Action 166 - Boycott Sinclair
Background: It is difficult for me (Abbie) to comment on things related to television, because we haven’t had TV enabled in our house for 40 years. However, television is extremely important, and increasingly dangerous, in shaping public opinion. I remember participating in a protest at Sinclair Broadcasting’s headquarters in Maine, out on Washington Ave in Portland – probably on a cold October evening in 2004 (1). In the ensuing years, Sinclair has only gotten worse. (2) It’s not just the latest outrage that has captured public attention (i.e. Sinclair’s refusal to re-instate Jimmy Kimmel’s show on their network). Sinclair has for years forced their local news anchors to read canned right-wing propaganda pieces. (3) Now they are trying to glom onto even more broadcast bandwidth in an effort to expand their propaganda, by merging with Tegna (4) which owns stations in Maine. Could it be that they are trying to curry favor with Trump’s FCC in advance of the merger?
Action: Stop watching or listening to Sinclair stations, and boycott any large, national advertisers who sponsor Channel 13 (WGME Portland) and Channel 23 (WPFO Fox). This is effective – you may have noticed how rapidly Disney caved over the Kimmel cancelation, due to public pressure. But it works only if you let the advertisers know of your intention to boycott unless they stop advertising on Sinclair stations.
Regarding local businesses who may be advertisers on these channels, be mindful of the following: “Local businesses are not thriving in this economy, contacting these businesses is to make them aware of the situation. This is not intended to shame or punish them. Local businesses are the heart of our communities and they too are affected by the decisions of large conglomerates. Tell your local business to not waste their dollars on these stations.” Note that ad buys are often done by middlemen and the local business may not even know every place their ads appear. You can help them understand that their ads on Sinclair may be turning off customers.
So your action assignment, should you choose to undertake it, is to
- find out who the advertisers are on channels 13 and 23,
- develop contact info for the advertisers (e.g. their customer relations departments),
- contact them, and
- spread the word. To leverage your work, send us an email with what you find out.
To find the most current advertisers, you will probably need to watch Channels 13 and 23 at different times of the day. You could try putting the station on mute and just glancing at it when an ad comes on, which we understand is about every 15 minutes or so. We’ve tried other shortcuts to finding a list of advertisers, but Sinclair is pretty cagey about listing their sponsors anywhere on the web.
This Action item was suggested by Emanuel Pariser. If you don’t get his almost daily suggestions for things you can do, sign up at emanuel.pariser@gmail.com. Also, Jessica Craven of “chop wood, carry water” has details on this action as well as many, many others (5).
Extra Credit:
(1) https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/sinclair-under-fire-for-decision-to-air-anti-senator-kerry-film
(2) https://www.mediamatters.org/sinclair-broadcast-group
(3) on your search engine, type in “brainwashing by Sinclair Broadcasting”. You may get the full rundown, like I did on Safari’s “AI Overview”.
(4) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tegna_Inc
(5) Jessica Craven’s “Chop Wood, Carry Water” action on this subject is at https://chopwoodcarrywaterdailyactions.substack.com/p/chop-wood-carry-water-923-b5b
https://robertj1088.substack.com/p/our-first-amendment-rights?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=2099161&post_id=174568342&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=2ycvh&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email