Ownership

The perception that President Donald Trump has a vendetta against CNN might not factor into a court's ruling on the AT&T-Time Warner deal, but it could backfire in a different way on a president who styles himself as a champion of American business. “The U.S. has made an enormous effort over the past decades to advocate sound antitrust policies abroad,” said Anu Bradford, an antitrust specialist at Columbia Law School.

In February, Facebook said it would step up enforcement of its prohibition against discrimination in advertising for housing, employment or credit. But our tests showed a significant lapse in the company’s monitoring of the rental market. Last week, ProPublica bought dozens of rental housing ads on Facebook, but asked that they not be shown to certain categories of users, such as African Americans, mothers of high school kids, people interested in wheelchair ramps, Jews, expats from Argentina and Spanish speakers.

I thank the Chairman for circulating the items for the December meeting and look forward to reading each one.The time has come to overturn the market disrupting net neutrality and common carrier regulations that sacrificed decades of precedent and the independence of the agency for political ends while doing nothing to protect actual consumers. The Internet was a vibrant place of commerce and public discourse before the rules ever took effect and will continue to flourish after we discard this unnecessary and harmful regulatory overhang.

Today’s proposal from FCC leadership asks to either eliminate or modify the existing national media ownership cap. On this subject, Congress has made it clear that the FCC is not permitted to change or evade the cap, which statutorily prohibits a single broadcaster from acquiring stations that reach more than 39% of the national television audience. In fact, just yesterday, Congressional leaders warned the FCC not to use its regulatory authority to ignore the law.

[Commentary] No matter what the Federal Communications Commission does, America's internet is not an equal place and it's only going to become less fair. The reality is big companies do have a privileged path into people's digital lives. They have the money and the technical ability to make sure their websites and internet videos speed through internet pipes without delays or hiccups. Web services from big companies such as Netflix and Google account for the majority of internet use during peak evening hours in North America. And even though Google doesn't need to pay AT&T or Verizon Co

The tech industry’s ongoing strong financial performance reflects a soaring economic outlook. But it is increasingly at odds with worsening political winds in Washington as policymakers worry that Silicon Valley has become too dominant, too invasive and too out-of-control. “There is a looming coalition of conservatives skeptical of liberal West Coast companies, and progressives who worry about bigness in any form,” said Darrell West, director of the Brookings Center for Technology Innovation.

In just two days, many of us will join friends and family in celebrating the spirit of Thanksgiving.

Earlier this year, the Commission reinstated the UHF discount, finding that the prior FCC’s decision last year to eliminate it absent a simultaneous review of the 39 percent national cap effectively tightened the cap without determining whether that was in the public interest. Because the national cap and the UHF discount are inextricably linked, any review of one component of the rule must include a review of the other. Under the proposal that I shared with my colleagues today, we would go about determining the future of the national cap, including the UHF discount, the right way.

[Commentary] President Donald Trump’s chair of the Federal Communications Commission, Ajit Pai, and the Trump-aligned majority on a commission is bent on clearing the way for precisely the sort of media monopoly that FDR and the small-“d” democrats of his time feared. Recently, the FCC voted 3-2 for a radical rewrite of media-ownership rules that will benefit corporate conglomerates, while diminishing the character and quality of the discourse in communities across the United States.

AT&T and Time Warner want to merge. What interests me are two key assumptions underlying the Department of Justice’s case that are at odds with other Trump Administration policy or pronouncements. The first is network neutrality. The Trump Federal Communications Commission wants to do away with it — perhaps today. But if net neutrality was in place, then the DOJ concern that the integrated firm will use its power to harm other content providers and damage growing Internet competition would be significantly mitigated.