Senators ask FCC to look into Sinclair license, pause merger

Twelve U.S. Senators have called on the Federal Communications Commission to review conservative media giant Sinclair Broadcast Group's broadcast license in light of recent "must-run" promos.

Sinclair stations around the country aired promos warning about the dangers of "one-sided news stories plaguing our country." Anchors at local stations, including Seattle's KOMO-TV, were forced to read a script that, in part, alleged that "some members of the media use their platforms to push their own personal bias and agenda to control 'exactly what people think' ... This is extremely dangerous to a democracy."

Those promos went viral after Deadspin posted a video mashup of the anchors sticking word-for-word to the script, which mirrored one read by Sinclair Senior Vice President of News Scott Livingston a year earlier.

A group of Senators led by Washington's Maria Cantwell and New Mexico's Tom Udall, both Democrats, believes that given Sinclair's well-known political bent, those segments may have run afoul of federal communications law.

"We have strong concerns that Sinclair has violated the public interest obligation inherent in holding broadcast licenses," a letter from the group of 12 to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai read in part. "Sinclair may have violated the FCC's longstanding policy against broadcast licensees deliberately distorting news by staging, slanting, or falsifying informationtri."

Sinclair was fined $13.3 million by the FCC in December for running over 1,700 commercials designed to look like news broadcasts over a six-month period without properly identifying them as paid content. That was a fraction of the maximum allowable fine of $82 million, or three percent of Sinclair's annual sales.

https://www.seattlepi.com/seattlenews/article/Senators-ask-FCC-to-look-into-Sinclair-license-12828211.php?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dailynewsletterspi&utm_term=spi