Donald Trump’s campaign struck a deal with Sinclair Broadcast Group during the campaign to try and secure better media coverage, his son-in-law Jared Kushner told business executives Friday in Manhattan.
Kushner said the agreement with Sinclair, which owns television stations across the country in many swing states and often packages news for their affiliates to run, gave them more access to Trump and the campaign, according to six people who heard his remarks.
In exchange, Sinclair would broadcast their Trump interviews across the country without commentary, Kushner said. Kushner highlighted that Sinclair, in states like Ohio, reaches a much wider audience — around 250,000 listeners — than networks like CNN, which reach somewhere around 30,000.
“It’s math,” Kushner said according to multiple attendees.
But Sinclair and other networks said such a deal is nothing nefarious or new – just an arrangement for extended sit-down interviews with both candidates, one many campaigns have done in previous years to get around the national media and directly to viewers in key states.
Scott Livingston, vice president of news at Sinclair, said the offer for extended interviews with local anchors was made to both candidates. Trump did a handful of interviews, while Sen. Tim Kaine did a few as well, though Hillary Clinton did not.
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Trump team was troubled by coverage that frequently fact-checked Trump's statements etc. They found way around it https://t.co/yRWstp9Dfr
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) December 17, 2016
So Trump will have his own propaganda outlet.
By the way, some years ago, one of our local TV stations launched a 10 pm news broadcast designed to take away audiences from the major TV stations which broadcast their news at 11 pm. This station did not have a news operation of its own, so it used feed from Sinclair. The effort was a disaster. You could tell right off the news wasn’t coming from anywhere in western Pennsylvania. Sounded to me like it was coming from New York. It may not be noticeable, but like those in the south, for example, those of us in the Rust Belt do have accents. These news readers did not sound like us and it seemed they weren’t familiar with landmarks, customs and lifestyles in these parts.
After about a week, people stopped watching. The station abandoned its agreement with Sinclair, then partnered with a local station that had a news division. So now the station withe the news team broadcasts at 10 pm on the smaller sration and at 11 pm on its own station..
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