Rolling Stone has a must-read article on the company, which exposes just how vile it really is:Even before the payoffs became public, the news staff at Sinclair was horrified. The producer who edited the interview Williams did with Paige calls it "the worst piece of TV I've ever been associated with. You've seen softballs from Larry King? Well, this was softer. I told my boss it didn't even deserve to be broadcast, but they kept pushing me to put more of it on tape. In retrospect, it was so clearly propaganda."

The Federal Communications Commission is investigating the cash-for-coverage deal, and other media outlets have severed their ties to Williams. But not Sinclair. Smith leaves open the possibility of putting the commentator back on the air, dismissing the entire controversy as "foolish." Williams, for his part, is confident that Sinclair will have him back. "David Smith has stood beside me as a friend," he says. "I'm not too concerned about my relationship with Sinclair, if you know what I mean."

In the firmament of right-wing media outlets, Sinclair stands somewhere to the right of Fox News. Its archconservative politics may not be served up with Fox's raw-meat bite, but what Sinclair lacks in flash, it makes up for in unabashed cheerleading for the Bush administration. It sent a team to Iraq to report "good news" about the war and forced each of its sixty-two stations to broadcast a pledge of support for Bush. Last April, it refused to air a Nightline special listing the name of every American soldier killed in Iraq, and it gave national exposure to Stolen Honor, a documentary attacking John Kerry, just weeks before the election. And each night, Sinclair requires all of its stations to air an editorial segment called "The Point," in which company vice president Mark Hyman rails against the "angry left" and "clueless academia," dismisses peace activists as "wack jobs," calls the French "cheese-eating surrender monkeys" and supports a host of right-wing initiatives, from a national sales tax to privatizing Medicare.

Because Sinclair broadcasts mostly in out-of-the-way markets, beyond the glare of the national media, no one much noticed until recently. But within the company, current and former employees have long known that there is a fine line between ideology and coercion. Jon Leiberman, once Sinclair's Washington bureau chief, says Smith and other executives were intent on airing "propaganda meant to sway the election." An ex-producer says he was ordered not to report "any bad news out of Iraq -- no dead servicemen, no reports on how much we're spending, nothing." And a producer Sinclair sent to Iraq to report on the war calls the resulting coverage "pro-Bush."

"You weren't reporting news," says the producer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "You were reporting a political agenda that came down to you from the top of the food chain."(...)

In addition to deceiving viewers and cutting costs, Sinclair's news operation enables it to shape the tone and content of the evening news at every local station. The company delivers its message in News Central segments it labels "must carries" -- those that every affiliate is required to air. In addition to Hyman's editorial, these segments often include "Truth, Lies and Red Tape," which trots out examples of government waste, and reports by Sinclair's Washington bureau that are skewed to the right.

Behind the scenes, Sinclair gives generously to Bush and the GOP. A report by the nonprofit Center for Public Integrity found that ninety-five percent of Sinclair's $335,000 in campaign contributions since 1998 have gone to Republicans -- "a lopsided record of giving unmatched by other major television broadcasters." All told, the company gave $23,000 to Bush and $217,000 to the Republican Party.

The article also discusses the owner's background in porn, how he passed off a community service conviction onto his employees, the illegal deals it used to increase market share, its Wal-Mart like practices in cutting employees, its deceptive programming that only looks like local news, the story behind Stolen Honor, the incredible egomania of its top management, and the culture of fear it creates among its employees. Truly remarkable. Truly evil. Truly a case for why we need to support representative Slaughter to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine. Truly a worthy target for us to try and take down.