If you’re like us, local news is “that thing that comes on when you don’t turn off your TV immediately following Jesus Christ Superstar.” But for millions of Americans it’s a go-to resource that filters the news of the day into succinct, 3-minute, highlights-only stories. Which is why it’s completely and utterly horrifying to see this clip that was making the rounds this weekend. In it anchors who work at Sinclair Media, each in their specific “serious news anchor” inflection, recites verbatim a script of right wing propaganda about “fake news.” Feeding the fire that you shouldn’t trust the news ON THE NEWS seems like the kinda evil genius plan that could only come from this administration. For more info on the scary big company, Sinclair Media Group, that wants to make state media a reality, check out this great piece from the Guardian.
This whole story had us thinking about the power of words and fake scripts. And it reminded us of our sworn enemies: fake clinics. You see, we’ve done a lot of research on these monsters, and the script for them too, is always the same. They do calculations like is the pregnant person “abortion-minded” (aka, do they, you know, want an abortion, the thing they came for). Fake clinics all have pamphlets that say things like “abortion causes breast cancer” or “abortion can lead to suicide” or “ABORTION WILL KILL YOU HERE’S THIS ONE STUDY WE FOUND ONLINE.” It’s all meant to scare and intimidate, and all becomes increasingly scary when you hear it parroted back from frightened, vulnerable patients. “This is extremely dangerous to our democracy” indeed.
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For some quick hits of today’s news: Missouri's’ legislature is trying to get one last kneecap to reproductive rights into law, a federal judge ruled that teen immigrants could not be denied abortions by Scott Lloyd (not performed by.. just to clarify), Maine turns out to not be *as* conservative as you think, NYTimes embarrassment Bret Stephens thinks it’s OK to say all women who’ve had abortions should be hanged if it’s in a tweet (come on, guys).
