Operation: Distraction

For the second time in his presidency, Donald Trump ordered airstrikes on Syria's chemical weapons program.  The quick hits allowed the Pentagon to claim that these bombs have just set back the country's program by a few years, Russia, China and Congress be damned, with France and Great Britain helping out.

Not that anybody's fooled.  The President needed a distraction from the various legal and political messes he's in, and Syria just gave him one with the world watching videos of people choking to death from the fumes of another chemical attack.  It's all part of Syria's ongoing civil war, with President Bashar Assad destroying his own people to save his country while Russia helps him beat back the Islamic State.

Meanwhile, back in the States . . .

• The FBI raided the offices of Trump's attorney Michael Cohen, in hopes of getting the goods on any evidence of the President's alleged affair with adult film star Stormy Daniels.  So far, the biggest revelation from all this is that Fox News host Sean Hannity has been outed as one of Cohen's clients.  And that Daniels' attorney is trying to make a name for himself.
• Former FBI director James Comey is currently making the media rounds in support of the book he wrote.  His message to anyone who'll listen is that Trump's "morally unfit" for office, but shouldn't be impeached because he thinks only the American people should be able to vote him out.  Well, the American people did reject Trump in the 2016 popular vote, but he gamed the Electoral College tallies in all the right places to win.  And wasn't it Comey who was partly responsible for Hillary Clinton's defeat with his last-minute investigation of her e-mails, only to find nothing incriminating?
• Robert Mueller's job as special counsel in the Russian election interference matter is getting shakier as he finds more evidence of wrongdoing.  As Trump keeps making noises about wanting to indirectly fire Mueller, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says he's not bringing a bill to the floor that would protect his job.  Is this another indication of how Republicans would rather lick the President's boots (or some other part of his anatomy) than serve the country?
• Speaker of the House Paul Ryan has decided he's had enough of Washington, so he's not running for re-election.  He's the latest--and most prominent--Republican who's figured out that they should get out of town ahead of a supposed Democratic blue wave in November.  Ryan did his best to deal with Trump, and ultimately suffered the fate of others in the GOP who crossed him.

President Trump has declared "mission accomplished" on his bombing run, even though Assad is still in power and probably has a secret stash of chemical weapons somewhere to commit more crimes on humanity.  But his mission to make people forget his problems at home is still failing, just like the last president to utter that line tried to convince the country that things are under control.

Sinclair Broadcasting: The Dinosaur in the Room

The Sinclair Broadcast Group currently owns or controls 193 TV stations, the largest of any such company in the United States.  From Baltimore (its home base) to Seattle, it has spread its footprint from coast to coast.

Sinclair stands accused of using its conservative political agenda to shape news coverage at its local stations, airing "must-run" features such as commentaries and updates about terrorism.  Recently, they were criticized for forcing its news anchors to read a standardized statement about "journalistic responsibility", accusing the mainstream media of bias.

Now Sinclair wants to raise its profile even more, with its proposed purchase of Tribune Media awaiting approval by the Federal Communications Commission.  This would bring into the fold iconic Tribune-owned stations like WGN in Chicago, WPIX in New York and KTLA in Los Angeles--all of whose reputations for news coverage would take major hits if the sale went through.  Sinclair has already made some changes to make the sale more palatable to the FCC by offering to divest some stations, but would keep control of them through such tactics as local marketing agreements and shell companies.

(SBG also owns WUCW in Minneapolis-St. Paul.  Because it is a CW network affiliate that does not carry local news, the controversy has yet to resonate in Minnesota.  That could change if the company either puts out its own newscast, or if they made a deal to purchase one of the other network stations in town.)

Local news, no matter who the parent company is, has become less a source of information nowadays.  Its coverage of murders stoke fear of crime in the big city.  They exploit people with special needs.  So-called "feel-good" stories are really infomercials promoting local charities.  Alerting viewers to bad weather that's nowhere near where they are.  Stroking the ego of the President of the United States?  That's Fox News' job, not your local newscast.

Remember all those Sinclair gasoline stations that used to dot the highways and byways of America?  Their mascot (and corporate logo) was a big green dinosaur.  Sinclair Broadcasting doesn't have a mascot that we know of.  But if they did, they'd represent a similar prehistoric creature that flexes its muscles in the dying world of broadcast television, pushing a political agenda on the verge of going extinct.

UPDATE (12/28/19):  The Sinclair-Tribune merger fell through, and once it did, Nexstar Media Group swept in and took over Tribune.  Oh, they had to sell a few stations such as WPIX (to Scripps), but it was relatively smooth sailing on its way to government approval.

Sinclair has also announced that they would no longer air "must-run" political commentaries on its stations, and will instead devote its energies to local investigative reporting.  We'll believe it when we see it.