Three’s Company: Fox, Sinclair and the RNC are working together to meddle in the election.

When Russian & Chinese autocratic propaganda machines and American media owners are running the same game plan to pervert our democracy, that’s a five alarm fire.

-Doctored videos

-Manipulated photos

-Misleading headlines

-Propaganda masquerading as news content

Right wing media companies Fox and Sinclair are working with the MAGA-RNC to flood the country’s airwaves, front pages and social media feeds with disinformation designed to smear President Joe Biden. 

Take a second to let that sink in. Major “news” organizations have become part of a political party’s propaganda operation. Forget all those movies about crusading reporters trying to hold the powerful to account. Think instead of TASS and Xinghua news doing all they can to make the public swallow the dictator’s lies.  This is not why the founders protected a free press. In fact, it was to fight the Monarch’s monopoly on news that they fought so hard for freedom of speech.

Here’s how it works. The MAGA-RNC trolls the internet with anti-Biden memes. Often this included doctored videos and entirely fictional stories. Then Fox, the very same company that notoriously paid out almost $1-billion dollars for lying about the 2020 election, amplifies those lies. Sinclair uses the same doctored and dishonest content on its 86- local television stations and websites. Rinse, repeat.

Together these efforts are grossly distorting the facts in an effort to help secure convicted felon Donald Trump’s election in November.  And it’s getting worse. There’s been a noticeable increase in deceptive content cycling its way to the public from all three of these bad actors in the last few weeks.  Each one- including the multiple Murdoch outlets like the New York Post and Wall Street Journal-- is busy spreading lies and disinformation in an attempt to cement a false narrative that Joe Biden is mentally unfit for office.

And, we have recently learned that Russian and Chinese government actors are joining their effort.  When autocratic propaganda machines and American media owners are running the same game plan to pervert our democracy, that’s a five alarm fire.

Anatomy of a smear

In recent days, we have seen the RNC and Murdoch media outlets produce & share sneaky and misleading edits of videos of President Biden on his two recent overseas trips, a White House Juneteenth celebration and at his recent LA fundraiser. That’s in addition to the widely discredited story by the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal alleging the president was not attentive enough at a variety of policy meetings.

Sinclair then laundered all of that deceptive content and blasted it out to local news viewers across the country as journalists Judd Legum and Aaron Rupar have reported. It’s nightmare fuel to watch these purported journalists read the exact same false information word for word as they introduced the lie-filled video to unsuspecting audiences. It’s also not the first time the right wing media giant has forced its news anchors to read questionable copy. You may recall the Trump inspired ‘fake news’ propaganda piece. But this new Biden attack piece is much worse.  You can watch it here:

Sinclair is also busy boosting the MAGA RNC talking points with a steady stream of anti-Biden “articles” on its many local ‘news’ websites. Judd Legum describes the scam:

“The articles are based on specious social media posts by the Republican National Committee (RNC), which are then repackaged to resemble news reports. The thinly disguised political attacks are then syndicated to dozens of local news websites owned by Sinclair, where they are given the imprimatur of mainstream media brands, including NBC, ABC, and CBS.

For example, on June 10, Biden attended an event on the White House lawn celebrating Juneteenth. The event included a musical performance, and Biden listened with a broad smile but did not dance. The RNC's "research" team posted a clip of Biden on X with the caption, "Why isn't Biden moving?"  Hours later, the RNC's post was embedded into an article published by Sinclair's National Desk, with the headline, "Biden appears to freeze, slur words during White House Juneteenth event."

That Didn’t Happen

The White House is pushing back hard against the so-called Cheapfake videos. So are people who were with Biden at the events in question including the Obama aide Eric Schultz, LA fundraiser host Jimmy Kimmel and even the German Chancellor. There’s also been some fact checking including CNN,  AP and the Washington Post:

“The use of these clips is an especially pernicious couple of examples of manipulated video — what we label “isolation” under our guide to manipulated video — because it’s intended to create a false narrative that doesn’t reflect the event as it occurred. The RNC and its avid followers in the conservative media earn Four Pinocchios.”

Sinclair posted the White House complaints about the misleading content. Curiously, the article was written by the same person who wrote all of Sinclair’s propaganda articles. But that’s likely  just to give them legal cover since every one of the questionable stories is still live on the Sinclair websites without an update or correction. 

Sinclair local TV stations laundering Republican propaganda. Photo credit: Popular Information by Judd Legum

So now what?  The goal of this propaganda is to destroy trust, and to allow lies to take hold. Only in a truthless world can autocrats rule. Anyone concerned about our democracy-including the mainstream media-  should be part of a sharp, sustained rebuke of this dishonest and dangerous election meddling. Public pressure can help put each one on notice that voters won’t stand for such underhanded media manipulation. We need continued fact crusading to help voters better understand how and when they are being lied to.

It’s also important to dust off those ‘how to be a smart information consumer’ guidelines. That means reading past the headlines, paying attention to the source of information, and not sharing questionable memes from sketchy social media accounts and websites.  The sad fact is that this election meddling effort is only going to get much worse so buckle up.

Jennifer Schulze is a former Chicago journalist talking about journalism. You can read her columns here and at Heartland Signal. Follow Jennifer on Threads @jenniferschulzechi or Twitter/X @NewsJennifer.