When the sale of the Baltimore Sun was announced, the Media Research Center spent a lot of time whining that it was exposed that the buyer, Sinclair Broadcasting Group chief David Smith, is a right-winger. Curtis Houck huffed in a Jan. 17 post:
In February 2021, liberal journalists (correctly) were crestfallen that Tribune, The Baltimore Sun’s parent company, would merge with Alden Global Capital, an infamous newspaper conglomerate known for stripping down newspapers to ghost status with, in some cases, only one staff writer and the thickness of a store-brand napkin.
After it was announced Monday that local businessman and Sinclair Broadcasting Group executive Chairman David Smith had rescued The Sun with plans to revitalize it to a robust status, the left is apoplectic.
Why? Sinclair, the local news behemoth Smith runs, has been accused for years of tilting right. Based on the hissy fits pitched by the AP, the Baltimore Banner (an online site started after the Alden purchase), CNN, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, it seems like journalists would rather the paper die all together than be run by someone who’s not a leftist.
[…]CNN reacted the way you’d expect. Oliver Darcy, their deranged liberal media hall monitor, whined in his media newsletter that it’s a “deal that has set off alarm bells” since Smith’s local stations around the country “has previously inserted right-wing editorial segments into its local news broadcasts.”
Writing on Threads and X, NPR media writer and former Sun reporter David Folkenflik huffed that “Smith was dismissive of the Sun‘s journalism” and “deflected questions about his own political activities.”
He also seethed that “Smith has been a major funder of GOP candidates; more recently he has funded far-right outfits like Project Veritas and Turning Point USA & financed local ballot initiatives.”
Folkenflik made sure to take a swipe at Sinclair stations: “Sinclair…has pulled the news coverage and commentaries on those stations markedly to the right, ultimately becoming quite supportive of Trump.”
In other words, media outlets took the same tone the MRC does whenever a “liberal” or “left-wing” person is involved.
Houck went on to wine that the Banner reported truthfully about Smith’s disdain for non-right-wing media — including the paper he was buying:
The Banner story reeked of scorn.
“In a tense, three-hour meeting with staff Tuesday afternoon, new Baltimore Sun owner David Smith told employees he has only read the paper four times in the past few months, insulted the quality of their journalism and encouraged them to emulate a TV station owned by his broadcasting company,” the story began, written by former Sun reporters Cody Boteler, Lee Sanderlin, and Giacomo Bologna.
Two paragraphs later, they shined that Smith said back in 2018 that print journalism was “so left-wing as to be meaningless dribble” and that he dared to stand by that statement in a meeting with Sun reporters.
[…]A second story was cartoonish in nature, down to the headline: “Meet The Baltimore Sun’s new owner: the conservative TV mogul who embraces controversy and profit.”
The nearly 3,000-word item dripped with disgust and conspiratorial zeal.
The one new find? Smith gave $121,000 to….gird your loins…Moms for Liberty!
Cue the suspense sounds effects!
Houck identified nothing inaccurate in any of this reporting about Smith and Sinclair.
The next day, Jorge Bonilla continued to be annoyed that Smith’s right-wing activism was pointed out (with a little Stelter Derangement Syndrome for good measure):
On MSNBC’s Alex Wagner Tonight, viewers were subjected to several painful minutes of self-indulgent whining over the purchase of The Baltimore Sun by David Smith, executive chairman of Sinclair Broadcasting Group. Media don’t especially appreciate losing control of an outlet.
Watch as Stelter lays out the case for why the sale of The Sun is such a terrible thing:
BRIAN STELTER: So what’s gonna happen to it now, Alex? I fear this is likely the end of the Sun as a nonpartisan, widely trusted, outlet. And there’s gonna have to be alternatives to pop up in its place. Because when these sorts of right-wing backers of media talk, they talk in code. When they say fair, what they really mean is, “we think the press is too liberal”. When they say balanced, what they mean is “we want the media to advance our political agenda, but cloak it in an all-sides claim to balance”. You know what I mean? It’s that kind of code language that we’re already hearing the new owner of the Sun start to use.
You know what’s code language? Terms like “truth-based” and “disinformation”, which Stelter and his ilk constantly use in order to belittle and ostracize those outlets that are not aligned with a left-wing vision of what America should be. This entire interview is a tantrum about the fact that the left has lost a print outlet.
Notice how Stelter whines about the advancement of political agendas, as if that weren’t what the “fact-based media” does on an exclusive basis (see: laptop, Hunter Biden). The “alternatives” that Stelter is calling on to rise are left-wing alternatives. To be clear.
Any time an outlet is not perceived as reliably left-wing, you begin to hear the mumbling about “trust” and “reliable sources of information”. I know this from the great Spanish-language media wars, and how the left tries to frame conservative outlets in that space. The same thing is happening here. Stelter and Wagner ran the “Spanish-language disinformation” op, with some Old Bay sprinkled over the top.
Bonilla clearly holds the view he’s been inculcated with through his MRC employment that only right-wing outlets report the truth and only non-right-wing outlets have a bias or an agenda.
Bonilla concluded by proclaiming without evidence that Smith will save the paper: “Ultimately, the purchase is not about “bringing the Fourth Estate to heel”, but about bringing it back to life with restored credibility. For the left-wing media, that’s a bridge too far.” Only an committed ideologue like Bonilla would think that turning a newspaper into a right-wing rag will bring it “restored credibility.”
In a Feb. 19 post, Tim Graham complained that a Washington Post profile of Smith pointed out that he uses his Sinclair stations to promote an ideology, something the MRC usually opposes:
Chutzpah can be defined by partisan leftist media outlets decrying conservative media outlets as tremendously biased. The Washington Post can’t abide Sinclair Broadcasting owner David Smith purchasing the Baltimore Sun, which was apparently “nonpartisan” when it was a Democrat rag.
Media reporter Sarah Ellison uncorked this thesis:
Sinclair’s recipe for TV news: Crime, homelessness, illegal drugs
The local news powerhouse, whose chairman recently bought the Baltimore Sun, focuses on fear in broadcasts that often align with Donald Trump’s view of cities
The Post puts the idea of a conservative newspaper under the “Democracy In America” tag — as if conservative media are the opposite of democracy.
Graham offered no evidence to back up his claim that the Sun is currently a “Democrat rag.” He then whined that current and former newspaper employees were interviewed for the story because “Current and former Sun staffers are going to be a pile of liberals!”
Graham went on to complain it was pointed out that Sinclair’s right-wing reporting on hot-button issues like crime “can leave out context,” which he insisted “is a weasel word for left-wing bias,” though he again offered no evidence to back that up (and the MRC has a history of demanding context for conservatives). He concluded with whataboutism:
Liberal papers are upset if the public gets a “different impression” than the narrative they’re forcing on people. The article ends with extreme Trump hater David Zurawik, a regular fear-mongerer on Brian Stelter’s canceled Reliable Sources program. Zurawik argued Sinclair is a political tool, not journalism:
“These guys were more likely to threaten you when you called than talk to you,” said David Zurawik, a longtime media critic at the Sun who is now a professor at Goucher College. “It’s a Fox News wannabe. That’s their model, a political tool rather than a journalistic platform.”
What was CNN under Trump? The essence of nonpartisan news? The Left can’t stand one of their platforms being bought out.
Yet Graham never criticizes right-wing outlets like Fox News and Sinclair stations for doing the same thing he accuses CNN of doing.