Ownership

News Corp is taking aim at the digital-ad dominance of Google and Facebook with a new platform to let advertisers reach audiences across all of its online properties. The new platform, called News IQ, will pull audience data from sites like The Wall Street Journal, New York Post and Barron's and give advertisers a way to reach specific audiences around safe content.  News Corp is the latest publishing company to launch a data-based advertising network to win back digital ad dollars from Google and Facebook. Disney, NBC and Vox Media, and Verizon and Oath have all similar steps.

In a speech on Nov 28, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai angrily denounced celebrities and tech companies who have been criticizing his plans to undo the 2015 rules. Hollywood is always a good scapegoat, of course, and Republicans looking to stir up anger in 2017 do well to frame their issues as a response to the unchecked power of Silicon Valley.

Australia’s competition watchdog has begun an investigation into the market power of Facebook, Google and other digital platforms to determine if they are harming the media and advertising industries. The probe follows an order by the government of a formal inquiry into the internet giants’ impact on the industry, as part of a shake-up of media laws in September.

More than 1 billion people — mostly adults — use Facebook’s Messenger app to communicate every month. Now, the future of Messenger is set to become much younger. 

First, the Department of Justice sued to block AT&T's proposed $85 billion acquisition of Time Warner. The next day, the Federal Communications Commission unveiled a proposal to loosen the limits on the number of television and radio stations a broadcast company can own, the latest in a series of moves that pave the way for Sinclair Broadcasting's proposed $3.9 billion acquisition of Tribune Company. The same week, the FCC unveiled its plan to overturn net-neutrality rules that ban broadband providers, including AT&T, from blocking or discriminating against legal content.

Twitter has changed its explanation as to why it did not delete three graphic anti-Muslim videos retweeted by President Donald Trump. "We mistakenly pointed to the wrong reason we didn't take action on the videos from earlier this week," Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said in a tweet on Dec 1. In response to questions on Nov 30 regarding why the tweets were still available, a Twitter spokesperson referenced the company's Help Center policy. It says Twitter may allow controversial content that might otherwise violate its rules if the company believes there is a legitimate public interest.

While much the internet is in an uproar about Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai’s plan to roll back Network Neutrality, I’d like the suggest that they’re focusing on the wrong thing. The reason Pai’s decision is the wrong one is not because the lack of net neutrality is, prima facie, a bad thing. Rather, it’s because we don’t have anything close to free market conditions in the U.S. when it comes to broadband.

The arrival of hard consequences for these men may have come too late in the news industry, but media organizations are unquestionably leading the national reckoning now underway. For the news business, this is the way it has to be: Its main product, after all, is integrity, which, in the case of the networks, is personified by those who sit behind the desk. Once the audience’s trust is lost, the entire enterprise falls apart.

[Commentary] At the end of October, Jonathan Baker, Fiona Scott Morton, and I organized a day-long conference entitled Unlocking the Promise of Antitrust Enforcement. Our premise was simple: In a time when the purpose and future of antitrust is again an important topic of political discourse, we need to understand what antitrust enforcers can do today with the laws that exist right now. Laws that have been on the books for a long time – The Sherman Act was passed in 1890 – but which retain their vitality. And their importance.

President Donald Trump has leapt on the news of Today Show co-host Matt Lauer's dismissal by NBC as further "evidence" of the "fake news" brand he has applied to news outlets the president dislikes. President Trump recently renewed his attacks on the press with a vengeance, and doubled down yet again Nov 29. In a pair of tweets following the news that NBC had fired Lauer following allegations of sexual misconduct, the president asked when top Comcast-NBCU executives would also be fired for putting out "fake news," mentioning specific names.