{"id":355912,"date":"2018-04-09T09:31:58","date_gmt":"2018-04-09T08:31:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/sinclair-broadcasting-airs-allied-progress-ad\/"},"modified":"2018-04-09T09:31:58","modified_gmt":"2018-04-09T08:31:58","slug":"sinclair-broadcasting-airs-allied-progress-ad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/sinclair-broadcasting-airs-allied-progress-ad\/","title":{"rendered":"Sinclair Broadcasting Airs Allied Progress Ad"},"content":{"rendered":"<div itemprop=\"articleBody\"><meta itemprop=\"image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/sites\/default\/files\/headline\/thumbs\/tell-the-fcc-sinclair-955px.jpg\"\/><meta itemprop=\"wordCount\" content=\"501\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Sinclair Broadcast Group has agreed to air a commercial from a progressive watchdog that\u2019s critical of the broadcaster\u2019s actions.<\/p>\n<p>But Allied Progress called foul Sunday.<\/p>\n<p>Sinclair began running the 30-second spot with a 15-second defense of Sinclair, followed by the Allied Progress 30-second ad, and then another 15-second of Sinclair&#8217;s voiceover: \u201cThe misleading ad you just saw focused on a brief promotional message that simply said we\u2019re a source for truthful news. It ignored thousands of hours of local news we produce each year to keep you informed. The ad was purchased by a group known for its liberal bias, and we hope you won\u2019t buy into the hysteria and hype.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The unusual move comes one week after\u00a0Sinclair Broadcast Group, the nation&#8217;s largest television owner, faced mounting scrutiny for its mandatory scripted segments \u00a0echoing President Trump\u2019s talking point sand pending mega-merger with Tribune Media.<\/p>\n<p>Allied Progress <a href=\"https:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/news\/2018\/04\/05\/call-block-extremely-dangerous-merger-ad-campaign-will-target-sinclair-sinclair\">announced<\/a> on Thursday it&#8217;s six-figure ad buy.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/qWYI7h2mLz0?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>In response, Allied Progress released the following statement Sunday from its executive direct, Karl Frisch:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen we bought airtime with Sinclair we didn&#8217;t think they&#8217;d respond by admitting they actively push a partisan agenda. But that&#8217;s essentially what they&#8217;ve done by attacking Allied Progress for a supposed \u2018liberal bias\u2019 while simultaneously claiming they want viewers to hear the other side in their response.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat we are a progressive consumer watchdog dedicated to holding special interests accountable is something we wear proudly on our sleeves. We&#8217;re clear about who we are. Sinclair is not. By claiming &#8216;both sides&#8217; and attacking a critic&#8217;s liberal politics, they are acknowledging they actively disseminate partisan conservative propaganda, something clearly at odds with their repeated claims to the contrary.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt is standard practice for a station to seek permission before bookending an ad with a content warning. That did not happen here, which is hardly surprising coming from a company that doesn&#8217;t even subscribe to the basic pillars of independent journalistic integrity.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen one company owns this much of the local television media marketplace, it can drown out the voices of other sources, push a political agenda with little resistance, and misuse the people&#8217;s airwaves in an attempt to silence and malign its critics. That is precisely what Sinclair is doing. Imagine what they&#8217;ll do if the Tribune merger is approved and they can reach into the homes of 72% of Americans.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We will continue to sound the alarm over Sinclair&#8217;s encroaching control over America&#8217;s most trusted sources for local news. They can force their anchors to read from the same politically motivated script, but they can&#8217;t stop their viewers from changing the channel and contacting the FCC.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The six-figure, one-week ad buy was slated to begin last Friday but faced significant delays from Sinclair and did not begin until this weekend on four stations: WJLA (ABC News) in Washington, D.C., KDSM (FOX News) in Des Moines, KOMO (ABC News) in Seattle, and Sinclair\u2019s flagship station WBFF (FOX News) in Baltimore.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\" xml:lang=\"en\">When a media company responds to critics by calling them liberal, they expose their own political agenda. <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/StopSinclair?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#StopSinclair<\/a> <\/p>\n<p>1\/9<a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/gGM54aVnAD\">https:\/\/t.co\/gGM54aVnAD<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Allied Progress (@AlliedProgress) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/AlliedProgress\/status\/983030076995489796?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">April 8, 2018<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<p><script async src=\"http:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><br \/>\n<b>Via <a href=\"https:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/news\/2018\/04\/08\/sinclair-broadcasting-airs-allied-progress-ad-between-attacks-group\">Common Dreams<\/a>. This piece was reprinted by <a href=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\">RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission or license.<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sinclair Broadcast Group has agreed to air a commercial from a progressive watchdog that\u2019s critical of the broadcaster\u2019s actions. But Allied Progress called foul Sunday. Sinclair began running the 30-second spot with a 15-second defense of Sinclair, followed by the Allied Progress 30-second ad, and then another 15-second of Sinclair&#8217;s voiceover: \u201cThe misleading ad you [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":355913,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-355912","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355912","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=355912"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355912\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/355913"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=355912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=355912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=355912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}