Ownership

For Facebook, April 10, 2018 is being seen as a kind of dreaded final exam. That’s when Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s chief executive, will swap out his trademark gray T-shirts for a suit and tie, and embark on a two-day marathon of testimony on Capitol Hill. His goal? To apologize for Facebook’s missteps, reassure Congress that Facebook intends to stop foreign powers from using its service to meddle in American elections and detail the company’s plans to better protect its users’ privacy.

[Editorial] Consider this a plea to Alden — owner of Digital First Media, one of the largest newspaper chains in the country — to rethink its business strategy across all its newspaper holdings. Consider this also a signal to our community and civic leaders that they ought to demand better. Denver deserves a newspaper owner who supports its newsroom.

When Mark Zuckerberg testifies to Congress the week of April 9, the Facebook chief executive will face off with lawmakers who have long been itching to confront him – on everything from a privacy mishap involving 87 million users to a litany of issues that have dogged the company for years. Zuckerberg’s scheduled appearance at two congressional hearings marks the first time that the tech leader will submit to questioning at the Capitol.

[Commentary] If you think Facebook’s “Cambridge Analytica problem” is bad, just wait until Comcast and Verizon are able to do the same thing. Facebook isn’t the only company that amasses troves of data about people and leaves it vulnerable to exploitation and misuse.

As the antitrust battle between the Department of Justice and merger hopefuls AT&T and Time Warner moved through its third week in court, the government accused the companies of trying to shore up their lucrative pay TV business at the expense of rivals—and presented a memo as proof.  It was a draft document from April 2017 created by an AT&T executive touting the combination as a way to “ensure stability” of the pay TV business. The memo said the business was in a “slow, structural decline” but would be a “cash cow” for years to come, according to press reports.

President Donald Trump and Chief of Staff John F. Kelly do not regularly give on-the-record interviews. But both men recently sat down with Jeanine Pirro, the fiery Fox News host whom President Trump adores, for her upcoming book on the Trump presidency. The White House communications shop arranged the 30-minute interview with Pirro and the chief of staff in the West Wing, two White House officials said. Trump gave her an even longer interview, one of these officials said. The president has also encouraged other advisers to interview with Pirro, officials said.

We're now almost four weeks into AT&T's historic court battle with the government over its $85 billion merger with Time Warner. Here's an overview of the major themes emerging in this pivotal case that could shape the future of connectivity, entertainment and corporate consolidation:

Rarely has President Donald Trump waged such a sustained campaign against a single entity as he has with recent broadsides against The Washington Post. Over the past week, Trump has repeatedly tweeted about the Post, its owner Jeff Bezos, and Amazon, the company that made Bezos his fortune. Bezos has remained silent and leadership at the Post restrained in the the face of the criticism, but April 5 the paper published a long story exploring the president’s charges and rebutting them at every turn.

On March 23, 2018, President Donald Trump signed H.R. 1625, Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2018. H.R. 1625's 2,232 pages make for a great read, but if you're looking for just the telecommunications policy highlights, let's thumb through straight to Division P, the Repack Airwaves Yielding Better Access for Users of Modern Services Act of 2018 or the RAY BAUM’S Act of 2018 which reauthorizes the Federal Communications Commission and does a whole bunch more. The bill completes a process began three years ago.

President Donald Trump’s decision in recent days to zero in on Jeff Bezos and Amazon.com as his latest Twitter targets has highlighted a severe fracture in American society, a divide between concrete and steel and zeros and ones, a split that is as much philosophical as it is economic, as much about the fraying of communities as it is about the shape of commerce.