The real Sinclair danger isn't its Trumpian promo, it's how many TV stations it owns It’s a waste of time to be up in arms over Sinclair's one-minute promo. The real concern should be that it owns so many local TV news stations.

Alicia Shepard | Opinion columnist

Show Caption Hide Caption Why Sinclair's 'false news' script sounds so familiar President Trump called Sinclair Broadcasting "superior" after the media giant made anchors at its TV stations across the country say the same script about "false news."

Outrage over a one-minute Sinclair Broadcast Group media-bashing promotion is jumping across time zones and platforms with some calling for an advertising boycott or its employees to go on strike.

Deadspin set off the controversy with a mashup of trusted Sinclair news anchors reading a corporate-ordered script decrying the proliferation of false news and fake stories. The video went viral and has been seen more than 7.5 million times since Saturday.

The best thing about the video is it has spotlighted Sinclair’s growing domination in local markets. As the nation’s largest TV station owner with 173 stations in markets big and small across the country, Sinclair has a quiet but powerful reach and influences.

Or at least it used to be quiet.

More: You are not friends with Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg. You are their product.

More: Florida shooting survivors aren't 'crisis actors.' They're victims of Internet failure.

Now on the Deadspin video, we can see dozens of mostly white anchors, from Tuscaloosa, Ala., to Waterloo, Iowa, to Kalispell, Mont., force-read identical words in robotic fashion. It's a vivid demonstration of the dangers of one company having the ability to send out a centralized message.

The disturbing implication of a mostly innocuous script is that Sinclair is the antidote to a liberal media that often peddles false news.

Sinclair says the promo is simply a “corporate news journalistic responsibility promotional campaign,” and “served no political agenda and represented nothing more than an effort to differentiate our award-winning news programming from other, less reliable sources of information.”

“We’re concerned about the troubling trend of irresponsible, one-sided news stories plaguing our country,” reads the official promo, which Sinclair called must-run and said had to be run during the news and not use up commercial time. “The sharing of biased and false news has become all too common on social media. More alarming, some media outlets publish these same fake stories ... stories that just aren’t true, without checking the facts first. Unfortunately, some members of the media use their platforms to push their own personal agendas. This is extremely dangerous to our democracy.”

What is extremely dangerous to our democracy is the enormous influence of Sinclair, a company with a conservative political agenda whose owners all supported Trump. While some Sinclair journalists worry the promo may damage hard-won credibility, others don’t like the Trump-like echo praising their own journalism with the clear implication other journalists can’t be trusted. “Rather than saying we do it the very best we can … they’re saying the other guys don’t do it well," says NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik.”

That’s all noise compared to how Sinclair is amassing local news stations. The company owns or operates nearly 200 TV stations, including affiliates of all major networks, and also has its own network, Comet TV. It is in 89 markets and has made a $4 billion play for Chicago-based Tribune Media company, which owns 42 stations in Los Angeles, New York City, Chicago and other cities. Even though Sinclair plans to sell at least 13 stations, it will still be a dominant market force.

More: At stake in Cambridge Analytica scandal? Not just privacy, but freedom itself: Chertoff

POLICING THE USA: A look at race, justice, media

In April 2017, the Federal Communications Commission undid a long-standing rule to prevent monopolies by limiting company ownership of TV stations. A few months later, Sinclair asked the FCC and the Justice Department to bless its bid for the Tribune stations. If the sale is approved, Sinclair would reach 72% of American households with TVs.

Consolidation may be necessary to keep companies alive but it also has serious consequences. It means viewers are likely to find more homogenization of the news, fewer news choices and less local accountability journalism. In fact, a new paper by two Emory University researchers found that Sinclair stations, on average, carried about a third less local political coverage and a quarter more national coverage.

My complaint isn’t simply because it’s Sinclair, though any TV company with a strong political agenda is worrisome. But it is extremely dangerous to a democracy to have one company, regardless of its political leaning, with such a large reach — especially when local TV stations continue to be a major news source. Even with a steady decline in audience, local TV news still has more viewers on average than cable and network news programs, according to the Pew Research Center.

About 25 million Americans watch local TV nightly news, write authors Gregory J. Martin and Josh McCrain. Some 85% of Americans trust local news outlets, higher than the 76% for family or friends, according to Pew.

That’s a lot of power and influence, particularly for a company that has infused its airtime with “must-run” conservative commentaries and terrorism segments that sometimes supplant local news time. One example: Sinclair hired Boris Epshteyn, who worked on Trump’s campaign and in the White House, as its chief political analyst. Critics say he simply spouts Trump talking points in his “must-run” commentaries.

The Washington Post reported Sinclair gave a disproportionate amount of neutral or favorable coverage to Trump during the campaign. Sinclair has already shown that it’s not concerned about appearances of conflicts of interest by asking its executives, including its news directors, to donate to the Sinclair PAC (political action committee). Journalist ethics codes clearly forbid political contributions to avoid even the appearance of bias.

It’s a waste of time to be up in arms over a one-minute promo. The real concern, if one is worried about democracy, should be preventing the concentration of so many local news stations in one company. We can thank Timothy Burke, the video director at Deadspin, for bringing it to our attention.

Alicia Shepard, a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors, is a longtime media analyst and a former ombudsman for NPR. Follow her on Twitter: @Ombudsman.