Corporate Consolidation of Local News Will Perpetuate Bias Against Arabs in U.S. Media
By Daniel Gil/ Contributing Writer
“ISIS has carried out a gruesome public execution in Iraq,” said anchor Michelle Marsh in September of 2016 as TERRORISM ALERT DESK basked in red and black within a digital graphic flares prominently in the background of a local news broadcast. The story about 9 teenagers being killed with a chainsaw was followed with an unrelated story about some towns in France ignoring a high court’s ruling which said banning burqa-bikinis was illegal.
The segment, which began running in November of 2015 is a daily portion of Sinclair Broadcast Group’s news cast, which is the largest owner of local television stations in the country. This specific segment made its way from a FOX news affiliate to the popular satire Last Week Tonight hosted by John Oliver, who used the clip to highlight a growing right-wing slant among local news stations around the country in a story about Sinclair, or as Oliver calls them, “the most influential media company you’ve never heard of.” And, they could be getting much larger.
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver
Sinclair recently proposed the acquisition of Tribune Media, a TV conglomerate headquartered in Chicago whose purchase could mean expanding Sinclair’s segments to potentially reach 70 percent of American homes. The combined media companies would add 42 to the 173 local stations Sinclair already owns, producing the largest single group owner of local television stations across the country, effectively creating an information monopoly skewed to the right of the political spectrum. Although the merger still needs regulatory approval, “it is widely assumed that that will happen,” said Oliver.
The Terrorism Alert Desk segment is part of a “must-run” package which Sinclar station managers are directed to fit into the broadcasts. Unlike most media groups, Sinclair edits and produces their own segments which are then sent to local stations for air time in a packaging technique called “central casting.”
This has led local stations owned by Sinclair to wage a battle over their very own editorial freedom in their news broadcasts. Some stations have pushed back in their own way on “must-runs” as Oliver pointed out, with some managers running them late at night when viewership is low. Many of the packages skew hard to the political right which inevitably perpetuate cultural and national narratives about who should be feared, and why, as in the Terrorism Alert Desk segments.
A recent Georgia State University study on the nature of reporting on terrorist attacks in the United States media found that the attacks by Muslims are covered about 450 percent more than attacks by people of other societal backgrounds. The expansion of such right-leaning segments would likely extend a bias which exists in national media, into local news outlets across the country.
Jim Naureckas, the editor of the national media and watch group, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) isn’t surprised by this statistic, saying he believes the coverage of Muslim terrorists is “even higher” in comparison to non-Muslims.
“It’s an issue with people’s’ preconceptions of what terrorism is and the media is a major source for this,” Naureckas told Arab America, citing both right and left wing media organizations as major culprits of misrepresenting Muslims through terrorism.
“A basic commercial strategy the media has used is an ‘us vs. them’ mentality,” which Naureckas says would require a “self-examination” of sorts on the part of media and viewers to try and mitigate. “People are not thinking statistically when these stories run,” Naureckas continued. “However, it does help to direct the attention towards the people who present it as an overwhelming issue.”
Silvio Waisbord, the associate director and professor at the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University said the issue of corporate consolidation of news is rooted in the “basic matters of corporate profit” and continues a trend in the news industry which has existed for decades.
“I don’t believe [Sinclair’s acquisition of Tribune] is necessarily driven by the quality of news or a conservative agenda, but more of an effect of deregulation in the industry,” he continued.
A study, which appeared in the International Journal of Public Opinion Research in 2015, linked increasing political polarization in news media as an effect of the deregulation of television in the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Seeking to spur competition between markets on television, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) deregulated the industry, which led to a corporate consolidation of smaller television stations by large companies like FOX and NBC.
“The best instrument we have against this is the regulation of the industry, particularly when the issue becomes politically based,” Waisbord said who remains highly skeptical of the media, saying he knows the problem will have “negative consequences on the quality of journalism.”
Among these negative consequences will unfortunately be the misinformation spread through local networks which have historically tried their best to remain impartial and independent. Along with this, the merger will likely lead to more bigoted reporting of Islam similar to the Terrorism Alert Desk and feed into a larger biased national narrative.
Notes on article
Silvio Waisbord was author’s Professor prior to publish