“Connect the dots… and pay attention.” — What I so often tell myself

I hear tell today that weather lady Christina Anthony is leaving WWMT-TV Channel 3. Her departure is latest in a puzzling string of female reporters and broadcasters who have exited the television station, owned by the Sinclair Broadcast Group in recent years.

I had suspicions about Sinclair a few years back when the company took over ownership of the Kalamazoo station. A friend told me the company was even more conservative than Fox News, which I found hard to believe.

Just after it took the reins at Channel 3, the co-anchors of the evening news broadcast read a statement warning viewers not to be taken in by fake news, as has become so common in these troubling times. The problem was that all of the Sinclair-owned outlets were forced to make exactly the same statements and a satirical video outed them for manufacturing the whole campaign.

Now comes a disturbing trend I’ve been watching over the last couple of months. In these modern times, we have become accustomed to the news being presented as pseudo entertainment and we as viewers have been invited to get to know the personalities that present it to us. They even take turns in reading their teleprompters.

But that development also has led to troublemakers like me noticing a pattern of female reporters and broadcasters leaving, perhaps not “to spend more time with their families.” To be sure, many of them have landed on their feet in the business elsewhere, but it seems unusual that so many women are jumping ship in Kalamazoo.

In just the last several months co-anchor Erica Mokay, Tricia McCauley, Lexi Petrovic, Christina Anthony and Lora Painter have left. Kate Siefert left earlier this year.

Kate Tillotson, who was the co-anchor who had to read that manufactured Sinclair warning, was fired in 2019 for violating company policy. When she departed, said, “Newschannel 3 is owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group. In the last couple years there have been some journalistic choices made that didn’t align with my journalistic values.”

That makes seven females who have parted ways with Newschannel 3 in the last several years, six since last January. It’s easy to notice because of the industry’s effort to get us to like those who deliver the news to us weekday evenings in our living rooms.

Many of us were shocked and some dismayed when Channel 8 abruptly dismissed co-anchor Suzanne Geha and never bothered to explain why. This, from an organization that prides itself on getting the truth to us — except when it involves one of them.

I have heard and seen many express the opinion they miss the good old days when people like Walter Cronkite simply told us what was happening, without any editorial embellishment. What has happened is the news actually is an entertainment program that lives and dies by advertising and ratings.

Meanwhile, I have no evidence that the Sinclair Broadcasting Co. is somehow making things intolerable for female employees, but following recent patterns and developments, I have to wonder just what’s going on.