Rolling Stone has just published a must read article on Sinclair Broadcast Group, and sheds new light on an important piece of the White House propaganda puzzle. The article reveals Sinclair to be what we always knew it was -- the largest and most powerful disseminator of Republican propaganda that exists in the modern media. Its operation, for instance, provided the biggest megaphone for the payola-lathered Armstrong Williams:
Although [CEO David] Smith says he didn't know [Armstrong] Williams was on the take, he liked the pundit's pro-Bush views and was eager to hand him plum assignments at Sinclair. While on the Bush payroll, Williams did an interview for Sinclair with then Education Secretary Rod Paige, the man responsible for funneling him taxpayer money to secure such prime-time exposure. He also interviewed Majority Whip Tom DeLay, and even got an hour on camera with Vice President Dick Cheney, who rarely speaks to the media. "Sinclair brought me stuff that I did not have -- real numbers, where you can get the speaker of the house or the VP," Williams tells ROLLING STONE. "On Sinclair, I was talking to millions of viewers a night."
Even before the payoffs became public, the news staff at Sinclair was horrified. The producer who edited the interview Williams did with Paige calls it "the worst piece of TV I've ever been associated with. You've seen softballs from Larry King? Well, this was softer. I told my boss it didn't even deserve to be broadcast, but they kept pushing me to put more of it on tape. In retrospect, it was so clearly propaganda."
Of course, this kind of exploitation of the airwaves is nothing new for Sinclair's CEO, who got his start, Rolling Stone reveals, in the porn industry:
Smith had some experience in the media when he took over the company from his father -- but it wasn't the kind of work most conservatives would appreciate. In the 1970s, he was a partner in a business called Cine Processors, which made bootleg copies of porn films in the basement of a building owned by another of his father's companies, the Commercial Radio Institute. "We had the film-processing lab in operation for, like, a year," recalls David Williams, Smith's partner at Cine. "The first film we copied was Deep Throat, which had just opened in New York and was not available anywhere else." According to Williams, Cine got involved with the mob and was busted by the police. "How David got control of the family company after that, I don't know," he says. "He was just a big egotist. He wanted attention."
While Sinclair appears to be treading water in terms of its profitability, it has become a paranoid organization -- employing KGB-style surveillance of its employees to make sure they don't "blow the whistle" on its unsavory activities:
Employees report a pervasive climate of fear at Sinclair. Staffers worry that management is listening to their telephone calls, and a recent notice sent to all employees warns that the company is monitoring their e-mail and Internet use. "We know if you use e-mail to send jokes to your friends and co-workers," the memo states. "We know if you view porn.... We know if you order parts for the car you are trying to restore.... We know how many people searched for Janet Jackson after the Super Bowl (97 searches)." Employees laugh when told that Smith insists he runs Sinclair like a family. "They are blinded," a former producer says. "They think their employees are loyal, but really they're not in touch with what's happening in their own newsroom."
The article is eye-opening, and reveals important new information about one of the most dangerous pieces of the Republican propaganda machine. Everyone should definitely give it a read.