Ownership

[Commentary] President Donald Trump’s April 2 Sinclair tweet highlights the fact that in his administration, companies that favor the president seem to get treated one way, while those who appear to be neutral or even opposed to his administration risk getting publicly abused by him.  President Trump’s tweet in support of Sinclair dredges up this disconcerting history. But it’s also troubling on a deeper level.

Charter Communications has lost a lawsuit in which it accused a workers' union of sabotaging the Charter network during an ongoing strike. Charter sued IBEW Local Union No. 3 in a New York state court in October in 2017, alleging that union leadership "orchestrated" vandalism of coaxial and fiber cables that had caused outages for tens of thousands of subscribers. The lawsuit said vandalism hit Charter cables in New York City more than 125 times during the strike, which began in March 2017 and is now entering its second year.

A Q&A with Tim Wu, a professor at Columbia University and coiner of the term "net neutrality."

Sinclair Broadcast Group is defending itself against criticism for a recent on-air promotional message many of its local news anchors were asked to read that warned viewers about "false news" on competing media outlets.  Sinclair produced the spots to express concern about the spread of such false media reports such as the "Pope Endorses Trump" fake news story that quickly spread across social media, said Scott Livingston, Sinclair's senior vice president of news. “Some other false stories, like the fake ‘Pizzagate’ story, can result in dangerous consequences,” he said.

On the morning of April 2, President Donald Trump tweeted, "So funny to watch Fake News Networks, among the most dishonest groups of people I have ever dealt with, criticize Sinclair Broadcasting for being biased.

On local news stations across the United States, dozens of anchors gave the same speech to their combined millions of viewers. It included a warning about fake news, a promise to report fairly and accurately and a request that viewers go to the station’s website and comment “if you believe our coverage is unfair.” It may not have seemed strange until viewers began to notice that the newscasters from Seattle to Phoenix to Washington sounded very similar. The script came from Sinclair Broadcast Group, the country’s largest broadcaster, which owns or operates 193 television stations. 

President Donald Trump continued to needle Amazon, claiming the company maintains an advantageous relationship with the US Postal Service amounting to a "scam" worth "billions of dollars." The President wrote on Twitter:

A top executive at Comcast testified at the AT&T-Time Warner antitrust trial that he has “no reason” to believe that the massive merger will have an impact on their company’s negotiations for Turner channels or HBO.  A key argument in the Justice Department’s case is that the merger will give AT&T-Time Warner increased leverage to demand more onerous fees from distribution rivals, ultimately driving up prices for consumers.

Facebook employees are calling for a crackdown on suspected leakers and questioning whether “spies” have infiltrated the corporation, according to leaked internal posts that suggest the social media giant’s workforce is becoming defensive in the face of critical public scrutiny. The posts were a response to the leak of a memo by a senior Facebook executive who defended the social network’s negative effects on society.

In a 2016 employee memo that was leaked the week of March 26, a Facebook executive defended the company's questionable data mining practices and championed the growth of social media at any cost — apparently even death. "Maybe it costs a life by exposing someone to bullies,” company vice president Andrew Bosworth wrote in the memo. “Maybe someone dies in a terrorist attack coordinated on our tools. And still we connect people.