Sinclair warned its viewers about the media’s ‘fake news.’ Now it’s about to take over some of the nation’s biggest stations.

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.