March 2016

We impose a penalty of $89,200 against D.T.V., LLC (D.T.V.), licensee of Class A Television Station WPHA-CD (Station WPHA or the Station) in Philadelphia (PA) for failing to make the Station available for inspection by FCC agents on multiple occasions, maintain a fully staffed main studio for the Station, and operate the Station’s transmitter from its authorized location. The Commission’s ability to conduct unannounced inspections to assess compliance is essential to its responsibility to promote safety of life and property. Failing to make stations available for “on-the-spot” inspections frustrates the Commission’s ability to judiciously and efficiently deploy its resources to monitor the thousands of broadcasters subject to our oversight. In addition, requiring broadcasters to maintain fully staffed main studios ensures that stations provide adequate service and remain responsive to their communities of license. Finally, unauthorized transmitter operations pose a risk of interference to licensed broadcasters and threaten the Commission’s licensing regime.

[Commentary] Wall Street’s sinister influence on the political process has, rightly, been a major topic during this presidential campaign. But history has taught us that the role that the media industry plays in Washington poses a comparable threat to our democracy. Yet this is a topic rarely discussed by the dominant media, or on the campaign trail. But now is a good time to discuss our growing media crises.

Twenty years ago last month, President Bill Clinton signed the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The act, signed into law on February 8, 1996, was “essentially bought and paid for by corporate media lobbies,” as Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) described it, and radically “opened the floodgates on mergers.” The negative impact of the law cannot be overstated.The act dramatically reduced important Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations on cross ownership, and allowed giant corporations to buy up thousands of media outlets across the country, increasing their monopoly on the flow of information in the United States and around the world. Twenty years later the devastating impact of the legislation is undeniable: About 90 percent of the country’s major media companies are owned by six corporations. This issue has not been central in the 2016 presidential election. But it is deeply concerning that, of all the presidential candidates running in 2016, the Big Media lobby has chosen to back Hillary Clinton. Media industry giants have donated way more to her than any other candidate in the race, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics. In light of this, we must be mindful of the media reform challenges we face in the present, as we try to prevent the type of damage to our democracy that was caused by the passing of this unfortunate law.

[Michael Corcoran is a journalist based in Boston (MA)]

In a meandering, 100-minute-long telephone interview with The New York Times, Donald Trump elaborated on some of the bold and belligerent foreign-policy prescriptions he’s hinted at in the past. He touched on nuclear weapons, spying, and the fight against ISIS, bringing his tried-and-true “we’re losing” doom and gloom to each topic. His proclamations of decline seem to be designed to support what he said outright on Twitter recently, after a bombing in Pakistan killed dozens and injured hundreds: “I alone can solve.” When confronted with a question about cyberwarfare, Trump leaned on the same tactics, while displaying a profound unfamiliarity with the issue.

David Sanger, one of the two Times journalists interviewing Trump, asked the candidate if the US should use cyberweapons as an alternative to conventional weapons or nukes, and if so, how often. Trump said he didn’t think cyberweapons are an alternative to nuclear weapons “in terms of ultimate power.” He tacked back to discussing nukes—“I will tell you, I would very much not want to be the first one to use them, that I can say”—until Sanger asked him again how he would use the US cyber-arsenal as president. Trump appears to be making three points here: first, that the US is “obsolete in cyber”; second, that the US can’t even tell where attacks are coming from; and third, that “the power of cyber” is “inconceivable” and should figure “very strongly in our thought process.”