Ownership

CBS’s Mark Knoller crunched the numbers. After President Donald Trump’s interview with Lou Dobbs on the Fox Business Network on Oct 25, President Trump has now participated in interviews with Fox News Channel or affiliated networks 18 times — out of 26 television interviews in total. Combined, President Trump has granted five interviews to NBC, MSNBC, ABC and CBS, in total. He has given three to the Christian Broadcasting Network and Trinity Broadcasting Network. And he has given zero to CNN.

The House Judiciary Committee has scheduled a hearing on network neutrality and the role of antitrust for Nov 1. The Subcommittee on Regulatory Reform, Commercial and Antitrust Law, which will hold the hearing, has not released details, but the event is likely to address concerns that internet service providers stifle competition. The hearing comes as Republicans in the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) put their finishing touches on a plan to scrap net neutrality. The agency has not released a timeline for when it will release and vote on the final version of Chairman Ajit Pai’s proposal to roll back the rules, but telecommunication insiders speculate that a vote could come as soon as December.

Facebook, Twitter and Google played a far deeper role in Donald Trump's presidential campaign than has previously been disclosed, with company employees taking on the kind of political strategizing that campaigns typically entrust to their own staff or paid consultants, according to a new study released Oct 26. The peer-reviewed paper, based on more than a dozen interviews with both tech company staffers who worked inside several 2016 presidential campaigns and campaign officials, sheds new light on Silicon Valley's assistance to Trump before his surprise win last November.

While the companies call it standard practice to work hand-in-hand with high-spending advertisers like political campaigns, the new research details how the staffers assigned to the 2016 candidates frequently acted more like political operatives, doing things like suggesting methods to target difficult-to-reach voters online, helping to tee up responses to likely lines of attack during debates, and scanning candidate calendars to recommend ad pushes around upcoming speeches. Such support was critical for the Trump campaign, which didn’t invest heavily in its own digital operations during the primary season and made extensive use of Facebook, Twitter and Google "embeds" for the general election, says the study, conducted by communications professors from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Utah.

Public Knowledge joined conservative groups -- including the Tea Party Patriots and Frontiers of Freedom -- in a letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions requesting that the Department of Justice block or condition the proposed AT&T-Time Warner merger.

The letter states: “As entities that closely follow the US media landscape, we are acutely aware that AT&T and Time Warner are already massive media conglomerates in their own rights. AT&T’s 2015 purchase of DirecTV made it the country’s top pay-TV firm, the No. 2 wireless provider, and the No. 3 broadband company. Time Warner, meanwhile, owns CNN and HBO, three of the top five general entertainment cable networks, and the second largest movie studio in Warner Brothers. We are deeply concerned that allowing these firms to join forces -- without significant conditions that fully address all competitive concerns -- would intolerably limit consumers’ control over what they watch and where they get their information. The First Amendment is the bulwark of political discourse, and the proposed AT&T-Time Warner merger will necessarily further restrict the diversity of speech which strengthens our nation as it becomes in the new company’s interest to promote select channels over alternative outlets. At this time where giant media companies are aggressively seeking to consolidate, our antitrust laws have rarely been a more potent and needed defender of American consumers of all stripes and ideologies.”

Twitter said it overstated its number of users for the past three years and committed to take advertising off its site from two Russian media outlets, even as it reported modest user growth for the third quarter. Twitter said it will no longer accept advertising from all accounts owned by Russian-backed news outlets RT and Sputnik. Federal intelligence officials say RT is “the Kremlin’s principal international propaganda outlet.“ Twitter’s decision marks a stark change to its previous stance of accepting advertising from these groups. The RT editor in chief said in a tweet on Oct 26 that Twitter approached RT ahead of the 2016 U.S. Presidential election to pitch ways RT could advertise on Twitter during this period.

Since this is my first official speech, I want to highlight a few of the issues I hope to focus on during my time on the Federal Communications Commission. I intend for this to be the beginning of a conversation. I welcome all stakeholders to reach out with ideas on where you think the FCC should be heading.

