Local journalism would suffer if Sinclair is allowed to buy Q13.
Local journalism would suffer if Sinclair is allowed to buy Q13. WILLIAM THOMAS CAIN/GETTY

Remember that time KOMO’s corporate overlords made them run a weird screed about fake news?

That was far from a one-time thing.

Sinclair Broadcast Group requires stations it owns, like KOMO, to run right-wing segments. Those include spots by a former Trump adviser and the fear-mongering “Terror Alert Desk.” This spring, eight current and former KOMO employees told the New York Times they are concerned about the company’s political bent. (If you haven’t seen John Oliver’s segment on all this, watch it.)

Now, Sinclair is on the verge of expanding and owning two stations in Seattle. Given the way things are going at the Federal Communications Commission, the expansion appears to stand a good chance of going through. UPDATE: A new report indicates that while the merger will likely go through, Q13 may not come under Sinclair's control after all. The Department of Justice has reportedly signed off on the merger but will require Sinclair to sell a small number of stations including Q13. I'll update again if we learn more.

This Spring, Sinclair announced a deal to buy Tribune Media. Nationally, the merger would balloon Sinclair’s reach to more than 70 percent of households

Here in Seattle, it would mean Sinclair would own both KOMO and Q13. (See update above.) That could push bizarre anti-media/pro-Trump content to more Seattleites. It could also threaten journalists’ jobs.

KOMO is unionized; Q13 is not. If Sinclair soon owns both stations, "they have a very powerful incentive to fold those two stations into one and lay off half of the professionals," said Dave Twedell, a representative for IATSE 600, which represents KOMO photojournalists. When the union asked Sinclair to guarantee it wouldn’t layoff KOMO employees in the merger, Sinclair refused.

Now the union is making a last ditch effort to rally opposition to the deal. At a sparsely attended event at the University of Washington Thursday night, Twedell set the stakes as the union sees them.

“We could be looking very soon at a world in which there just isn’t any local [TV] news," he said.

This year, the FCC eliminated a rule that required broadcasters to have a station in the local area they cover. And the agency is now reviewing (and could lift) another rule limiting how many TV stations one company can own. That would allow Sinclair to hold on to more stations when it takes over Tribune.

"If the biggest operator in the industry can operate without having to hire and maintain local news staff," Twedell said, "nobody’s going to be able to compete with them. It will be a race to the bottom in which we just lose local news as an asset. This is what’s at stake.”

The left-leaning consumer group Allied Progress is also running a campaign against the deal and appears to be sending mail to Seattleites:


People concerned about the merger should lobby their local and Congressional representatives to try to stop the FCC from approving the deal, Twedell said. A spokesperson for County Executive Dow Constantine, who wrote to the FCC opposing the deal, said at the event, “We believe nothing less than our democracy is at stake.”

If (or when) the deal goes through anyway, the union plans demonstrations at affected stations in Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York.

“If they do close one or the other of the stations [KOMO or Q13], we need to have a very negative response in this city,” Twedell said. “We need to be ready to greet the new regime with our own opinions.”