Arthur Silber: But It's Not Censorship

And it isn't explicit censorship. But in certain ways, it's just as if not more dangerous. It's what I described here and here, with a very, very heavy rightwing twist.

A friend directs me to this:

Former and current news employees of Sinclair Broadcasting have described the owners' campaign to court powerful conservative legislators who responded by clearing away legal obstacles and thereby allow Sinclair to become the largest owner of TV stations in America. In interviews appearing in GQ magazine, the employees describe how they were subjected to political litmus tests before being hired, how they were ordered to report only "good news" about Iraq, how an interview with President Bush was delivered to stations with orders to replace the image of the interviewer with that of the local anchor, and how stations were required to run a nightly right-wing editorial delivered by Sinclair exec Mark Hyman that once accused the late Peter Jennings of "appearing to favor terrorists over America." (One local producer said that when she used a graphic to identify Hyman's commentary as an "editorial," Sinclair officials ordered her to remove the offending word.)