FCC & Charter Slapped With $10 Billion Racial Discrimination Lawsuit By Byron Allen

You might feel like you’ve read this one before – and you have, kind of. Less than a month after Byron Allen got AT&T and DirecTV carriage deals after charging them with racial discrimination in a $10 billion lawsuit, he’s got some new targets. On Jan 27, both the Federal Communications Commission and Charter Communications were sued for $10 billion in federal court by Allen’s Entertainment Studios and the National Association of African-American Owned Media for “racial discrimination in contracting for television channel carriage.”

“President Obama and the Democratic Party have completely excluded the African-American community when it comes to economic inclusion,” Allen said. “Everyone talks about diversity, but diversity in Hollywood and the media starts with ownership. African-Americans don’t need handouts and donations; we can hire ourselves if white corporate America does business with us in a fair and equitable way.” And that includes the FCC, according to Jan 27’s lawsuit. “A driving purpose of the Federal Communications Act and the First Amendment is to ensure the widest possible dissemination of information from diverse sources,” the jury seeking complaint (says of the Obama Administration body). “Yet the FCC has done nothing to protect the voices of African-American-owned media companies in the face of increased media consolidation,” it adds, noting the proposed $55 billion merger of Charter Communications and Time Warner Cable. “Instead, the FCC works hand-in-hand with these merging television distribution companies to enable and facilitate their Civil Rights violations. The FCC’s apparent standard operating procedure is to obtain and accept sham diversity commitments from merger applicants, in excess of its statutory duties.”