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The Sun is a storied American daily founded in 1837 and the winner of 16 Pulitzer Prizes, not to mention the largest newspaper in Maryland. It’s not local TV-style hype to bemoan its possible tumble down a tendentious rabbit hole. No such movement has yet occurred. “We’re making good progress in terms of getting to know each other,” said Trif Alatzas, the Sun’s publisher and editor in chief. Thanks to the work of Sun staffers, said Alatzas, the newspaper is a “sound business.” An overlooked part of Smith’s meeting with Sun staffers, said Alatzas, is that he emphasized that “the industry cannot continue on this track without innovating, without trying new things.”
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Armstrong Williams, Smith’s partner in the Sun purchase, has also been meeting with Sun journalists regarding the paper’s direction, according to Alatzas. Williams’s bio calls him a “a pugnacious, provocative and principled voice for conservative and Christian values in America’s public debate” and a “multi-media wonder” with a history in newspapers, television, radio and cyberspace, but that description does a disservice to his varied and occasionally scandal-filled history.
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There’s an ideological gap at the heart of this story. The editorial board of the Baltimore Sun, like those of many American newspapers, leans to the left. Though many TV stations in the country are driven solely by ratings — and they’re happy to bash politicians of every stripe — Sinclair has upended the industry by inserting a conservative bent to coverage, including persistent pro-Trump commentary.
Fox45 isn’t just any outlet of Sinclair Broadcast Group, which owns or operates 185 stations in 86 markets. It’s the first in the family, the flagship that operates just miles from Sinclair’s headquarters in Hunt Valley, Md. The company is known for the conservative bent of its stations, which became famous in 2018, when anchors at the stations mouthed out a scripted Trumpian attack on the American news media’s “fake stories.” Baltimore is a predominantly Democratic jurisdiction.
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Though Fox45 leans hard to the right, don’t go thinking it’s just a local version of the prime-time blather on Fox News. Its product relies far more on enterprise. Reporters shadow all the major figures in the Baltimore government and press them hard for answers to the questions of the day. The hustle pays off. Fox45, for instance, won an award from Investigative Reporters and Editors for a “Project Baltimore” series exposing a scandal involving the treatment of students with disabilities in the city’s public schools. One student missed the first 140 days of school because his school couldn’t provide a nurse — yet his report card “showed he was marked present 33.5 days in the first quarter and earned grades even though he was never in class.” The WBFF team — Carolyn Peirce, Chris Papst, Dwayne Myers, Jed Gamber and Ray Rogowski — brought to light “multiple examples of outright corruption, with contractors and the school system both stealing money by falsifying reports, all while hurting kids in the process,” according to an IRE write-up.
Project Baltimore has won many other awards, including three others from IRE: for an investigation of “ghost students” in Baltimore public schools, an exposé regarding a 21-year-old sex offender enrolled in a high school and a scam involving so-called church-exempt schools. That’s impact.
And when it comes to impact, Smith has shown a knack for manufacturing it. As reported recently by the Baltimore Banner, the new Sun owner was a moving force behind a high-profile 2022 suit against the Baltimore City school system. This was an astounding work of reportorial laundering: The suit relied to a significant degree on revelations from Fox45’s reporting; once it was filed, Fox45 highlighted it, noting it included material reported by the station; the station didn’t mention Smith’s involvement. In a statement, Fox45 said that the station’s journalists had “no knowledge” of Smith’s role in the suit and that Smith was not involved in the coverage of the suit. Okay, but suspicions about Sinclair’s connection to the suit — including in a piece by Sun columnist Dan Rodricks — have been circulating for quite some time.
