More to The Point

Blake Brunner of Official Media has been tracking Sinclair Broadcast Group and the commentary segment The Point, home of Mark Hyman's right-wing rants. In a thorough piece, Brunner writes that--aside from Hyman's views that celebrity protesters are "wackjobs," Jesse Jackson is "America's premier race hustler," and the "liberal media" is really the "Axis of Drivel"--what's truly scary is:

the prospect that Sinclair may soon increase its share of the nation’s media markets. Although its website boasts that Sinclair is currently the “largest commercial television broadcasting company not owned by a network,” the company is one of many currently lobbying the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to ease its ownership rules. Sinclair would not be the sole beneficiary of deregulation—fellow broadcasting giants like Hearst-Argyle and Scripps could expand their vast holdings—but in attaining a greater market share Sinclair increases its already great potential to damage public discourse. If these companies—and their ally, FCC Chairman Michael Powell—get their way, viewers should expect increasingly homogenous programming as well as an acceleration of the rightward shift in already-conservative televised discourse.