June 2011

A Newsroom That Doesn’t Need News

It is 6:30 in the morning, and a stubborn mist is hanging low over the Hollywood Hills. This is when TMZ punches in and goes to work making a television show that is beamed out five nights a week to the rest of us, mining our culture’s need to know every single little thing about celebrities.

Syndicated by Fox Broadcasting for the past three years, TMZ the show is recorded in the newsroom of TMZ the Web site, situated on Sunset Boulevard a block from the Chateau Marmont. It is an aggressive purveyor of celebrity news that has been known to uncover (or pay for) scoops that open the kimono on the world of Hollywood. But unlike Access Hollywood or Entertainment Tonight, TMZ lets viewers in on the joke. Five days a week, its reporters show up at work and the television lights come on above them and five cameras roam overhead as they discuss the “news” of the day. The newsroom is alive and buzzing about — well, let’s face it, nothing very important. No one pretends that they are covering the war in Afghanistan or the federal debt ceiling. They are covering show business, with an emphasis on the “show.” It is a pleasure to watch, and a very guilty one at that. But it is also a daily indictment of our outsize fascination with celebrities. We are in on the joke, but we are implicated by it as well.

The Right’s Blogger Provocateur

Part performance artist, part polemicist, Andrew Breitbart, 42, has used his network of Web sites and their legions of followers to bring conservative media red meat.

Some of his reader-generated scoops have reverberated all the way to the halls of the United States Capitol, like the Weiner photos and undercover video he released of Acorn workers offering advice on how to evade taxes and conceal child prostitution. After the videos went viral Congress ended grants to Acorn, and federal agencies severed ties with the group. The stories and videos Breitbart plays up on his Web sites — which include Big Government, Big Journalism and Big Hollywood — tend to act as political Rorschach tests. If you agree with him, you think what he does is citizen journalism. If you don’t, his work is little more than crowd-sourced political sabotage that freely distorts the facts.

California PUC president must resign

[Commentary] California Public Utilities Commission President Michael Peevey should step down. Gov. Jerry Brown should name a recent PUC appointee to replace Peevey. Californians need to be able to trust the Public Utilities Commission. Only a new president can offer assurance that fresh eyes are reviewing PUC policies and practices.

Companies Are Erecting In-House Social Networks

As social networks increasingly dominate communications in private lives, businesses of all sizes -- from tiny start-ups to midsize companies like Nikon to behemoths like Dell -- are adopting them for the workplace.

Although it is difficult to quantify how many companies use internal social networks, a number of corporate software companies have sensed the opportunity and offer various systems, some free to existing customers, others that charge a fee per user. It’s one more instance of how consumer technology trends, like the use of tablet computers, are crossing into office life. Because of Facebook, most people are already comfortable with the idea of “following” their colleagues. But in the business world, the connections are between colleagues, not personal friends or family, and the communications are meant to be about work matters -- like team projects, production flaws and other routine business issues.

76 House Dems Praise AT&T-T Mobile 4G Pledge

Seventy six House Democrats have written Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski and Attorney General Eric Holder to urge them to consider the benefits of an AT&T-T Mobile acquisition of T-Mobile in their respective agencies' reviews of the proposed $39 billion deal. While the letter does not explicitly endorse the merger, it does celebrate AT&T's pledge that the deal will allow the combined companies to deliver next-generation wireless broadband to over 97% of the country. Led by Reps. G.K Butterfield of North Carolina and Gene Green of Texas, the Dems extolled the potential benefits of that rollout. Those include driving investment and innovation, creating jobs, and reaching the rural constituents that the FCC has just said need more help getting broadband. They make it clear that the FCC review should include "all relevant issues," including price and competition. But they also point out, as has AT&T at every opportunity, that President Barack Obama has made ubiquitous wireless broadband a national priority.

Public Knowledge President Gigi Sohn said, "We wish the members of Congress had studied AT&T’s proposal, backed by the Communications Workers of America, more closely. Had they done so, they would have found that AT&T’s deployment plan is only marginally better than what they have proposed before and that under this merger, jobs will be lost, not gained. Had they done so, they might have asked AT&T and the CWA why the company was spending $39 billion to buy T-Mobile instead of expanding their coverage, as they could have done at any time rather than use the buyout as a threat or, as former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt characterized it, a ‘state-authorized bribe.’ It is unfortunate that proponents of the merger have been able to mislead so many Members of Congress."

"Members of Congress should be more careful about signing any letter that AT&T puts in front of them. This letter is riddled with misleading and factually inaccurate statements that contradict what the company is telling investors and regulators. It is simply wrong on the facts," said Derek Turner of Free Press.