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Plus: Smith — described by one of my sources as a combination of Rupert Murdoch and the Koch brothers — has financed a lawsuit against a 2020 mayoral candidate, provided financial backing for a current mayoral candidate and supports a group behind ballot initiatives. One of those initiatives would have empowered the public to recall elected leaders — a prospect that Fox45 has floated vis-à-vis first-term Democratic Mayor Brandon Scott, in part through a preposterous “poll”:
According to an unscientific FOX45 News poll, with 242 respondents, 95% of people said they would like to see Mayor Scott recalled.https://t.co/GrUI8ycKCU
— FOX Baltimore (@FOXBaltimore)
December 15, 2021 Bogus polls at Fox45 provide not only social media fodder but also sleazy material for prodding public officials. According to an email obtained through a Maryland records request, an anonymous Fox45 email account — newspolls@foxbaltimore.com — blasted this request regarding the city’s Safe Streets violence-reduction program to Baltimore officials in July:
Dear Baltimore City elected officials –Following up on our previous email, 97% of the viewers who responded to our most recent poll said they would like to see an independent prosecutor investigate the Safe Streets program.Give this information, and the questions and concerns brought up at the recent Council hearing, why have you chosen not to call for an independent prosecutor to investigate Safe Streets?Responses by 8p ET this evening would be appreciated.Thank you,---FOX45 Newsnewspolls@foxbaltimore.com
Fox45 produces 10½ hours of news per weekday, the better to not merely expose the underside of Baltimore but to sensationalize it, to rub it in. Newscasts recycle the same grim stories over and over. What grim stories? Last summer, Fox45 set out to take a “closer look” at the impact of crime on attendance at Camden Yards, home to the Baltimore Orioles. The threadbare story noted that within a 1½-mile radius, there had been shootings, carjackings and robberies. In 2019, “a man shot a woman multiple times three miles away.” Justin Fenton, a longtime Sun reporter who has moved to the Baltimore Banner, tweeted, “Orioles fans weren’t the victims nor do they have to go anywhere near those areas to get in/out of the ballpark!” Two months later, Fox45 ran a story on thefts near the ballpark with this line: “Fans may be filling the stands at Oriole Park but outside the gates, it’s a season of survival.”
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Reporting on all the awful things going on in the city can be found under the Fox45 website heading “City in Crisis,” the station’s bread and butter. It’s a marathon scroll: violent crime, “crime sprees,” the “juvenile crime crisis,” “escalating teen violence,” “surge in teen violence,” loaded guns, “violent squeegee encounters,” a warning from the police union, a $15,000 water bill, Baltimore’s status as the “dirtiest city in America.” Those scourges must compete for attention with another Fox45 bugbear: bike lanes, which draw sneering scrutiny from the station. In November, Fox45 laid bare its position in an email to the mayor’s office obtained through a records request: “As you know, FOX Baltimore continues to cover the negative impacts of scarcely used bike lanes in Baltimore City. Many residents feel these bike lanes are disruptive and a waste of taxpayer dollars. Do you believe Baltimore City should continue using taxpayer dollars to create new bike lanes?”
In response to questions about specific Fox45 stories, Sinclair spokeswoman Jessica Bellucci expressed concern that “there is a specific narrative you are seeking.” She continued: “WBFF has a steadfast commitment to accountability reporting, exposing issues within the community, and seeking answers and solutions for viewers. Our aim is to help create a safer city, improve public education and the overall quality of life. As I’ve stated earlier, we stand by our journalists and their reporting.”
Baltimore furnishes a station such as Fox45 a bounty of raw material. It ranks high among American cities for violent crime, its schools turn in some dismal test scores, and it has hemorrhaged residents because of crime, civic dysfunction and other factors. Fox45 has made the decision to torque all this misery for its programming needs, such that nary an incident of municipal misfortune squeaks past its anchor desk.
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Even when newspapers are gasping for breath and reducing staff, the Sun doesn’t need a business model powered by fearmongering, conflicts of interest and, in fairness, a history of investigative work. Could that formula even migrate to a daily newspaper? Unlikely. A Fox45-ified Baltimore Sun would read like a cross between a crime blotter and the Daily Caller — a local New York Post without the gossip. Tabloids, including the New York Post, have labored right alongside other newspapers in the doomsday media economy of the 21st century, which might make it hard for journalists at the new-look Sun to “go make me some money,” as Smith importuned at his meeting with staffers.
They might struggle even more in Baltimore, considering that locals already have a site that overplays mayhem and touts lame polls: Fox45.
