A merger between the controversial Sinclair Broadcast Group and Tribune Media Company would expand Sinclair’s reach across New York state.

In May, Sinclair — which owns three local stations in Syracuse under the CNY Central Syracuse brand — announced its intent to buy Tribune Media for about $3.9 billion. Sinclair owns, operates or services 173 local TV stations nationwide, and its broadcasts reach tens of millions of Americans in 81 United States markets. Tribune founded the Chicago Tribune.

If the merger is approved by the Federal Communications Commission — as is widely expected by media experts — Sinclair, which is already the largest owner of local TV stations in the country, will expand to 233 stations in 108 markets.

“They’re already the major player in local television news in the country in terms of ownership, and this just amplifies their power and their influence,” said Suzanne Lysak, associate professor of broadcast and digital journalism in Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications.

Sinclair already owns nine television stations in New York state, with two stations in Buffalo, two in Rochester, two in Albany and three in Syracuse — including the local CBS and NBC affiliates, according to Sinclair’s website.

In 2004, the top five companies in local TV including Sinclair and Tribune owned, operated or serviced 179 full-power TV stations, according to the Pew Research Center. By 2016, that number had more than doubled to 443 stations.

“I don’t believe concentration of ownership in a few hands is a good thing,” Lysak said. “It’s not good for journalism, and it’s also not good for the communities that are served.”

Some experts said they are particularly concerned about Sinclair’s expansion because of the way the company manages its local stations.

In May 2017, the New York Times reported that Sinclair habitually requires its local stations to air certain segments or programs, known as “must-runs,” often ideologically skewed toward the right.

For instance, in October 2016, Sinclair directed its stations to run a segment that suggested viewers should not vote for Hillary Clinton because “she belongs to the party that gave this country slavery, the KKK (and) Jim Crow laws.”

Other Sinclair must-runs include opinion segments by conservative commentators, such as Mark Hyman and Boris Epshteyn, a former Trump campaign adviser.

Jason Samuels, associate professor of journalism at New York University, said Sinclair’s must runs might confuse TV viewers by blurring the lines between news and commentary.

“If you were to poll people viewing television news, they may not be aware that these commentaries are must run,” Samuels said. “Do they know that it’s not an editorial decision that’s made by the local station itself, but is coming from some corporate overlord?”

Nancy Dafoe, a writer and teacher who has lived in Little York, New York for more than 35 years, said the Sinclair’s must runs can create confusion.

Sinclair owns three local stations in Syracuse — WSTM, WSTQ and WTVH — all of which are housed together under the “CNY Central” brand. Dafoe was watching one of these stations in May 2017 when she saw something that disturbed her, she said.

“I was very confused, because it appeared to be a news program … everything looked kind of official,” Dafoe said. But the content of the program seemed speculative and ideologically slanted to Dafoe, she said.

Dafoe recalled the anchor suggesting that there had been some type of collusion between the FBI and Hillary Clinton. She later identified the woman on camera as Sara Carter. Carter is a conservative pundit who appears regularly on Fox News, according to Snopes, a fact-checking site.

As of July 2017, Snopes was unable to obtain confirmation that CNY Central stations had run the specific program Dafoe remembered, although it did confirm that Carter works as a national security correspondent for Circa, Sinclair’s news brand, and that she appeared in a March 2017 Circa segment titled “A Clinton supporter pushed the Trump-Russia computer narrative investigated by the FBI.”

Dafoe said her experience was disturbing because of the importance of local TV, particularly in rural areas with fewer media options.

According to a Pew Research Center study, local news is more trusted than national news — with 82 percent of Americans expressing “some” or “a lot” of trust in the former, versus 76 percent in the latter.

Local television is by far the most popular source of news for Americans over the age of 50, according to the study.

Both CNY Central and Sinclair’s national office declined to comment on this article.

All “must-run” programming comprises approximately 2.5 percent of the average total news minutes per week, according to a Sinclair statement submitted to the FCC in response to public comments opposing the merger.

Sinclair said it has always demonstrated an interest in serving the public, and that the merger with Tribune will help preserve free local TV for its viewers, according to a Sinclair statement submitted to the FCC in response to public comments opposing the merger.

Published on August 29, 2017 at 10:19 pm

Contact Madeleine: mdavison@syr.edu