Sinclair Broadcast Group wants to buy Chicago's WGN-TV outright as part of its latest effort to win the Federal Communications Commission's approval for its proposed acquisition of Tribune Media Co. In addition to buying WGN, Sinclair plans to put stations in Dallas and Houston into a divestiture trust to be operated by an independent third-party trustee. Sinclair had previously proposed selling the Texas stations to Cunningham Broadcasting Corp. and WGN to an entity called WGN-TV LLC. Sinclair had included service agreements in the deals allowing the company to continue to run the stations. Cunningham was controlled by the estate of Sinclair chairman David Smith's mother. WGN-TV LLC's president is Steven B. Fader, a business partner of Smith in Atlantic Automotive Corp. which owns dozens of car dealerships in Greater Baltimore.

"There can be no question regarding misrepresentation or character given that Sinclair has fully disclosed all terms of all aspects of the transactions it has proposed," Sinclair said. "The FCC's reported concerns with sales to certain parties have been eliminated in light of the withdrawals of the applications relating to Dallas, Houston, and Chicago. Accordingly, we call upon the FCC to approve the modified Tribune acquisition in order to bring closure to this extraordinarily drawn-out process and to provide certainty to the thousands of Tribune employees who are looking for closure."

Robert McDowell, a former FCC commissioner who is now an attorney at Cooley LLP, said Sinclair could actually end up coming out ahead as a result of addressing the specific problems identified by Pai. "What was noteworthy about this hearing designation order is that it was pretty specific regarding what defects it perceived needed to be cured," McDowell said. "The HDO could have the effect of pushing Sinclair into accepting terms it was resisting previously. If Sinclair complies with the FCC’s wishes, it could get more than half of the loaf it was pursuing in the first place."

[Analysis] Digital platforms that (a) provide a two-sided or multi-sided market; (b) are accessed via the internet; and (c) have at least one side that is marketed as a “mass market” service, share a set of characteristics and raise a similar set of concerns so that we should consider them as a distinct set of businesses. This does not make laws of general applicability such as antitrust inapposite. Nor are these distinct capabilities and incentives intrinsically bad or good. Identifying the nature of digital platforms and understanding the implications of this increasingly important sector of the economy is critical to understanding both how to update antitrust and other generally applicable laws, and when sector-specific regulation is required to promote the public interest. In particular, this analysis should make clear that regulation based on surface similarities is not merely unlikely to be helpful, but may be downright harmful. It is a common cliché that “if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck.” Unless, of course, it is actually a clever hunting decoy. For ducks, distinguishing between these two possibilities is rather essential. Similarly, for the formulation of good policy -- whether through updating antitrust law or applying sector-specific regulation -- understanding what makes digital platforms different is critical to protecting and promoting the public interest.

[Public Knowledge Senior Vice President Harold Feld]

The Federal Communications Commission's Wireline Competition Bureau updated minimum service standards levels for speed and usage allowances for Lifeline-supported services as required by the 2016 Lifeline Order including newly-calculated minimum service standards for fixed broadband. The FCC reminded providers of the updated minimum service standards for mobile broadband and mobile voice service. These standards will take effect on December 1, 2018. Finally, the FCC announced that the budget for federal universal service support for the Lifeline program for calendar year 2019 will be $ 2,327,114,250.

• Beginning December 1, 2018, the Lifeline minimum service standard for fixed broadband speed will be 18 Mbps downstream and 2 Mbps upstream. The standard for fixed broadband data usage will be 1000 GB per month.
• Beginning December 1, 2018, the Lifeline minimum service standard for mobile broadband data usage will increase to 2 GB per month. The Lifeline minimum service standard for mobile broadband speed remains 3G mobile technology.
• Beginning December 1, 2018, the Lifeline minimum service standard for mobile voice service will increase to 1000 minutes per month.
• The indexed budget for federal universal service support for the Lifeline program for the calendar year beginning January 1, 2018 was $2,279,250,000, and the indexed budget for the calendar year beginning January 1, 2019, will be $2,327,114,250.

Facebook will start removing misinformation that could spark violence, a response to mounting criticism that the flow of rumors on its platform has led to physical harm to people in countries around the world. Facebook will rely on local organizations of its choosing to decide whether specific posts contain false information and could lead to physical violence, company officials said. If both hold true, the posts will be taken down. A Facebook spokeswoman said the company will implement the new policy first in Sri Lanka and later in Myanmar, two countries where some people and groups have used Facebook to spread rumors that ultimately lead to physical violence. The attacks in those countries have garnered significant media attention.

The new policy raises questions that company officials said are too early to answer, including who its partners will be and what the criteria will be to become one. A Facebook spokeswoman said she couldn’t provide a list of organizations Facebook plans to team up with or countries where they could deploy this new policy.

The 2016 presidential election coincided with substantial shifts in the ways that members of Congress communicated with their constituents online. Democrats expressed political opposition nearly five times as much under President Donald Trump as they did during the last two years of Barack Obama’s presidency. Much of this opposition was directed at President Trump, though Democrats also increasingly opposed Republican members of Congress. Meanwhile, congressional Republicans posted in support of Trump more than twice as much as congressional Democrats posted in support of President Obama during his final two years in office. Members of Congress who expressed political opposition most often were also the most liberal or conservative. This pattern is in line with the Center’s previous research on how members of Congress express political disagreement. But the new analysis also shows that the most ideological members were also the most likely to express support for others in their party. In other words, the most liberal and conservative members of Congress both attacked those on the other side more often and were more likely to affirm their own side’s decisions and positions. Moderates, meanwhile, tended to focus most of their posts on local issues.