The deal sealed the companys dominance over Sinclair, which had tried to purchase Tribune in 2018 but failed to get support from the FCC. The local television behemoth Nexstar Media Group announced Friday that it had acquired The Hill, a Beltway political news website, for $130 . Producers and writers with experience at Fox News, CNN and MSNBC came on board earlier this year to work on Donlons new program. If Nexstars general mandate to encourage localism does not explicitly incentivize station managers to embrace a muckraking ethos, in other words, its unlikely to happen. The deal also unites two companies that have sought, with mixed results, to present themselves as neutral arbiters in a partisan moment. An example of data being processed may be a unique identifier stored in a cookie. Faced with the challenge of low viewership for its prime-time newscast, NewsNation has added talk shows to its lineup, a route taken by other cable news channels to get viewers to tune in when there is a lull in breaking stories. After drawing on local station news operations to staff NewsNation for its launch, Sook has said Nexstar is looking to hire executives and talent with national network experience. These sources have minimal bias and use very few loaded words (wording that attempts to influence an audience by appeals to emotion or stereotypes). As of July 2020, Nexstar Media Group owned 196 stations. This spring, WTNH added even more hours of news programming, likely in a move to increase revenue. Ad-Free Sign up Further, their personality-driven news shows often feature the opinions of the hosts. Rich L.A. homeowners are snapping them up, Column: Uber and Lyfts deactivation policy is dehumanizing and unfair. Mr. Finkelstein took a controlling stake in The Hill in 2014. The founder, chairman, president, and CEO of Nexstar is Perry A. Sook. As of 2019, KTLA is owned by Nexstar Media Group, which owns over 200 TV stations nationwide. Overall, we rate KTLA Least Biased based on neutral straight news reporting without offering opinion pieces. Whats more, over the last three months, several of NewsNations top editorial executives including the newsrooms leader, Jennifer Lyons, a veteran news director from Nexstars Chicago station, WGN have exited. It is best known for fast aggregation and a steady stream of links from The Drudge Report. Former ABC News correspondent Adrienne Bankert is joining NewsNation as a morning show anchor. When it comes to science, they are usually fact-based such as when covering the Coronavirus and climate change. Nexstar, a public company, became the nation's largest local TV operator in 2018, when it bought Tribune Media, the television arm of the Tribune Company, for $4.1 billion. , a half-hour roundtable conversation with Republican and Democratic public figures about hot topics being debated in Hartford. Official PAC Name: NEXSTAR MEDIA GROUP, INC.POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE (NEXSTAR PAC) Location: IRVING , TX 75062 Industry: TV/Movies/Music; Commercial TV & radio stations Treasurer: CARTER, THOMAS FEC Committee ID: C00567388 (Look up the documents filed at the FEC) When I asked Gary Weitman, whether Nexstars political activity presented a potential conflict of interest, he responded, The, Campaign organizers say Facebook boycott will continue, Coping with the inundation of news online, Emergency upon Emergency: How the press reacted to, A Matter of Necessity: Shefali Luthra covers abortion for, Anonymous Woman: Speaking with the press, an abortion fund worker faces an impossible dilemma, Everywhere and Nowhere: Notes from a parachuting national reporter on abortions local stories, Peer to Peer: News you can use, via Google Doc, The Poetics of Posting: A conversation with Mia Sato of, Sources on Sourcing: Six people weigh the risks and benefits of talking with the media, Out of Control: How a search for answers about reproductive health can lead you down a tunnel of misinformation. (In 2019, Sooks compensation was worth $16.4 million, while the median salary of Nexstars thirteen thousand employees was $43,537.). This review will focus on website content, and fact-checking of TV news programming as NewsNation continues to broadcast WGN programming during the day and overnight, with news programming making up almost half of the 24-hour schedule. Nexstar has also invested heavily in its Washington, DC, bureaupart of an industry-wide prioritization of national figures and newswhich conducts interviews with members of Congress and sends the interviews to stations in the states they represent. The network is also hampered by WGN Americas long legacy as a general entertainment programmer. After its merger with Tribune, Nexstar will be the largest owner of local broadcast stations in the U.S. Nexstar and the Illinois-based media company already have political activism in common. On Sunday mornings, the station airs. ad fontes media Most Extreme Left Hyper-Partisan Left Comm Trump lost the race, and he and his supporters have been crying about election fraud that has been proven to be a wholesale product of his imagination. For its part, NewsNations top executives refute any claims of bias, sticking to its talking point that the cable news block offers middle-of-the-road news and debate. In reality, Nexstar says, its stations reach 63 