But then I was raised with a little something called "integrity."
Update: This addresses some of the points made in the comments section.
Courtesy of Bloomberg:
After Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc. drew widespread criticism for having anchors read a statement taking aim at the integrity of other U.S. media outlets, many wondered why some of the company’s journalists didn’t just quit.
The short answer is the cost may be too steep. According to copies of two employment contracts reviewed by Bloomberg, some Sinclair employees were subject to a liquidated damages clause for leaving before the term of their agreement was up: one that requires they pay as much as 40 percent of their annual compensation to the company.
While they were also subject to a six-month noncompete clause and forced arbitration, three current and former Sinclair employees said it was the potential financial penalty that had the greatest impact on those thinking of quitting. Under the clause, there’s a specific window of time during which employees can give notice. One current employee who requested anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak publicly said the clause’s limitations are the reason he hasn’t quit. A former employee who also requested anonymity said both the noncompete and the damages clause dissuaded her at first from looking for work elsewhere.
It's like they knew all along that their practices would inspire employees to run for the hills, so they shackled them to their desks.
Hard to believe this is even legal.
So you're a news anchor with 35 years at one station in a relatively small market with a spouse whose career requires them to remain in your city and a family who is settled and doesn't want to leave. You're not old enough to retire, but too old to start over somewhere else because, in the television news business, gray hair and wrinkles count AGAINST you more than experience counts FOR you.
ReplyDeleteOr you had a heart transplant a couple of years ago and need to remain close to your medical team and at a station that allows you to work on a limited schedule as your health permits.
Or you're an anchor that is finishing up a 51+ year career at the same station (which qualified you to be in the Guinness Book of Records) and you're not quite ready to retire just yet.
These are some of the people in my city who I've been watching for 20 years. They've been faithfully serving their audience for all of their careers and have only recently been placed in an impossible situation. They are not some nameless, faceless employees of an evil empire.
It's easy to talk about integrity until it smacks head-on into reality. Quitting on principle is not always possible, especially when contracts include clauses with significant financial penalties for doing so, and replacement jobs are simply not available. I have tremendous sympathy for those people who are caught in a no-win situation. At least two of the anchors in my city have publicly commented on how horrified they are about what they've had to do but they have been given no choice.
Let's not automatically brand them as traitors when the real villains are the executives at Sinclair who are forcing them to recite the prepared scripts and include the canned 'reports' in their nightly broadcasts.
What you say is true and something we should all be mindful of before rushing to condemn these people. I'm sure many of us have been forced into positions we disagree with by our employers in far less publicly visible jobs.
DeleteStill, it would be nice to hear that other anchors at competing stations in your market are covering this story and speaking out about the horrible and compromising position Sinclair is placing its anchors in. Maybe by shining a light on the dark recesses of what Sinclair is doing will either change their behavior or cost them viewership and market share.
6:20 - Interesting point. I haven't taken the time to check out the other local stations, but I might just do that to see what they're saying about the situation.
DeleteI highly doubt that Sinclair expected the widespread negative coverage and public outrage that their insidious actions have inspired. At the very least, I hope that this reaction will prevent the FCC from approving Sinclair's acquisition of Tribune Media. I always thought monopolies were against the law in this country. I guess that rule doesn't apply if the monopoly is conservative and supports a Republican president!
Except for those like the windbhag Sharyl Atkisson of Cincinnati- definite unethical "journalist."
DeleteYou know what - like teh "me too" movement, it always comes down to a choice. Anyone who read this stuff, doesn't deserve to be called a journalist. They could have refused and forced Sinclair to fire them, then stoof on journalis ethics to defend themselves. (See Akre, Jane) But they caved and chosed to "spread 'em" on Sinclair's casting couch.
DeleteThere are ways to rebel.
DeleteI would keep a brooch or button of some kind in m pocket. When I am forced to read a canned speech, I would put it on. It wouldn't take long for the message to get out that when I'm wearing the button I'm spouting propaganda.
