Wall Street Journal

Now as one of the tech industry’s main bridges to President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming administration, Silicon Valley investor Peter Thiel is playing a central role in helping shape the relationship with a president most tech titans didn’t want.

Until recently it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing for a company to wear its political leanings on its sleeve. But the recent backlash against Kellogg and other companies shows that political stances can come with costs. After the cereal maker joined other companies in pulling advertising from controversial right-wing website Breitbart over hate speech, the outlet launched a #DumpKelloggs campaign and wrote articles critical of the company. As American society becomes more divided it is becoming more dangerous to mix business and politics.

The telecommunications industry is embracing the idea of a Trump administration. President-elect Donald Trump’s promises to reduce corporate taxes and to eliminate regulations have been welcomed by executives from an industry facing intense oversight. Four of the biggest players generate more than $340 billion in annual revenue from largely domestic operations. One key area for optimism is taxes. Verizon Communications chief Lowell McAdam recently expressed hope that the Trump administration will be able to lower the corporate rate. “We are not planning on getting into the 15% range; that would be great if it did,” McAdams said.

21st Century Fox Inc is in late-stage discussions to buy the rest of Sky PLC, the UK’s market-leading pay-TV provider, as Fox again tries to consolidate its holdings years after its previous attempt was thwarted by a phone-hacking scandal. Fox already owns 39.1% of the company. The companies said that it reached a preliminary agreement for £10.75 per share in cash ($13.52) but that certain material offer terms remained under discussion. The $14 billion offer was a 40% premium to Sky’s Dec. 6 closing price.

If completed, the deal would value Sky at about $23 billion. Fox has until Jan 6 to say whether it will make a firm offer. In 2011, News Corp. dropped its bid to take full control of Sky after a scandal over the reporting tactics at one of its UK newspaper titles raised government and public outcry over the deal. News Corp has since split into 21st Century Fox and News Corp, parent company of The Wall Street Journal.

Silicon Valley investor and entrepreneur Peter Thiel is continuing to put his stamp on the presidential transition with appointments of two associates to help in that effort, according to a person close to the transition effort. Mark Woolway, the Vice President of Corporate Development at health benefits broker Zenefits, and Kevin Harrington, a managing director at Thiel Capital, will join so-called “landing teams” charged with identifying policy priorities and hiring key people into executive-branch departments. Woolway is set to join the landing team at the Treasury Department and Harrington the team at the Commerce Department.

[Commentary] Not all of the government nomination negotiations these days are taking place at Trump Tower in Manhattan. Some are happening in Congress, and one is a potential Senate deal over nominees to the Federal Communications Commission that could leave Democrats in control of one of the most economically destructive agencies in Washington.

We hear Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) are negotiating for an FCC transition in which Chairman Tom Wheeler would leave in January. GOP leaders would then reconfirm two commissioners: Democrat Jessica Rosenworcel, whose five-year term has expired; and Republican Ajit Pai, who is not up until 2017 and is in the mix to be the next chairman. The question is why run the risk of a Democratic majority that could stymie GOP progress for several months? Traditionally chairmen resign from the five-member commission when a new President of the other party is elected. But Chairman Wheeler has shown more than once that his word isn’t worth very much. Even if he isn’t chairman, Chairman Wheeler is free to hang out as a commissioner until his term expires in mid-2017. Our advice is to give up this commissioner confirmation swap and let the normal change of power take place in Washington.

The US government’s massive airwaves auction again failed to move forward Dec 5 after a single two-hour round of bidding didn’t generate enough demand. The complex process will now move into its fourth stage with another cut to the supply of available licenses, and the auction which kicked off in May likely won’t conclude until 2017. This is the third time the FCC hasn’t drawn enough interest from cellphone operators like AT&T, Verizon Communications, and Comcast in buying the licenses for airwaves now used by television broadcasters. FCC officials have said the auction is designed to run multiple rounds. The FCC will now go back to television broadcasters for a fourth time, cutting the number of licenses it will buy from stations while also likely reducing the price the agency pays for those it does acquire.

The Federal Communications Commission raised new concerns about AT&T’s practice of excluding its new DirecTV Now streaming service from data charges and, for the first time, lobbed similar questions at Verizon Communications. In a pair of letters sent Dec 1, the FCC warned that so called zero-rating, which makes the data used by certain video services free for the carriers’ wireless customers, could harm competition and consumers. The agency argues the practice could deter consumers from accessing mobile-video services not affiliated with the carriers, such as those from Netflix or Hulu, which is co-owned by Walt Disney Co., Comcast Corp., 21st Century Fox and Time Warner Inc. Both AT&T and Verizon responded that the practice complies with existing rules and benefits consumers.

[Commentary] Outsider Donald Trump was elected president in significant part because of his promise to shake up Washington. He’ll soon find that one of the most entrenched forces that object to any change affecting them is the White House press corps. As recent meetings with the media showed, a clash is coming.

The clash will go beyond ideology and the media’s dislike of President-elect Trump personally. It will happen because, while the press as an institution is largely in decline throughout the US, the White House briefing room is one of the mainstream media’s last bunkers of power. It’s a place where they dominate—satisfied with the traditions and practices that predate social media—even as the press struggles, especially financially, with how news is made and covered today. The briefing room itself, the place where reporters sit, and the adjacent space in which they are provided offices reflect the power of the mainstream press, based largely on the media-consuming habits of the American people from decades ago. The White House press secretary used to decide who got what seats, but this authority was given to the White House Correspondents Association in the middle of the George W. Bush administration. Nothing prohibits the incoming administration from taking it back. The valuable West Wing real estate occupied by the White House press corps isn’t the property of the press. It belongs to the US government.

[Fleischer was the White House press secretary for George W. Bush]

Preteens and teens may appear dazzlingly fluent, flitting among social-media sites, uploading selfies and texting friends. But they’re often clueless about evaluating the accuracy and trustworthiness of what they find.

Some 82% of middle-schoolers couldn’t distinguish between an ad labeled “sponsored content” and a real news story on a website, according to a Stanford University study of 7,804 students from middle school through college. The study is the biggest so far on how teens evaluate information they find online. Many students judged the credibility of newsy tweets based on how much detail they contained or whether a large photo was attached, rather than on the source. More than two out of three middle-schoolers couldn’t see any valid reason to mistrust a post written by a bank executive arguing that young adults need more financial-planning help. And nearly four in 10 high-school students believed, based on the headline, that a photo of deformed daisies on a photo-sharing site provided strong evidence of toxic conditions near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan, even though no source or location was given for the photo.