percent of American households, well surpassing the cap. Despite strong-arming traditional pay TV companies and forging new agreements with streaming services, Nexstar has yet to see a return on that investment even after it reduced NewsNations news hours from three to two and launched two new current affairs programs in their place. Carlson, Fox's wildly popular conservative pundit, said last week that he would begin airing footage from the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot this week, after Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) offered him what Carlson described as "unfettered" exclusive access to more than 40,000 hours of unreleased surveillance tape starting earlier in the month. The Supreme Court's conservative justices cast doubt on President Biden's student debt forgiveness plan during oral arguments on Tuesday in a pair of challenges to the administration's relief program. [4] The first television station bought by Nexstar was WYOU in Scranton, Pennsylvania. The founder, chairman, president, and CEO of Nexstar is Perry A. Sook. The two cover an enormous radiusoften driving multiple hours to cover a storyand usually write between two and four pieces a day, mostly related to migration. Sook seems to have anticipated this; in 2019 he requested, and was denied, was worth $16.4 million, while the median salary of Nexstars thirteen thousand employees was $43,537. Jimmy Finkelstein with Arianna Huffington in Washington in 2012. This spring, WTNH added even more hours of news programming, likely in a move to increase revenue. (D. Van Zandt 11/1/2019) Updated (09/09/2022), Last Updated on September 9, 2022 by Media Bias Fact Check, Left vs. The unfolding crisis has shown local news outlets to be indispensablejust as it has threatened their survival. In 2021, The Hill was purchased by Nexstar, which owns around 200 TV stations and media outlets nationwide. Lyons' departure was announced by Nexstar CEO Perry Sook, according to Robert Feder, who writes about the Chicago media business. This also included Nexstar station KRON in San Francisco, a market with the potential to reach over 2.3 million households. But the ratings show that there is not a lot of demand for straight-ahead news in the evening. Political spending at Tribune peaked around 2000 when they gave $123,280, the majority of that to Republicans. Founded in 1947, KTLA is a CW-Affiliated television station located in Los Angeles, California. Ranking the media from liberal to conservative, based on their audiences. Susan Tully, Nexstars senior vice president of local content development, explains, Now we own a station in market 2 [in Los Angeles] and a station in market 195 [in San Angelo, Texas]. Thats a staggering amount of airtime, and it reveals a contradiction at the heart of the mandate to produce original local programming every day. 3) The broadcast stations (NBC, CBS, ABC) and online news sites like Yahoo and Google have a more middle-of-the-road audience than other mainstream media outlets. Banfields program is less politically oriented and has featured many liberal guests, such as commentator Keith Olbermann and screenwriter-director Aaron Sorkin. KTLA was the first commercially licensed television station in thewestern United States. They argued that the merger would diminish local news because Nexstar lays off employees at some stations it acquires and relies too much on pumping content from its regional hubs. Several recipients of Nexstar donations, including Sens. Matthew Keys is an award-winning journalist who covers the intersection of media, journalism and technology as publisher of The Desk. Butthe piece also included this soundbite from Bensman: Citation And whats happening? When I asked about accountability reporting, Rich Graziano, the general manager, told me that investigating government institutions is not his main priority for WTNH. Nexstar requires its stations to generate local content but otherwise gives them wide leeway. Filtered Search, Enter your email address to subscribe to MBFC and receive notifications of new posts by email. Bias Rating: LEAST BIASED This spring, viewership soared while earnings plummeted. Even Sinclair Broadcast Group, which had run into criticism for a conservative bent in local newscast commentary, is launching what it calls a fact-based morning headline news service early next year. AccordingtoOpen Secrets, Nexstar Media group gave more money to Republicans in the 2018 election cycle (45% to Democrats, 55% to Republicans); however, in 2020, they gave more to Democrats. These are the most credible media sources. Launched on 9/1/2020, NewsNation Now was a nightly 3-hour-long news program broadcast on WGN America. , which features local businesses that have paid the station to appear. Between 2003 and 2014, newspapers lost about a third of their full-time statehouse reporters, a significant loss. [5] The sale was completed on September 28 of that year. And the station size, the market size, the geographic part of the nation, it is so diverse and varied that there is no one way fits all., Investigative journalism, Tully says, is important to viewers in some markets and less so in others, and it is up to station managers to gauge demand. Im not so focused on being first, Graziano said. Nexstar corporate officers suggested that