A Democracy Drive Thread
How a handful of owners, paywalls, and the attention economy reshaped American news — and how lawless conduct gets “sanewashed” into normal-sounding coverage.
There was a time when local news was mostly just the news — facts, gathered and reported. Two forces have reshaped that world: consolidation and the attention economy. A handful of corporations now own most of the outlets Americans watch and read; the largest local-TV operators, Nexstar and Sinclair, each reach roughly 40% of U.S. households, and Sinclair has required stations nationwide to air centrally written “must-run” segments. Much reporting now sits behind paywalls, while the free tier is tuned for clicks — sharpened headlines, outrage, engagement. And in political coverage a subtler problem has taken hold: “sanewashing,” the habit of translating lawless or incoherent conduct into calm, conventional language — reporting an executive order as though it were settled law, or describing plainly illegal acts in the gentle grammar of ordinary politics. This thread lays out how the American news business got here, and tracks the ownership, incentives, and editorial choices that shape what the public sees.
April 2, 2018
On the ground
In 2018, Sinclair Broadcast Group — one of the largest owners of local U.S. television stations, reaching roughly 40% of American households — required anchors across nearly 200 outlets to read the same company-written promo, accusing unnamed media of pushing “their own personal bias and agenda” and publishing “fake stories.” A viral compilation of dozens of “local” anchors reciting the identical lines — warning that biased reporting is “extremely dangerous to our democracy” — became a stark illustration of how concentrated ownership can put one company’s message in the mouths of local news nationwide. President Trump publicly defended Sinclair.
“This is extremely dangerous to a democracy.”