If you asked Americans what they think the most dangerous company in the United States is, you’ll probably get different answers depending on who you end up asking. Some will say tobacco companies. They have been proven to give people a ton of different types of cancers and illnesses just by existing and pushing out the products they made. It also doesn’t help when they have a history of pushing their products to children, and have created new products to target minors (Vape, anyone?). Others may tell you it’s companies that make alcoholic products, or those that make sexually explicit films or music. Gun companies are another popular choice, along with corporations that drill for oil or other natural resources, harming the economy while they do so.
What if I told you that the most dangerous company in America is one that you’ve probably never heard of?
Enter, Sinclair Broadcast Group. Sinclair Broadcasting owns 193 local affiliate news stations throughout the United States—the most of any company in the US. With their assets reaching such a large audience, the power they hold is immense. The company has been under fire for forcing all of their stations to read a script on the air about fake news and how members of the media perpetuate bias and opinion in their work. In a video shown below, the eerie statement is repeated over and over again on different channels across the country.
I’ve always been fascinated by media in this country and throughout the world to the point that I had originally wanted to go to school and go into journalism. There was a point in time where news anchors like Walter Cronkite were looked up to by everyone. Today, it isn’t the same, and people want to get their news from the side that they support. How did this happen? What were the causes that has made our society like this?
For my research paper, I’d like to look at news in this country from World War Two to the present day. The news has drastically changed in it’s form, going from print to radio to television to digitally available online, and the way the news is presented has drastically changed as well. I’d like to look at how the news shifted from local channels and newspapers into the massive corporate media conglomerates that exist today. I will look through analyzing primary sources such as news articles, videos, onto my primary focus which will be legislation in Congress as well as any communications related to those forms of legislation. I’ll also be looking into the behemoth that is social media, and the spread of fake news and misinformation campaigns on the internet.
News and media companies run this nation, and have a form of empire that shouldn’t be happening in a free democratic country. I’ll trace how we let this happen as my research.
Works Cited:
Fortin, Jacey, and Jonah Engel Bromwich. “Sinclair Made Dozens of Local News Anchors Recite the Same Script.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 2 Apr. 2018, http://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/02/business/media/sinclair-news-anchors-script.html.
HumCore Blog 