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Will the Baltimore Sun morph into urban apocalypse porn?
That’s an open question now that David Smith, the 73-year-old executive chairman of the sprawling Sinclair Broadcast Group, purchased the daily. As reported in the Baltimore Banner, Smith, who grew up in Baltimore, suggested in a staff meeting that Sun reporters mimic the work of Fox Baltimore (WBFF/Fox45), a Sinclair property famous for its dramatized coverage of crime. So, it bears considering: What would a Sinclairized Baltimore Sun look like?
The Sun is a storied American daily founded in 1837 and the winner of 16 Pulitzer Prizes, not to mention the largest newspaper in Maryland. It’s not local TV-style hype to bemoan its possible tumble down a tendentious rabbit hole. No such movement has yet occurred. “We’re making good progress in terms of getting to know each other,” said Trif Alatzas, the Sun’s publisher and editor in chief. Thanks to the work of Sun staffers, said Alatzas, the newspaper is a “sound business.” An overlooked part of Smith’s meeting with Sun staffers, said Alatzas, is that he emphasized that “the industry cannot continue on this track without innovating, without trying new things.”
Armstrong Williams, Smith’s partner in the Sun purchase, has also been meeting with Sun journalists regarding the paper’s direction, according to Alatzas. Williams’s bio calls him a “a pugnacious, provocative and principled voice for conservative and Christian values in America’s public debate” and a “multi-media wonder” with a history in newspapers, television, radio and cyberspace, but that description does a disservice to his varied and occasionally scandal-filled history.
There’s an ideological gap at the heart of this story. The editorial board of the Baltimore Sun, like those of many American newspapers, leans to the left. Though many TV stations in the country are driven solely by ratings — and they’re happy to bash politicians of every stripe — Sinclair has upended the industry by inserting a conservative bent to coverage, including persistent pro-Trump commentary.
Fox45 isn’t just any outlet of Sinclair Broadcast Group, which owns or operates 185 stations in 86 markets. It’s the first in the family, the flagship that operates just miles from Sinclair’s headquarters in Hunt Valley, Md. The company is known for the conservative bent of its stations, which became famous in 2018, when anchors at the stations mouthed out a scripted Trumpian attack on the American news media’s “fake stories.” Baltimore is a predominantly Democratic jurisdiction.
Though Fox45 leans hard to the right, don’t go thinking it’s just a local version of the prime-time blather on Fox News. Its product relies far more on enterprise. Reporters shadow all the major figures in the Baltimore government and press them hard for answers to the questions of the day. The hustle pays off. Fox45, for instance, won an award from Investigative Reporters and Editors for a “Project Baltimore” series exposing a scandal involving the treatment of students with disabilities in the city’s public schools. One student missed the first 140 days of school because his school couldn’t provide a nurse — yet his report card “showed he was marked present 33.5 days in the first quarter and earned grades even though he was never in class.” The WBFF team — Carolyn Peirce, Chris Papst, Dwayne Myers, Jed Gamber and Ray Rogowski — brought to light “multiple examples of outright corruption, with contractors and the school system both stealing money by falsifying reports, all while hurting kids in the process,” according to an IRE write-up.
Project Baltimore has won many other awards, including three others from IRE: for an investigation of “ghost students” in Baltimore public schools, an exposé regarding a 21-year-old sex offender enrolled in a high school and a scam involving so-called church-exempt schools. That’s impact.
And when it comes to impact, Smith has shown a knack for manufacturing it. As reported recently by the Baltimore Banner, the new Sun owner was a moving force behind a high-profile 2022 suit against the Baltimore City school system. This was an astounding work of reportorial laundering: The suit relied to a significant degree on revelations from Fox45’s reporting; once it was filed, Fox45 highlighted it, noting it included material reported by the station; the station didn’t mention Smith’s involvement. In a statement, Fox45 said that the station’s journalists had “no knowledge” of Smith’s role in the suit and that Smith was not involved in the coverage of the suit. Okay, but suspicions about Sinclair’s connection to the suit — including in a piece by Sun columnist Dan Rodricks — have been circulating for quite some time.
