A former Sinclair Broadcasting Group reporter who is now being sued by the company said having local reporters across the U.S. read a scripted message is “classic Sinclair.”

Jonathan Beaton quit Sinclair in 2015 after working for them for one year, and moved to working in public relations.

While submitting his resignation two years earlier than his contract was up, higher-ups at WPEC News 12 in West Palm Beach, Fla., wanted him to sign a document requiring him to buy out of the contract for around $25,000 and give away his rights to speak about Sinclair publicly.

“I left after a year. I hated the atmosphere, I hated being forced to do stories that I didn’t think were accurate. I asked to be released from my contract and told them I would stick around however long they needed me to find a replacement,” Beaton told the Washington Examiner.

Beaton said working for Sinclair was “chaotic,” and there was a lot of “mismanagement.”

Sinclair Broadcasting Group had offered to settle with Beaton, only asking $1,700, but every settlement involved a gag order where he would not be able to speak either publicly or to the press regarding Sinclair.

Beaton said he didn’t want to settle if it meant giving up his First Amendment right to talk about his time there.

When Beaton heard about instances of local Sinclair reporters reading a scripted statement vowing to report unbiased news and combat “fake news stories” along the way, he was not surprised.

“It’s not surprising at all. It’s classic Sinclair. This is what the company does,” Beaton said. “They have must-runs to air at the end of each news show. They have copy that they force local networks to run. You could find dozens of the exact same types of mashups. They use manipulation as their greatest tool.”

Beaton said he told Sinclair’s lawyers to “go jump in a lake” when they offered the settlement. He doesn’t want to settle if it means giving up his right to talk about something freely.

Other anchors and reporters at Sinclair want to quit, according to a Bloomberg report , but some feel it would be too costly to break their contracts like Beaton did.

Despite working for both left- and right-leaning organizations, Beaton said Sinclair had the strongest bias of any place he had worked, including ABC and Turner Broadcasting System, who owns CNN.

“Sinclair was a toxic atmosphere, a propaganda machine, and they manipulated reporters,” Beaton said. “Other news organizations don’t do that.”