I don't believe Sinclair could penalize a broadcaster for their choice of jewelry or apparel. If they did, I'd find another way. Like when I'm wearing RED lipstick.
I find it hard to believe these reporters can't think of one creative way to rebel against this attack on their profession.
Are they such cowards they'll just roll over and submit?
Maria Downing? Is that You? ;
DeleteUntil it's your own career, it's easy to say "I'd quit"! We are all wage slaves.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.rawstory.com/2018/04/farmers-business-groups-warn-trade-war-china-will-wreck-trump-country-stop/
Delete"“But China’s threatened retaliation against last night’s U.S. tariff proposal is testing both the patience and optimism of families who are facing the worst agricultural economy in 16 years. This has to stop.”"
tOO BAD $O $AD...
https://www.rawstory.com/2018/04/msnbcs-chuck-todd-asked-ex-rnc-head-gop-leaders-will-stand-trumps-trade-war-burst-laughing/
Delete'“This was not sprung on us the last 24 hours, so where is the leadership?” Steele wondered. “Where are the ideals and principles that free market conservatives and Republicans have advocated for generations?”
“You expect to hear that from the leadership,” Steele noted. “And then go down to the White House and say, ‘Are you nuts?
Do you know what this will do?'”'
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagwon
ReplyDeleteTEACHERS!
https://www.rawstory.com/2018/04/watch-south-korean-bystanders-horrified-americans-go-racist-rampage-subway/
Wow. So Sinclair resorts to a form of slavery to keep employees. Do we need to explain again why we need unions, even in white collar professions?
ReplyDeleteThis is exactly why the Republican Party has been systematically destroying unions for forty years.
Delete"Tribune Media, Nexstar and Tegna are examples of station groups. Sinclair is the biggest." "wning many stations and centralizing these back-end tasks are common in the broadcast business. What isn’t common is what the Deadspin video shows. As far as I know, no other station group has written news scripts and required local stations to deliver them.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, it’s a practice that directly goes against U.S. broadcast policy, which asserts that local stations should serve their geographic communities and be allowed to refuse content offered by national networks. Sinclair, however, has dubbed these scripts “must runs.” The company also produces complete news stories and commentaries that it requires local stations to air." "the most important part of the story isn’t the question of partisan bias. It’s that a national station group is forcing content on local stations. To many, what Sinclair is doing is precisely what U.S. broadcast policy is supposed to protect against:
https://theconversation.com/why-are-sinclairs-scripted-news-segments-such-a-big-deal-94365
And Sinclair wants to buy Tribune so they'll have a 72% market share. Bigger reach for their propaganda.
Deletehttps://www.politicususa.com/2018/04/04/a-sinclair-owned-station-has-ordered-employees-not-to-share-negative-information-about-company-with-the-media.html
ReplyDeletehttp://www.ftvlive.com/sqsp-test/2018/4/3/sinclair-employees-ordered-not-to-talk
""I will al$O remind you that giving statements to the media or sharing negative information about the company can have huge implications.""
What? All Sinclair employees haven't been required to sign NDAs for life yet?
DeleteSo that's the way to make free Americans bow dow and kiss your ass. Money.
ReplyDeleteIt reminds me of the Russian owned television. Except it's in America.
Well, I feel for the "journalist" I say play with the devil pay the devil.
I would quit and go work at something else rather than mouth what they'd want me too.
I always had a hard time playing the whore.
I'll bet you had a "hard time".
DeleteIsn't it time for meds $arah?
DeleteOT.
ReplyDeleteMLK died 50 yrs ago today.
https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/168624
Delete"“Let’s watch what’s been done, and see it is preserved, but let’s say we have just begun, and let’s go on. Until every boy and girl born in this land, whatever state, whatever color, can stand on the same level ground, our job will not be done.”<LBJ
FB In 2 PARTS
Delete#1"Has it really been 50 years? The head begins to spin, the heart beats faster, and the palms moisten with perspiration. It is the reminder of the news that seared my being on first hearing it, and many times since - the news that tore at the fabric of our nation igniting the simmering embers of racial injustice and violence that has plagued the United States since its founding.
