It begins with a headline in the running for "Understatement of the Year"
Under new ownership, WJLA-TV takes a slight turn to the right
Longtime DC residents have grown up watching the power local news team of Gordon Peterson and Maureen Bunyan. First on WUSA the duo was reunited at WJLA over ten years ago, when owner Joe Allbitron decided that the way to win the local news war was to give the public old school straight up news from seasoned broadcast veterans. Allbitron's decision paid off big time for him, when WJLA's newscasts went from last place to first place. Allbitron expanded his news empire with a 24 hour local newschannel, Newschannel8, and then his son Robert provided the seed money to start the political gossip rag Politico.
For whatever reason after Joe passed away Robert decided that the TV stations would not be profitable in the future, WJLA was no longer the #1 newscast as fewer folks were watching ABC primetime (but being #2 isn't so bad is it?), so he put the station group and Newschannel8 up for sale. Unfortunately the winning buyer was the Sinclair Broadcast group with the deal being finalized in July 2014 after obtaining FCC approval.
Follow me past the orange doo-hicky for the sad tale of what is now happening, thanks to brave employees and fired employees dishing to The Washington Post's Paul Farhi
Last week, for example, WJLA viewers woke up to a new face on the morning news: Mark Hyman, a veteran conservative pundit, who offered some criticism of President Obama.
In addition to adding commentaries from Hyman, an executive at Sinclair, WJLA has begun a partnership with the editorially conservative Washington Times to feature the newspaper’s “Golden Hammer” award on the air each week.
Sinclair’s takeover has caused some unease in WJLA’s newsroom. Staffers say some of the stories ordered by Sinclair on a “must-run” basis don’t meet the station’s long tradition of non-partisan reporting. Moreover, they suggest that airing criticism of the federal government without rebuttal is bound to play badly in a region that is home to hundreds of thousands of federal workers.
“You can’t run a TV station in Washington by telling government workers that they’re a bunch of criminals and crooks,” said one of the station’s journalists, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he said he risked being fired if identified. “You can’t be the anti-government channel in Washington. They’re going to lose the trust they built up with people over years and years. We’ve told people, ‘We’re just like you,’ not, ‘We’re looking out for the tea party.’ ”
SIGH I've been a faithful WJLA news viewer since they brought in my old favorites. I noticed the added wingnuttiness in the broadcasts recently and worried it was the shape of things to come. As a fed, it makes my blood curl when I see stories with an anti-government slant.
Tonight instead I watched NBC4, Jim Vance, Doreen Genzler and Doug Kamerer with the weather. I'm sure I'm not the only one dumping WJLA.