One Powerful Billionaire Tells 185 Local News Stations What to Say

And you probably have never heard of him.

Sad, bored family created partially with AI

At 6:59 p.m. on March 31, 2018, in hundreds of American living rooms, nearly 200 local news anchors in cities from Portland, Maine, to Portland, Oregon, opened their evening newscasts with the same exact word-for-word grave warning.

It wasn’t a national weather alert sweeping the nation.

It wasn’t a late-night “Do you know where your children are?” public-service reminder.

It wasn’t even one of those goofy “alligator found in a backyard swimming pool” stories that every local station jumps on.

It was a single, carefully scripted diatribe on “fake news” eerily similar to Trump’s fake news rants. The monologue was crafted at the corporate headquarters of Sinclair Broadcast Group in Baltimore and read, word for word, by nearly 200 local TV stations that night. The scripted monologue was known inside Sinclair as a “must-run.” The segment had to air, typically during the most-watched evening newscast.

“…members of the media use their platforms to push their own personal bias… This is extremely dangerous to our democracy.”

As they read the teleprompter, every local TV anchor across America looked like they were sitting…