'A f*cking horror show' -- The Wire's David Simon torches Sinclair anchors who read Trumpian 'Fake News' statement

Over the weekend, anchors at TV stations around the country owned by Sinclair read a Trumpian propaganda statement in which they vowed to fight "fake news."

How America's largest local TV owner turned its news anchors into soldiers in Trump's war on the media: https://t.co/iLVtKRQycLpic.twitter.com/dMdSGellH3

— Deadspin (@Deadspin) March 31, 2018

Being forced to spread conservative propaganda that undermines other media convinced at least one Sinclair employee to quit in protest. Like most in the TV industry, the anchors signed draconian contracts that make them pay huge damages if they quit before the term is up, which has won them some sympathy.

Not from David Simon. A former Baltimore Sun reporter who went on to be the producer of HBO's The Wire among other street-wise dramas torched everyone involved in a series of tweets. The anchors should have refused or quit and sued if they were fired or otherwise punished, he argued.

"[It] is too much to say they were so enslaved that their own consciences couldn't dictate an act of journalistic integrity," he said. "They could have refused to lie or misrepresent themselves on camera and the courthouse remedy remained for them."

Simon says that "any journalist with even a passing familiarity to the established ethos of the profession" because going to court to punish the anchors would have been "a f*cking horror show" for Sinclair, he says.

Read the whole thing below.