WJAR 10’s Parent Co. Under Fire for Trading Access to Trump for More Positive Coverage

WJAR 10’s Parent Co. Under Fire for Trading Access to Trump for More Positive Coverage

Politico is reporting that Sinclair Broadcasting made a deal with the Trump campaign for better access. This is not the first time that WJAR's parent company has been tied to pushing a conservative agenda.

“Kushner said the agreement with Sinclair, which owns television stations across the country in many swing states and often packages news for their affiliates to run, gave them more access to Trump and the campaign, according to six people who heard his remarks,” reported Politico, of remarks made by Trump's son-in-law, who is married to Trump's daughter, Ivanka. 

Political Coverage Controversy

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According to Politico, Trump’s comments were, de facto, unedited in broadcasts in exchange for access. In exchange, Sinclair would broadcast their Trump interviews across the country without commentary, Kushner said. Kushner highlighted that Sinclair, in states like Ohio, reaches a much wider audience — around 250,000 (viewers) — than networks like CNN, which reach somewhere around 30,000.”

This is not the first time Sinclair has been tied to conservative agendas.  The Sinclair family is known for being politically conservative and in 2004 the company sparked a national firestorm for pushing an anti-John Kerry documentary and initially directed their stations across the country to run the "anti-Kerry veterans group Swift Boat Veterans documentary,” according to a Sinclair journalist in the news department who said they were instructed to treat a partisan documentary as a news item.

“Jon Leiberman, the Sinclair reporter fired for publicly criticizing the company's handling of the documentary, said Sinclair executives told its news staff Sunday that they planned to run a "significant chunk" of the film, "but they refused to put a time on it." He said he objected when the company told reporters to develop news stories around the film,” according to a 2004 CNN news report.

CNN also reported that Sinclair's “top executives have donated at least $58,000 to President Bush's re-election campaign or the Republican National Committee for the 2004 election. Democrats said Sinclair would have been making an illegal campaign contribution to Bush's re-election effort by airing the film.”

At the time of the controversy, Sinclair’s President and Chief Executive Officer tried to defend the company. "People describe me as a right-wing loony-tune conservative," Smith said in a Washington Post article. He still leads Sinclair today.

According to Sinclair documents, the company "owns, operates and/or provides services to 173 television stations in 81 markets, broadcasting 482 channels and having affiliations with all the major networks" and claims it is the leading local news provider in the country