its impossible to generalize about the stations or their programming. A flashpoint occurred on Sept. 22 when NewsNation anchor Joe Donlon had an exclusive sit-down interview with Trump at the White House, a rarity for TV journalists not from his favored outlet, Fox News. In January, before the pandemic hit, Nexstars stock price had nearly doubled from two years prior. To journalists, this may not sound like a promising replacement for a robust economy of independently owned local stations. Its stock price, which closed Tuesday at $153.97, down 2%, has more than doubled in the last 12 months. WTNH staff aim for coverage that resonates, but out of necessity they also end up running items like the hack of a mans home security camera or the umpteenth update on the murder of a local woman. Washington, Based in Chicago, the program utilized the journalistic resources of the 110 television news operations throughout the United States under WGN Americas corporate parent Nexstar Media Group. Press Freedom Rating: MOSTLY FREE They have recently gained another digital reporter and a California correspondent. The interview came at a time when Trump was running for re-election, and several Nexstar employees said they felt the interview didnt go far enough to challenge numerous false claims that the former president made during his campaign. NEW YORK (AP) Republican presidential contenders typically fight for prime speaking slots at the Conservative Political Action Conference. Much of the reason news companies seek to buy up stations is to increase revenue from retransmission fees: charges to cable and satellite companies for permission to air local content. From the February 16, 2021,edition of WLNS 6 News at 11 PM. That dissent started after NewsNation acknowledged hiring William Bill Shine, a former White House official under former President Donald Trump who was tapped to provide consulting services to the news product. Over the last decade The Hill has sought to attract readers interested in political news without carving out a partisan editorial voice a challenge at a time of political polarization. In a dissenting opinion, Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel called the new policy bureaucratic and cruel. She wrote, It perversely means that the public will have fewer opportunities to comment on the use of the public airwaves.. Last year, CNBC hired former Fox News anchor Shepard Smith for a nightly just-the-facts presentation at 7 p.m. Eastern. Pew has basically taken the average viewer/consumer of all of these media outlets and plotted them on a continuum, trying to ascertain which outlets are favored bywhich side of the political spectrum. Analysis / Bias One of his primary roles, as he sees it, is to help local businesses grow: We are in an advertising-based business, and we try to come up with different marketing solutions for our partners.. Some of our partners may process your data as a part of their legitimate business interest without asking for consent. The broadcast was intended to be a straightforward news reporting alternative to the opinion-based programming of CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News. Obviously, increasing awareness is Job One for us, Sook told analysts in February. Pew's findings aren't an outlier. Media Bias Fact Check offers a number of sustaining Ad-Free membership plans to fit your budget! Starting about fifteen years ago, a handful of companies including Nexstar, Sinclair, Tegna, and Gray Television competed to buy up independent stations and media companies. The two cover an enormous radiusoften driving multiple hours to cover a storyand usually write between two and four pieces a day, mostly related to migration. A bruising presidential campaign and a historic pandemic brought in a record number of viewers for CNN, Fox News and MSNBC. Media Type: TV Station NewsNations mission is to provide news based on facts, not opinions, the company said. Fair Use Policy After Nexstar acquired WTNH in New Haven, Connecticut, in 2017, as part of its acquisition of Media General, the news team was encouraged to lead every newscast with a local story. Yet on February 16, one syndicated Nexstar piece aired an interview with a representative of CIS with no reference to the organizations extremist views. She is expected to be one of the anchors for a NewsNation morning program. But even liberals watch Fox. Editorially, NewsNation does not produce opinion pieces and generally reports on politics neutrally. But his employment, which began in June and was not revealed to staff for six months, was disturbing, especially to some of the female staffers. such as textbooks, contact OpenSecrets: info[at]crp.org. Aug. 20, 2021. Then, late last year, Nexstar finalized an acquisition of Tribune Media for $7.2 billion, a figure that includes the assumption of Tribunes debt. The consent submitted will only be used for data processing originating from this website. On July 26th, 2022, NewsNation announced that former CNN anchor Chris Cuomo would join the network with a new prime-time show. The staff also reflects a diversity of viewpoints, which they are encouraged to express., From the start, there were suspicions in the TV news industry that NewsNation might have a conservative slant. 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