Todd Frankel

Two months before May 8's announcement that Sinclair Broadcast Group would pay $3.9 billion for Tribune Media and add to its dominance as the nation’s largest owner of local TV stations, a top executive at Sinclair beamed a short commentary piece to many of the company’s 173 stations. In the segment, which looks like it belongs in a newscast, Sinclair vice president for news Scott Livingston stands before a wall of video monitors and warns that “some members of the national media are using their platforms to push their own personal bias and agenda to control exactly what people think.” He accuses the national media of publishing “fake news stories” — a direct echo of President Donald Trump’s frequent complaint — and then asks viewers to visit the station’s website to share “content concerns.” The piece was a “must-run,” meaning news directors and station managers from Baltimore (MD) to Seattle (WA) had to find room for it.

Local TV stations rank high in public trust, and that is partly because they avoid delving into divisive topics such as national politics, said Harry A. Jessell, editor of TVNewsCheck. Sinclair executives such as Livingtston see it differently, Jessell said. They believe they are pushing back against what they see as a liberal bias in most news programming. Livingston “sees himself like an old-fashioned newspaper publisher, one with a point of view,” Jessell said.

Argentina: In the thin air of the salt flats here, nearly 13,000 feet above sea level, the indigenous Atacamas people face a constant struggle. Yet beneath their ancestral land lies a modern-day Silicon Valley treasure: lithium.

The silvery-white metal is essential for the lithium-ion batteries that power smartphones, laptops and electric vehicles, and the popularity of these products has prompted a land rush here. Mining companies have for years been extracting billions of dollars of lithium from the Atacama region in Chile, and now firms are flocking to the neighboring Atacama lands in Argentina to hunt for the mineral known as “white gold.” But the impoverished Atacamas have seen little of the riches. One lithium company, a joint Canadian-Chilean venture named Minera Exar, struck deals with six aboriginal communities for a new mine here. The operation is expected to generate about $250 million a year in sales while each community will receive an annual payment — ranging from $9,000 to about $60,000 — for extensive surface and water rights.

Tracing the path from deadly hand-dug mines in Congo to consumers’ phones and laptops.

Cobalt is a mineral essential to the rechargeable lithium-ion batteries that power smartphones, laptops and electric vehicles made by companies such as Apple, Samsung and major automakers. The world’s soaring demand for cobalt is at times met by workers, including children, who labor in harsh and dangerous conditions. An estimated 100,000 cobalt miners in Congo use hand tools to dig hundreds of feet underground with little oversight and few safety measures, according to workers, government officials and evidence found by The Washington Post during visits to remote mines. Deaths and injuries are common. And the mining activity exposes local communities to levels of toxic metals that appear to be linked to ailments that include breathing problems and birth defects, health officials say.