Dateline: Memphis. April 4, 1968.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. shot!
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. dead!
Whither the future?
I had dreaded this day would come since the moment I first met the charismatic young preacher, just a few years older than myself. It was 1962, in Albany Georgia and I had been assigned to cover the fledgeling Civil Rights Movement. Dr. King's early campaign there would end in disappointment, but I could tell this was a man on a mission who could accomplish the impossible, if he could tempt fate to stay alive long enough in the face of the hatred that was bred into institutionalized racism. Dr. King did not die as soon as I feared but did not live as long, nearly as long, as I hoped. Or as our nation needed.
In all the memories of Dr. King, I would like to direct your attention to one that does not get nearly the attention it deserves. On April 4, 1967, Dr. King took the pulpit at Riverside Church in New York for one of the most consequential and controversial speeches of his career. It was entitled “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence,” and most Americans weren’t ready for the message he would deliver. Instead of the optimism of “I Have a Dream,” there was a weariness verging on pessimism. “The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit,” King said. “. . . We as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values.” King preached about money going for bombs instead of to the needy, about the uneven burden of military service between the rich and the poor, and about the institutionalization of violence at the heart of all wars. King described the plight of the Vietnamese and argued that the world would see us as occupiers. In his most controversial statement, he equated the use of napalm by the U.S. military with the tactics of Nazi Germany. “What do they think as we test out our latest weapons on them, just as the Germans tested out new medicine and new tortures in the concentration camps of Europe?”
fb Part 2 "I was not in the pews that evening, but I remember reading the press coverage and feeling a deep ache in my heart. The thought occurred that perhaps King had gone too far. He got a standing ovation from his antiwar audience, but the larger response to the speech was highly negative. The New York Times ran an editorial entitled “Dr. King’s Error” that suggested, in an observation echoed by many commentators and even some of King’s allies, that the civil rights leader should have kept his focus on racial justice instead of war.
DeleteBut King saw these causes as inextricably linked. A few days after the speech, he was captured on an FBI surveillance tape in a heated debate with his friend Stanley Levison. Levison worried the speech was a disaster that played into the hands of their critics. King was resolute in response. “I figure I was politically unwise but morally wise. I think I have a role to play which may be unpopular.” That quote is as eloquent a definition of dissent as you are likely to find. In all the sanitized reimaginings of King’s legacy, the Riverside Church speech is too often forgotten. That is a mistake because it captures both the complexities of the times and of a man who was one of the great dissenters in American history. King had exhorted his audience “to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism” to “a firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history.” I like the phrases “smooth patriotism” and “firm dissent” because fighting for justice is rarely smooth and dissent requires steely resolve.
We have a long history in the United States of marginalized voices eventually convincing majorities through the strength of their ideas. Our democracy provides fertile soil where seeds of change can grow. Few knew that better than King.
(Much of the above passage is from my book “What Unites Us” in the essay on Dissent.)
On this day, there will be no shortage of encomiums to Dr. King. But I fear that what will be lost is the quality of his character and the fierceness of his beliefs Many who now pay lip service to his legacy would be demonizing his rhetoric if he were alive today. May we regain the full measure of the man, who while not a saint, helped lead our nation to a more promising future."
#MLK50 #WhatUnitesUs
Dan the Man Rather
My only question is why would someone sign a contract like that?
ReplyDeleteFirst off they are thinking about employment with Sinclair Broadcasting...so they are already exhibiting signs of RWNJ hive mind syndrome...
DeleteA lot of these television stations were bought out by Sinclair, so many of the employees already worked there. Either these clauses were in their contracts already or they were forced to sign new ones to keep their jobs.
Deletehttps://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5ac4f7c8e4b063ce2e582ad9
ReplyDeleteSIN clair... HandmadianBook
NPR posted story & video of all the news casters reading the statement at the same time. Wow.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/04/02/598794433/video-reveals-power-of-sinclair-as-local-news-anchors-recite-script-in-unison