Sinclair injects deceptive attacks on Biden's age into dozens of local broadcasts

This is a special joint edition of Popular Information and Aaron Rupar's Public Notice. You can subscribe to Public Notice here.

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Two outlets controlled by right-wing media tycoons are working in tandem to aggressively push specious claims about President Joe Biden's fitness for office to millions of Americans. 

On June 4, the Wall Street Journal published a 3,000-word article questioning Biden's mental acuity. The Wall Street Journal is owned by News Corp, the media conglomerate founded by right-wing billionaire Rupert Murdoch. He stepped down as chairman of the company last year, assuming the role of chairman emeritus. At the time of his retirement, Murdoch promised to continue to be "engaged daily with news and ideas" at the company. (News Corp is now chaired by Rupert Murdoch's son, Lachlan.)

The Wall Street Journal article, headlined “Behind Closed Doors, Biden Shows Signs of Slipping,” boasts that it is based on "interviews with more than 45 people over several months." But only one person is quoted on the record supporting the thesis of the piece: Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA). “I used to meet with him when he was vice president. I’d go to his house,” McCarthy told the Wall Street Journal. “He’s not the same person.” 

Relying on McCarthy as the lynchpin of the article is problematic. First, McCarthy is not a neutral observer. He is a partisan Republican interested in inflicting political damage on Biden. Further, what McCarthy told the Wall Street Journal about Biden is directly contradicted by comments that McCarthy said previously — both publicly and privately. In the article, McCarthy criticizes Biden's performance in debt ceiling negotiations in 2023. But in March 2023, while these negotiations were underway, the New York Times reported that "McCarthy has told allies that he has found Mr. Biden to be mentally sharp in meetings." McCarthy made similar comments about Biden in public, praising Biden as "[v]ery professional, very smart" and "[v]ery tough at the same time." In October, when McCarthy was ousted as House Speaker, Politico reported that McCarthy "mocked Biden’s age and mental acuity in public, while privately telling allies that he found the president sharp and substantive in their conversations."

The rest of the piece is based on anonymous Republican criticism of Biden. For example, "according to six people," during a meeting with current House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), Biden "said a recent policy change by his administration that jeopardizes some big energy projects was just a study." But the new policy, which involved a pause on new liquified natural gas terminals, involved a study of "the impacts of LNG exports on energy costs, America’s energy security, and our environment." 

Other anonymous criticism from Republicans is even flimsier. For example, during a January 2024 meeting on Ukraine, unnamed Republicans criticized Biden for consulting notes, speaking softly, and taking ten minutes before the meeting started to personally greet attendees. Several Democrats provided the Wall Street Journal with on-the-record quotes about their impressions of Biden — including Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), Senator Jack Reed (D-RI), Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Senator Chris Coons (D-DE), and Governor Roy Cooper (D-NC) — but none of them were included in the piece. 

The Wall Street Journal piece was panned by independent media critics. CNN's Oliver Darcy said the Wall Street Journal piece had "glaring problems." In Poynter, Tom Jones wrote that it was not a "fairly reported story" because it relied exclusively on "quotes and opinions from those who don’t want to see Biden elected to a second term."

Nevertheless, the Wall Street Journal piece was repackaged by Sinclair Broadcast Group and beamed into the homes of millions of Americans. Sinclair, which is controlled by right-wing media mogul David Smith, owns or operates 185 local television stations across 86 markets. 

Sinclair repackaged the Wall Street Journal story through its centralized news team, known as The National Desk. The segment was then pushed to dozens of local news stations owned by Sinclair. Local anchors introduced the piece by reading from a nearly identical script. Again and again, the anchors say that the Wall Street Journal is "out with new reporting calling into question the mental fitness of President Joe Biden," adding that the issue "could be an election decider." Watch:

The segment itself, by national correspondent Matthew Galka, describes the Wall Street Journal article as "damaging" and casts it as an authoritative look at Biden's mental capabilities. Galka also quotes Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI), who asserts that Biden is "mentally declining," adding that "[i]t’s sad to see that in any human being." (Galka also describes comments by Congressman Jim Costa (D-CA), who believes Biden is "sharp.")

A 2018 study published in the American Political Science Review found that stations purchased by Sinclair increase "coverage of national politics at the expense of local politics" and undergo "a significant rightward shift in the ideological slant of coverage." 

Delivering right-wing attacks on Biden's mental fitness under the guise of "local news" is an extremely powerful tactic. While many Americans are distrustful of the national media, 71% believe that local news is accurate, including 78% of Democrats and 66% of Republicans. 

This is not the first time Sinclair has exploited Americans' trust in local news to boost Republicans politically. In 2016, the Trump campaign provided Sinclair stations with extensive access to Trump in exchange for friendly coverage that did not include fact-checking. "We are here to deliver your message," Smith told Trump in a 2016 meeting. In 2017, Sinclair hired Boris Epshteyn, who previously served as a Trump advisor and surrogate, as its Chief Political Analyst. Sinclair stations were required to run Epshteyn's political commentary. "The American people demand change, and they demand action, and that’s exactly what they’ll get from this administration going forward," Epshteyn declared in one piece. In 2018, anchors at Sinclair affiliates were forced to read a script warning views about "fake stories" being published by other media outlets "to push their own personal bias and agenda." The argument mirrored then-president Donald Trump's criticism of the media. 

In addition to running Sinclair, Smith has used his vast wealth to support a variety of far-right causes. The Baltimore Banner reports that since 2015, Smith, through his family foundation, has donated large sums to Young Americans for Liberty ($581,000), Project Veritas ($536,000), Turning Point USA ($150,000), and Moms for Liberty ($121,000).

Meanwhile, News Corp’s cable news properties, Fox News and Fox Business, also helped launder the Wall Street Journal’s attacks on Biden into the news cycle. According to transcript searches, the WSJ piece’s core claim that Biden is “slipping” was brought up at least 64 times on air on Fox News and Fox Business from when the article was published until yesterday afternoon. Online, the WSJ piece has been the focus of at least 15 articles on Fox News’ website, with many of them treating its dubious claims about Biden’s decline as a demonstrated fact.

The WSJ piece has also been a regular topic of conversation on CNN and MSNBC, where the claim about Biden “slipping” was discussed at least 28 times between the article’s publication and Monday afternoon. One of the article’s two authors, Siobhan Hughes, was interviewed on CNN on June 5. When pressed by anchor Boris Sanchez to explain McCarthy’s differing statements about Biden’s mental acuity, Hughes dismissed McCarthy’s praise for Biden as something he had to do “tactically because he had to get along with President Biden at a time when the country was at risk of a debt default.” But she wasn’t asked to address the likelihood that McCarthy is being equally tactical in denigrating Biden now that it’s politically advantageous for him.