Deadspin:
Earlier this month, CNN’s Brian Stelter broke the news that Sinclair Broadcast Group, owner or operator of nearly 200 television stations in the U.S., would be forcing its news anchors to record a promo about “the troubling trend of irresponsible, one sided news stories plaguing our country.” The script, which parrots Donald Trump’s oft-declarations of developments negative to his presidency as “fake news,” brought upheaval to newsrooms already dismayed with Sinclair’s consistent interference to bring right-wing propaganda to local television broadcasts. [...]
The net result of the company’s current mandate is dozens upon dozens of local news anchors looking like hostages in proof-of-life videos, trying their hardest to spit out words attacking the industry they’d chosen as a life vocation.
Recognize your local news anchor inserting that bit of pro-Trump, anti-objective-reality propaganda into your own town and community? If so, you’re watching a Sinclair station—and you should stop.
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On this date at Daily Kos in 2013—Sequester will zap long-term unemployed right in the wallet:
As of the jobs report the Bureau of Labor Statistics issued March 8, there were 4.8 million Americans counted as long-term unemployed. That is, Americans who have been without work for more than half a year. The lucky ones, if you can call them that, about two million people, are receiving federally funded Emergency Unemployment Compensation. Most states provide only 26 weeks of jobless benefits (although some have reduced that duration to as few as 18 in the past year).
But the sequester, which will hack $85 billion out of the federal budget this year if Congress doesn't act, means those Americans receiving EUC benefits will lose 10.7 percent of their average $300 a week benefit starting this month. That's an April Fools' joke not in the least bit funny.
“Cutting benefits will have real effects on people’s consumption,” said Jesse Rothstein, an associate professor of public policy and economics at the University of California (Berkeley). “That 300 bucks a week or so goes a long way when you don’t have anything else.”
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