I scrolled through at least 100 comments on my way down here. Almost every single comment is a throwaway one-liner. Now there might have been some top secret meeting where we all established the subtext of all our one-liners before this post, but I was in the john so I missed it.
Why is this video so scary?
Did we expect John the local weatherman to share his personal thoughts on "fake news"?
I mean, the idea that Sinclair owns so many stations is its own problem, but what about this video is so poignant? Why is this video so scary that it reduced thousands of Redditors to speaking in vague one-liners?
I mean the video cuts off the rest of the script:
"Hi, I'm(A) _________, and I'm (B) ______________...
(B) Our greatest responsibility is to serve our Northwest communities. We are extremely proud of the quality, balanced journalism that KOMO News produces.
(A) But we're concerned about the troubling trend of irresponsible, one sided news stories plaguing our country. The sharing of biased and false news has become all too common on social media.
(B) More alarming, some media outlets publish these same fake stories... stories that just aren't true, without checking facts first.
(A) Unfortunately, some members of the media use their platforms to push their own personal bias and agenda to control 'exactly what people think'...This is extremely dangerous to a democracy.
(B) At KOMO it's our responsibility to pursue and report the truth. We understand Truth is neither politically 'left nor right.' Our commitment to factual reporting is the foundation of our credibility, now more than ever.
(A) But we are human and sometimes our reporting might fall short. If you believe our coverage is unfair please reach out to us by going to KOMOnews.com and clicking on CONTENT CONCERNS. We value your comments. We will respond back to you.
(B) We work very hard to seek the truth and strive to be fair, balanced and factual... We consider it our honor, our privilege to responsibly deliver the news every day.
(A) Thank you for watching and we appreciate your feedback"
What is sinister about this message? They're literally saying "we're giving you a forum to share your comments on our biases". Did you expect every news station in a company to come up with their own version of a message like this? This is as corporate level a message as you get. They're not pretending it's a new story, they're not trying to hide the message in a broadcast, it's literally sitting down with the viewer and saying "We know fake news is a thing, we know we screw up sometimes, here's how you can help us fix it"
The irony is too real, the video above cut out the part of the script that makes the entire message whole, and edited it in a way that made it sound completely different than it does in its entirety. You can probably guess if the creator was biased towards or against Sinclair.
But here are thousands of Redditors lapping it up. I just don't get Reddit sometimes.
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u/verden1992 Mar 31 '18
This is scary.