In this week’s Maine Sunday Telegram, I write about the nation’s largest owner of local television stations, Sinclair Broadcasting Group, and the “must run” pro-Trump editorials it requires Maine’s WGME-13 to run in its newscasts. Check it out.
Sinclair is currently seeking approval from the Trump administration’s FCC to acquire two dozen more stations, a move requiring a change in rules governing the market penetration “discounts” granted for UHF stations.
COLIN WOODARD is a New York Times bestselling author, historian and award-winning journalist. He is the author of seven books that have been translated into a dozen foreign languages and inspired an NBC television drama. He is currently Director of Nationhood Lab at the Pell Center for International Relations and Public Affairs at Salve Regina University. As State and National Affairs Writer at Maine's Portland Press Herald, he won a 2012 George Polk Award and was a finalist for a 2016 Pulitzer Prize. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Politico, The Economist, Smithsonian and dozens of other major publications.
A native of Maine, he has reported from more than 50 countries and seven continents and lived for more than four years in Eastern Europe during the collapse of the Soviet empire and the transition that followed. A graduate of Tufts University and the University of Chicago he is past Pew Fellow in International Journalism at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, a recipient of the Jane Bagley Lehman Award for Excellence in Public Advocacy, and a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.