The Radio Television Digital News Association wants the FCC to reject the Baltimore City State’s Attorney’s office’s call for an investigation into Fox affiliate WBFF.
As we reported last week, the State’s Attorney’s office urged the commission to investigate Sinclair’s Baltimore station, alleging its coverage of the office, and particularly Baltimore City State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby, was “blatantly slanted, dishonest, misleading, racist, and extremely dangerous.”
But the RTDNA disagrees.
In a letter sent to the FCC, RTDNA executive director and COO Dan Shelley says the office “clearly provides no evidence to support such assertions” that WBFF was targeting Mosby, and that Mosby “either declined the station’s offers to comment in its news stories or did include comments sought by the station in response to its inquiries.”
“Rarely in the history of the United States–and never in the modern history of our country–has the government silenced a fair and independent news media,” Shelley said in a statement. “Should the commission undertake to do so in this case, it would set a dangerous precedent and have a chilling effect on the public’s ability to understand what its public officials are doing in their name.”