This is Bill Clinton's fault.

The [Telecommunications Act of 1996] dramatically reduced important Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations on cross ownership, and allowed giant corporations to buy up thousands of media outlets across the country, increasing their monopoly on the flow of information in the United States and around the world.

The bill, which was lobbied for in great numbers by the communications and media industry, was sadly a bipartisan misadventure – only 3 percent of Congress voted against the bill: five senators and 16 members of the House, including then-Rep. Bernie Sanders.

Rep. John Dingell (D-Michigan) “thanked God” for the bill that would “make this country the best served, the best educated and the most successful country … in all areas of communications.”

https://truthout.org/articles/democracy-in-peril-twenty-years-of-media-consolidation-under-the-telecommunications-act/

Critics have also claimed that the act has failed to enable the competition that was one of its stated goals. Instead, it may have inadvertently exacerbated the ongoing consolidation of the media marketplace that had commenced in the decades before the act's passage. The number of American major media content companies shrank from about fifty in 1983 to ten in 1996, and to just six in 2005. An FCC study found that the act led to a drastic decline in the number of radio station owners, even as the actual number of stations in the United States increased. This decline in owners and increase in stations has resulted in radio homogenization, in which local programming and content has been lost and content is repeated regardless of location. Activists and critics have cited similar effects in the television industry.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_Act_of_1996#Later_criticism

See also: John Oliver's take from 6 years ago

https://youtu.be/GvtNyOzGogc?si=YHabkkb1NZ8aGROS

No, no, no. I’ve been working with Sinclair for many years. It’s not Trump’s views that align with Sinclair. It’s Sinclair’s views that align with evil. To be clear, I don’t work for Sinclair, I just have to deal with them. They are much more evil than you think. Much more evil than this article explains. Much more.

Hardly just Sinclair, although they're definitely a big offender.

Must be that "liberal media" at work again, I guess.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Smith, an enthusiastic supporter of Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump who has built Sinclair into one of the largest television station operators in the country, purchased the Baltimore Sun last month.

In a private meeting with the Sun’s journalists, he urged them to emulate coverage at the local Sinclair station, Fox45, which in 2021 produced a documentary titled simply “Baltimore Is Dying.”

As Sinclair increasingly fills the void, it offers its viewers a perspective that aligns with Trump’s oft-stated opinion that America’s cities, especially those run by Democratic politicians, are dangerous and dysfunctional.

“Sinclair stations deliver messages that appeal to older, White, suburban audiences, and they play up crime stories in a way that is disproportionate to their statistical presence,” said Anne Nelson, a journalist and author of “Shadow Network: Media, Money and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right.” “All of it is fearmongering and feeds into a racialized view of cities.”

He specifically recalled that “they were running this absurd ‘terror alert desk’ just stoking fear that the terrorists are out to get you.” Weiss said that, after less than a year with Sinclair, “I just couldn’t look myself in the mirror and had to go find another job.” He now works for a nonpartisan environmental conservation nonprofit in Denver.

But tax forms show that his family’s foundation contributed to conservative advocacy groups, including more than half a million dollars to Project Veritas, a right-wing organization known for undercover sting operations.

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