January 2017

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler, who will depart the week of Jan 16, said that if the incoming Republican majority on the commission seeks to rollback his agenda, it will be “easier said than done.” In an interview with Variety, hours after he gave a speech at the Aspen Institute defending the FCC’s network neutrality rules, Chairman Wheeler said that moves to undo some of the actions taken in recent years will face public scrutiny. “The idea of taking things away that American consumers and American companies enjoy today is not the easiest thing in the world,” Chairman Wheeler said. “And there are processes in the Administrative Procedure Act that they have to follow in order to do this, and they have to withstand court scrutiny. That is easier said than done.”

Having come from industry, Chairman Wheeler said that as chairman he came to a realization that, in meeting with lobbying and other groups, “everyone comes in here and talks about how their self-interest is synonymous with the public interest.” He added, “And you know, I used to do the same thing. My ‘aha’ moment was that the public interest was a pretty malleable concept. The public interest is determined by the old adage, ‘Where you stand depends on where you sit.’ And so, what I have tried to do is say, ‘OK, we need another standard.’ And I kept saying to myself, ‘What is it that is in the common good, as differentiated from the public interest?’ Because the common good is how you can serve the good of the most people the best way.”

President-elect Donald Trump met Jan 16 with Federal Communications Commission senior Republican commissioner Ajit Pai, according to transition and future White House spokesman Sean Spicer, who said it was the President-elect's last meeting of the day. Commissioner Pai is widely expected to be tapped as interim FCC chair when President-elect Trump becomes President Trump on Jan 20 and could be named permanent chair as well, though his fellow Republican commissioner Michael O'Rielly is also in the conversation. Trump also met with former Federal Trade Commission Republican member Joshua Wright.

[Commentary] Dear Mr President Elect:
In these final days before your inauguration, we thought it might be helpful to clarify how we see the relationship between your administration and the American press corps. While you have every right to decide your ground rules for engaging with the press, we have some, too. It is, after all, our airtime and column inches that you are seeking to influence. We, not you, decide how best to serve our readers, listeners, and viewers. So think of what follows as a backgrounder on what to expect from us over the next four years:

Access is preferable, but not critical.
Off the record and other ground rules are ours—not yours—to set.
We decide how much airtime to give your spokespeople and surrogates.
We believe there is an objective truth, and we will hold you to that.
We’ll obsess over the details of government.
We will set higher standards for ourselves than ever before.
We’re going to work together.
We’re playing the long game.

Although AT&T and Time Warner have signaled they expect to bypass the Federal Communications Commission review of their proposed $108.7 billion merger—a review that would be triggered by the exchange of FCC licenses like those used to transmit CNN and HBO—AT&T chairman Randall Stephenson signaled a spin-off of CNN was not in the cards. "I don't know why we'd even talk about that," he said. "It doesn't seem relevant to approving a deal like this. What would be the competitive issue that you're remedying with spinning off CNN? There are not competitive issues with owning CNN." President-elect Donald Trump, who has been highly critical of CNN, has threatened to block the deal, leading some to see a spin-off as a way to ease the path to approval. But Stephenson said in the interview that he sees it as a "basic vertical merger" that will ultimately be approved.