Sinclair Broadcasting's Hostile Takeover

One afternoon last December, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, was holding court at the lectern in the Brady Room, when a reporter raised a provocative question: Does President Trump understand the difference between Russian propaganda – the real "fake news" – and the American press? Sanders’ response elicited groans from the press corps, whom she charged were "purposefully putting out information that you know to be false."

The next day, at the headquarters of TV-WJLA, a drab, fluorescent-lit office space in Rosslyn, Virginia, the press conference was fashioned into a segment for the local nightly news: "Media Errors Lend Some Credence to Charges of 'Fake News.’" As the spot opened, WJLA correspondent Kristine Frazao told viewers that CNN was "walking back" a months-old story that revealed Attorney General Jeff Sessions had opted not to disclose meetings with a Russian official on a security-clearance form. According to Frazao, CNN had now published newly released documents, showing that Sessions had actually received permission from the FBI to omit the meetings. CNN's embarrassing mistake, Frazao intoned gravely, was "prompting President Trump to once again call them fake news."

A jumbo-sized tweet swooped into center frame: "[T]his could, in fact, be a fraud on the American Public," Trump wrote, blaming "Fake News CNN." WJLA then cut away, with practiced dramaturgy, to the footage of Sanders scolding CNN’s Jim Acosta: "There’s a very big difference between making honest mistakes and purposely misleading the American people – something that happens regularly."

To the average viewer – who consumes about two hours of television news during the work week – CNN’s mistake surely appeared damning: Sessions had merely followed instructions from the FBI, the resulting scandal an invention of left-leaning media outlets, and now even CNN had admitted it. But this was not accurate. CNN never "walked back" the story, as Frazao reported. The network’s first report had included the details all along, describing how Sessions first included the meetings, then, once given permission, erased them. That was the point: By requesting permission to omit the meetings, Sessions’ behavior suggested an awareness of impropriety. CNN’s follow-up story published a newly discovered FBI email that merely verified this timeline. "None of that has anything to do with 'fake news,’" says Lorraine Branham, dean of the Newhouse School of Journalism at Syracuse University. "If anything, they created fake news," she says of Sinclair. "And that’s the problem."

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