July 2017

Sens Ron Johnson (R-WI) and Roy Blunt (R-MO) sharply rebuked Twitter following reports that the website briefly blocked its users from posting links to a blog post that criticized the US government’s network neutrality rules. Twitter previously had described the mishap as a glitch, but Sens Johnson and Blunt still penned a letter that slammed the company’s chief executive, Jack Dorsey, for an incident that appeared to lawmakers to be “an affront to free expression.”

The confusing saga began on July 12, the day that Twitter joined Facebook, Google and other tech giants for an online rally in defense of an open internet. But those who sought to share the company’s blog post could not do so on Twitter. For a time, the site marked the link as suspicious and blocked new tweets containing it. That immediately led to cries of censorship, given Twitter’s public participation in the day of action in support of net neutrality — and on the opposite side of the debate from AT&T. A Twitter spokesman at the time said the link was “erroneously caught in Twitter's anti-spam filters” and quickly remedied the mistake. But the fracas still managed to reach Capitol Hill, where Sens Johnson and Blunt on Tuesday described the incident in a letter to Dorsey as “disturbing.”

Of the many challenges Fox News Channel is facing amid a turbulent year, there’s one threat Rupert Murdoch can cross off the list: Sinclair Broadcast Group has no plans to launch a rival conservative-friendly TV network. Chris Ripley, CEO of the Hunt Valley (MD)-based TV-station giant, is ready to end months of speculation that his company was preparing to mount a competitive threat in the wake of its $3.9 billion deal to acquire Tribune Media in May. “After we acquired Allbritton [Communications] in 2014, we looked hard at launching a national cable news channel, but we decided the world didn’t need another cable news platform,” says Ripley, who makes clear that the rise of Donald Trump and the upheaval at Fox News haven’t changed his calculus. “Our strength is local news,” he maintains. “The market for national cable news is very well served.”

Legislation that would give telecommunication companies tax breaks for expanding high-speed internet access doesn’t include proper oversight controls to ensure firms invest in areas where it’s most needed, public interest groups say. The pushback reflects a potentially divisive fight on an issue — expanding internet access to underserved areas — that generally has bipartisan support. The Gigabit Opportunity Act, sponsored by Sen Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), would provide state governors the flexibility to choose low-income areas to be designated as GO zones, investments for which telecoms could claim write-offs. Eligibility would also require states and municipalities to adopt model codes to “streamline” local regulations. Those codes are being written by the FCC’s Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee.

Some local entities are wary of pre-emption of their powers to set rates for pole attachments and other permitting procedures. The congressional proposals don’t address the real problem — lack of will by providers to invest in low-density areas where its hard to turn a profit, said Martha Duggan, senior director of regulatory affairs for the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association. “The irony is that we are the unserved communities, we want that connectivity,” Duggan said at the BDAC meeting. “I can tell you stories of municipalities that have offered zero-cost rates for pole attachments if the providers will come out and build in our areas. None have taken us up on that so far.”