Ownership

The Federal Communications Commission has historically been over-obsessed and too reliant on the belief that the number of broadcast voices in a market is directly tied or correlated to the issue of license ownership, which is a false assumption. I firmly believe that our ownership rules have not worked. It’s why I was so pleased to support the Chairman’s order [in 2017] to eliminate some of these rules.

Critics have claimed that Sinclair — a company with close ties to the Trump Administration and conservative politicians — is pushing its stations away from local coverage and toward a partisan brand of political reporting on national politics. In new research, we find evidence that that appears to be the case.

[Commentary] Mark Zuckerberg’s appearance in Washington is a voluntary, one-off reaction to a scandal. It should be the start of the conversation, not the end: Facebook, like every company that collects and stores personal data, must be made permanently accountable to American political and regulatory institutions. Electronic media, social media and other innovations have created new challenges for law enforcement and national security; they have also helped to increase polarization and undermine trust in public institutions, in America and everywhere else.

House Commerce Committee Chairman Greg Walden (R-OR) said he would tend not to regulate Facebook and other edge providers more, but rather would reduce the regulations on their Internet service provider and broadcast competitors. Regarding privacy regulation of social media giants, Chairman Walden said people clearly needed to know how their data and information was being used, but he was clearly not ready to jump on the "regulate the edge" bandwagon that has been revving up. He pointed out that there are user agreements that are enforceable by the Federal Trade Commission, which is the sam

Facebook announced April 9 that it plans to give a limited group of soon-to-be determined academics some access to Facebook data as needed, with a research emphasis on how Facebook influences elections in different countries around the world.

As Mark Zuckerberg prepares to testify before Congress, Facebook is quietly fighting a crucial privacy measure in the Illinois Statehouse. Starting April 11, state legislators will consider a new amendment to the Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) that could neuter one of the strongest privacy laws in the US, giving Facebook free rein to run facial recognition scans without users’ consent.

Facebook's lobbying influence — along with Mark Zuckerberg’s expected mea culpa — may be enough, privacy experts say, to blunt any talk of significant consumer privacy regulations meant to reign in Facebook and other tech giants, regardless of the angry bluster Zuckerberg endures on Capitol Hill both April 10 and 11. “I think it will be really interesting whether Republicans give Facebook a pass given Zuckerberg’s prostrate apology stance — ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

Sinclair stands alone in its brazen use of the public airwaves to promote an extreme right-wing agenda to advance its business interests. From its hiring practices to its frequent disregard of journalistic values, the company is an unapologetic outlier among TV station owners. At one time, journalists applying for jobs at Sinclair were questioned by the company’s owners about their views on abortion and other hot-button political issues — and turned down if they were “too liberal.” Sinclair’s news website found a way to get around this time-consuming process by hiring as reporters the Repub

The chairman of Sinclair Broadcast Group met President Donald Trump at the White House during a visit to pitch a potentially lucrative new product to administration officials. David D Smith briefed officials in 2017 on a system that would enable authorities to broadcast direct to any American’s phone. Smith said his White House meeting was not financially motivated. The Federal Communications Commission decided in November 2017 to make incorporating chips voluntary.

[Commentary] Is it time to recognize that Facebook, and ‘Big Tech’ at large, may be a bug in our democracy? In Part 1, I examined how the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica story illustrates the harmful effects of “Surveillance Capitalism.” The erosion of our privacy is contributing to the declining health of our democratic discourse.  Moreover though, Facebook has facilitated the proliferation of hate speech, fake news, and international electoral interference.