Plus: Smith — described by one of my sources as a combination of Rupert Murdoch and the Koch brothers — has financed a lawsuit against a 2020 mayoral candidate, provided financial backing for a current mayoral candidate and supports a group behind ballot initiatives. One of those initiatives would have empowered the public to recall elected leaders — a prospect that Fox45 has floated vis-à-vis first-term Democratic Mayor Brandon Scott, in part through a preposterous “poll”:
According to an unscientific FOX45 News poll, with 242 respondents, 95% of people said they would like to see Mayor Scott recalled.https://t.co/GrUI8ycKCU
Bogus polls at Fox45 provide not only social media fodder but also sleazy material for prodding public officials. According to an email obtained through a Maryland records request, an anonymous Fox45 email account — newspolls@foxbaltimore.com — blasted this request regarding the city’s Safe Streets violence-reduction program to Baltimore officials in July:
Fox45 produces 10½ hours of news per weekday, the better to not merely expose the underside of Baltimore but to sensationalize it, to rub it in. Newscasts recycle the same grim stories over and over. What grim stories? Last summer, Fox45 set out to take a “closer look” at the impact of crime on attendance at Camden Yards, home to the Baltimore Orioles. The threadbare story noted that within a 1½-mile radius, there had been shootings, carjackings and robberies. In 2019, “a man shot a woman multiple times three miles away.” Justin Fenton, a longtime Sun reporter who has moved to the Baltimore Banner, tweeted, “Orioles fans weren’t the victims nor do they have to go anywhere near those areas to get in/out of the ballpark!” Two months later, Fox45 ran a story on thefts near the ballpark with this line: “Fans may be filling the stands at Oriole Park but outside the gates, it’s a season of survival.”
Reporting on all the awful things going on in the city can be found under the Fox45 website heading “City in Crisis,” the station’s bread and butter. It’s a marathon scroll: violent crime, “crime sprees,” the “juvenile crime crisis,” “escalating teen violence,” “surge in teen violence,” loaded guns, “violent squeegee encounters,” a warning from the police union, a $15,000 water bill, Baltimore’s status as the “dirtiest city in America.” Those scourges must compete for attention with another Fox45 bugbear: bike lanes, which draw sneering scrutiny from the station. In November, Fox45 laid bare its position in an email to the mayor’s office obtained through a records request: “As you know, FOX Baltimore continues to cover the negative impacts of scarcely used bike lanes in Baltimore City. Many residents feel these bike lanes are disruptive and a waste of taxpayer dollars. Do you believe Baltimore City should continue using taxpayer dollars to create new bike lanes?”
In response to questions about specific Fox45 stories, Sinclair spokeswoman Jessica Bellucci expressed concern that “there is a specific narrative you are seeking.” She continued: “WBFF has a steadfast commitment to accountability reporting, exposing issues within the community, and seeking answers and solutions for viewers. Our aim is to help create a safer city, improve public education and the overall quality of life. As I’ve stated earlier, we stand by our journalists and their reporting.”
Baltimore furnishes a station such as Fox45 a bounty of raw material. It ranks high among American cities for violent crime, its schools turn in some dismal test scores, and it has hemorrhaged residents because of crime, civic dysfunction and other factors. Fox45 has made the decision to torque all this misery for its programming needs, such that nary an incident of municipal misfortune squeaks past its anchor desk.
Even when newspapers are gasping for breath and reducing staff, the Sun doesn’t need a business model powered by fearmongering, conflicts of interest and, in fairness, a history of investigative work. Could that formula even migrate to a daily newspaper? Unlikely. A Fox45-ified Baltimore Sun would read like a cross between a crime blotter and the Daily Caller — a local New York Post without the gossip. Tabloids, including the New York Post, have labored right alongside other newspapers in the doomsday media economy of the 21st century, which might make it hard for journalists at the new-look Sun to “go make me some money,” as Smith importuned at his meeting with staffers.
They might struggle even more in Baltimore, considering that locals already have a site that overplays mayhem and touts lame polls: Fox45.
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