attorneys in Robert Mueller’s office and derided Michelle Obama’s school lunch program for its “junk food science.” And, even though it’s billed as news, the Terrorism Alert Desk has been criticized for what one liberal news blog described as a “daily dose of fearmongering.”

Despite such editorial intrusions, Hummel defends the work of Channel 10’s local news reporters.

“I’m not sure if the content compromises local reporting, because when the reporters go out the door every day to cover a car accident, or a Raimondo press conference or a 195 Commission meeting, I don’t believe they carry a political slant with them. They’re just trying to get as complete a story as they can under challenging conditions and constant deadlines,” Hummel said.

“But I do think it’s confusing for the viewer, especially in a blue state like Rhode Island, to have national news pieces with a conservative slant inserted in a news cast — from the Circa packages to editorial essays by former Trump aide Boris Epshteyn. I think that can be a little jarring,” Hummel added. (Circa is a pro-Trump Sinclair subsidiary.)

Levin said it is possible Channel 10, which has been at the top of the ratings in the evening news slot, could lose some views. “[N]ow that the public is aware of this, it may well compromise its credibility or lead to some erosion of it,” Levin said.

Despite the controversy, Sinclair has denied that it is injecting any kind of bias into local news programming. “We work very hard to be objective and fair and be in the middle,” Scott Livingston, a Sinclair executive, told The New York Times last May. “I think maybe some other news organizations may be to the left of center, and we work very hard to be in the center.”

Channel 10’s general manager could not be reached for comment in time for publication. He has previously referred a request for comment from The Providence Journal to Sinclair, which defended the segments as contributing to a “diversity of viewpoints” on local news, according to The Providence Journal’s report in September.

Ultimately, Channel’s 10 credibility issues may be just one symptom of a much larger crisis in traditional media.

“As a journalist and retired journalism professor, I believe that the future of the broadcast news industry and newspapers rests in their credibility. Both are in somewhat fragile states today, and losing even a small amount of credibility can be harmful to their future,” Levin said.