AT&T Gave $500k to House Democrats Pushing The T-Mobile Takeover

If you had any doubt that money talks in politics, consider June 24’s development in the lobbying effort for AT&T’s proposed $39 billion buyout of T-Mobile.

Seventy-two Democratic lawmakers sent a letter to the FCC and Justice Department praising the deal. Turns out, 66 of the more than 70 signatories received a combined half-million dollars in campaign contributions from the telecom giant in the most recent election cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Most of the donations came from political action committees (PACs) associated with AT&T, which is the single-largest corporate donor to members of Congress over the last two decades. To get an idea of how widely AT&T spreads its money around the nation’s capitol, consider this: during the last election cycle, the company gave money to 391 of the 435 members of the House, and 78 of the 100 members of the Senate.

June 18-24: AT&T/T-Mobile Update

We return this week to the story that's been dominating our Headlines since mid-March: AT&T's acquisition of T-Mobile.

First off, thankfully, there's no worries: the deal is on track to close by March 2012. No problems. No unexpected resistance. Nothing to see here behind the curtain. Or so says AT&T. The company's general counsel, Wayne Watts, met with DC reporters June 21 to reiterate that the deal will get done as things move along at both the Department of Justice and the Federal Communications Commission.

Typical of the support AT&T has gotten for the deal, the National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts sent a letter to the FCC this week citing the familiar arguments in favor of the merger from proponents: that it will speed the deployment of 4G wireless broadband to more than 97 percent of the population and increase the membership of the Communications Workers of America (CWA). The letter also touts AT&T's commitment to preventing online piracy of movies and music while T-Mobile's efforts have been "less than adequate." NHFA argues the acquisition of T-Mobile would benefit content creators because AT&T has gone much further than T-Mobile to ensure its networks aren't used to download pirated content.

But the NHFA's letter of support is also typical of a darker side of this debate.

FCC Spokesperson: Net Neutrality Rules Going To OMB 'Very Soon'

A Federal Communications Commission spokesperson says the FCC is expected to send its network neutrality rules to the Office of Management Budget for Paperwork Reduction Act vetting "very soon," which also means it hasn't sent them yet.

The rules were adopted in December 2010, but because they cause new reporting requirements, those were put out separately for comment by the FCC, which has been vetting those comments since April. The rules cannot be challenged in court until they are published in the Federal Register, which can't come until OMB has put them out for comment for 30 days and decided they do not create undue paperwork burdens. The rules do not go into effect until 60 days after that publication, however, so it will likely be October at the earliest before they would take effect.

Comcast has to sit on its hands while Hulu drama plays out

Comcast owns a big chunk of Hulu, but the company has to sit on the sidelines while the future of the online video site is determined even though the end result could greatly affect it.

Comcast ended up with a piece of Hulu when it acquired majority control of NBCUniversal from General Electric Co. At the time, there was great concern about what Comcast's acquisition of NBC would mean for the future of Hulu. Many consumer advocates, lawmakers and media watchdogs feared that Comcast would view Hulu as a competitor to its own cable distribution platforms and try to squash it. Indeed, in the consent decree approving the deal, the government said, "Comcast has an incentive to prevent Hulu from becoming an even more attractive avenue for viewing video programming because Hulu would then exert increased competitive pressure on Comcast's cable business." When it signed off on the deal, the government essentially told Comcast that it could retain its stake in Hulu but also had to give up its voting rights and board representation. As part of the approval order, Comcast was also ordered to provide programming to Hulu on the same terms as the other owners. Earlier this week, News Corp. was near a renewal deal for its content with Hulu and Disney is now following suit. Comcast will also now do the same per its deal with the government.

Consumer group says White House is too friendly with Google

Frequent Google critic Consumer Watchdog wrote to the White House Counsel arguing that President Barack Obama and other Administration officials must distance themselves from Google during pending federal investigations of the search giant.

"It’s unheard of for the President to publicly embrace a corporate executive whose company is under criminal investigation by the U.S. Justice Department," said Consumer Watchdog President Jamie Court and Privacy Project Director John Simpson. "Nonetheless, the Obama Administration continues to have close relationships with top executives of Google Inc. while the company is the target of serious federal investigations for possible wrongdoing." Google is currently under review by the government for allegedly selling ads to illegal online pharmacies; the Justice Department is also evaluating Google's proposed acquisition of Admeld for antitrust concerns. Most notably, the Federal Trade Commission is reportedly poised to bring a broader antitrust probe of the firm's core search business. The pair note Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt and a company vice president were both guests at a State Dinner honoring German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and argue the invitations undercut federal investigators by indicating White House support for the firm.