I want to focus my remarks this morning on some of the ways the FCC can incentivize even greater broadband deployment. This is particularly important as we make the transition to 5G—a shift that will require a massive investment in both wired and wireless infrastructure. In fact, if we get the right policies in place, this transition could mean $275 billion in network investment, three million new jobs, and a half a trillion dollars added to the GDP. So how do we get there? How do we ensure that the United States wins the global race to 5G? I want to talk this morning about three of the key pieces—(1) spectrum, (2) infrastructure, and (3) ensuring we have the skilled workforce in place to deploy these next-generation networks—before I talk more broadly about the need for regulatory reform.

For years, the country’s biggest technology companies have been virtually untouchable in Washington. The public adored the companies’ new devices, educators embraced their tools and politicians extolled their contributions to the economy. Even traditionally powerful voices, like media and telecom businesses, found little success in criticizing the technology industry. But now, as lawmakers look into how Russia used Google, Facebook and Twitter to influence the 2016 presidential election, many critics see a rare opening — and are lining up to take their shots.

The action is nascent, but gaining momentum fast. Lawmakers are pushing for regulations for technology companies for the first time in years, encouraged along by big tech’s broad assortment of rivals. For several weeks, a group of companies including smaller tech companies and entertainment and retail businesses has informally begun regular meetings and conference calls to compare notes about Google, Facebook and Amazon and to find a way to join in a stronger opposition force. But even as they sense an opportunity today, the rivals say that challenging the internet companies remains a daunting task. They doubt they can put a dent into the online ad duopoly of Facebook and Google. It will also be difficult, they say, to restrain Amazon’s fast movement into new markets, given the company’s willingness to lose money to gain a foothold.

The day after President Donald Trump ordered a ban on travelers from seven majority Muslim countries, Mamoon Hamid was rallying a response from Silicon Valley. The Pakistan-born venture capitalist held a private dinner that night in San Francisco (CA), where he pitched other investors, entrepreneurs and technology executives on a coalition that could challenge the Trump administration’s most controversial policies in court.

The goal was to solicit funding for the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection. The group offers a legal swat team of sorts “to protect people at a moment of great instability and peril,” said Hamid, the chairman. He had been planning the white-linen event with attendees from Facebook Inc., Google and other tech companies for months, but the immigration ban offered newfound urgency.

The Federal Communications Commission will vote in Nov to eliminate a decades-old rule designed to preserve media diversity in local markets, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said Oct 25. The move is aimed at supporting economically struggling media outlets in an age of digital consumption. But critics say it will lead to greater media consolidation and the loss of independent voices.

The regulations, passed in 1975, prevent any single company from owning both a full-power TV station in a given market and a daily newspaper at the same time. “The marketplace is nothing like it was in 1975,” Chairman Pai told House Communications Subcommittee members at a hearing, arguing that the restriction on newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership was outdated. “The FCC's rules still presume the market is defined by pulp and rabbit ears.” The FCC vote, expected Nov 16, could also eliminate a rule that prevents TV stations in the same market from merging if the outcome leads to fewer than eight independent stations operating in that market. “If the federal government has no business intervening in news, then we must stop the government from intervening in the news business,” he said.

Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel of the Federal Communications Commission told Congress that the FCC under Chairman Ajit Pai has been taking actions that appear to favor Sinclair Broadcasting, and suggested that needs investigating.

Commissioner Rosenworcel was asked to weigh in during an FCC oversight hearing in the House Communications Subcommittee Oct 25, and she did not hesitate. She said she was concerned that the FCC's recent policy decisions, from restoring the UHF discount to "foisting" on American households a new broadcast standard (ATSC 3.0) for which Sinclair has patents, seemed to serve Sinclair's business plans. "I think it has reached a point where all our media policy decisions seem to be custom built for this one company, and I think it merits investigation," she said. "That is a pretty strong statement," responded Rep Jerry McNerney (D-CA), who clearly shared her concern.