If you thought you were hearing things when our beloved local news anchor announced a “one-on-one interview” with President George W. Bush, well, obviously, you weren’t. This week, Springfield got a taste of NewsCentral, the “revolutionary news model” created by Sinclair Broadcasting Group, which bought WICS-TV Channel 20 about four years ago.
Proudly promoting itself as “the nation’s largest commercial television broadcasting company not owned by a network,” SBG was among a handful of “regional broadcasters” invited to privately interview Bush. According to a story in the Washington Post, Bush sat for five eight-minute interviews with broadcasters who don’t regularly cover the White House in an effort to take his message directly to the American people, thereby avoiding the cynical, “analytical” filter of the national media. The regional interviews came two days after Gannett News Service revealed that letters purportedly written by American soldiers in Iraq and published in letter-to-the-editor sections of newspapers across the country were actually not written by the soldiers. One soldier didn’t even know the letter existed, Gannett reported.
WICS ran the Bush interview, conducted by NewsCentral anchor Morris Jones, in two segments, Monday and Tuesday night. Jones’ interview technique included questions with helpful suggestions like, “I don’t think you’re getting your message out. . . “
Jones, formerly with Fox, is based in suburban Baltimore, Md., where NewsCentral broadcasts originate. SBG is currently testing a scheme to supply a homogenized newscast to its 62 stations. Stations in Pittsburgh, Pa.; Flint, Mich.; and Oklahoma City, Okla.; open their newscasts with a local segment, but the majority of the program — including weather and sports — comes from SBG’s Maryland hub.
SBG executives and board members donate hundreds of thousands of dollars to Republican campaign coffers, and has all its stations carry “The Point,” commentary from corporate vice president Mark Hyman, who has described himself as a former U.S. intelligence agent. Hyman expressed his views of U.S. efforts in Iraq in a recent segment called “Time to Come Home?” to which he suggested the answer is no. “Pull-out, schmull-out,” Hyman said. “Let’s finish the job we started and bring democracy to Iraq.”
Until recently, “The Point” was the only bit of SBG programming used on WICS newscasts. In the past few weeks, though, a NewsCentral segment called “Get This” was added to the sunrise newscast. “Get This” features Jones and his co-anchor Jennifer Gladstone reading wacky news items and engaging in humorous banter.
Will we see more NewsCentral on WICS? General manager Jack Connors can’t say. “The policy,” he says, “is that questions like this go to Baltimore.”
A call requesting comment from SBG news director Joe Defeo was not returned.
This article appears in Oct 16-22, 2003.
