Ownership

Current and former Sinclair employees, union representatives, and media experts have been speaking out in investigative reports about the damage Sinclair is doing to the public’s trust in local news, from Baltimore to Seattle and most recently in Providence.

A representative of the union representing employees at Sinclair-owned WJAR station in Providence, RI, recently told The Providence Journal that must-runs have “rattled viewers and WJAR’s own news reporters.” The September report also noted that WJAR appears to have made efforts to limit Sinclair’s editorial influence on its newscasts, airing a recent “Bottom Line with Boris” segment after anchors has signed off from the station’s 11 p.m. news broadcast. Media expert Paola Prado warned readers, though, that the length and placement of broadcasts matter far less than the content shown, directly challenging Sinclair’s frequent defense that its must-run segments account for a small fraction of total news time.

[Commentary] The more people learn about the frenzied Big Media-Wall Street rush to consolidate our communications ecosystem into a playground for monopolists-on-the-make, the more they dislike what they see. For example, a recent poll shows two-thirds of us are opposed to competition-busting transactions like AT&T and Time Warner, almost equally divided among Democrats, Republicans, and Independents. Less well-known until recently is the Sinclair-Tribune proposal currently pending at the Federal Communications Commission. Sinclair is already publicly bragging that it will get the FCC nod of approval in the months just ahead. I have called Sinclair “the most dangerous company most Americans have never heard of.” Already the country’s largest local TV station owner (173 stations now, 215 post-merger), Sinclair has an insatiable appetite for more.
[Former FCC Commissioner Michael Copps joined Common Cause to lead its Media and Democracy Reform Initiative]

Charter Communications has been served a whopping $13 million fine by New York State’s Public Service Commission (PSC). The commission claims that Charter, now the largest broadband provider in the state, has failed to make good on promises to expand its broadband service to more rural communities as part of its merger deal with Time Warner Cable (TWC).

New York’s PSC reached an agreement with Charter in 2016 as part of the commission’s approval of the merger with TWC, which had 2.5 million subscribers in New York. Under the deal, Charter made a series of commitments to upgrade its broadband network within its New York footprint, including a promise to extend its Spectrum broadband service to 145,000 more residents and businesses by 2020. The agreement included statewide speed upgrades reaching 100 Mbps by 2018 and 300 Mbps by 2019, and a timeline for building out its broadband network in chunks of over 36,000 new residents and businesses per year, to be completed by 2020. Charter was able to upgrade broadband service speeds to 100 Mbps across New York ahead of the 2018 deadline set by its agreement, but has been slow to roll out service to new households and businesses. In its first year, Charter passed just over 15,000 new premises, less than half of what it promised.

Fox News, which for more than a year has dealt with the fallout from an embarrassing sexual harassment scandal, was sued on Sept 18 by the political commentator Scottie Nell Hughes, who claimed that she had been raped by the longtime anchor Charles Payne and was then retaliated against by the network after she came forward with her allegation.

Payne, the host of “Making Money” on Fox Business, returned to the air earlier this month after the network suspended him in July pending an investigation into his conduct. Upon his return, the network said that it had completed the investigation, which came after Ms. Hughes brought her allegations to the network in late June. Representatives for Payne could not immediately be reached for comment, but he has previously denied claims from Ms. Hughes. In a statement released on July 7, his lawyer, Jonathan N. Halpern, said: “Charles Payne vehemently denies the allegations. He will defend himself vigorously against these claims and will hold those responsible to account.”

Apparently, Alphabet’s Google has proposed overhauling its shopping search results so that rivals can bid for space to display products for sale, as part of the company's efforts to comply with the European Union’s antitrust order. Under the proposal, Google would bid against rivals to display products for sale in the space above its general search results, apparently. Google would set itself a price cap that it wouldn’t be able to bid above, but competitors could do so if they wished. Rival shopping sites have hit back, saying an auction-based remedy wouldn’t assuage the EU regulator’s demands that the company treat its competitors’ offerings and its own shopping service equally.

The Trump administration, the Federal Communications Commission, Congress and greedy companies are attacking people’s rights to connect and communicate so relentlessly that staying on top of everything that’s happening can feel like an impossible task. That’s why we’ve put together this handy list of five of the biggest threats people are facing:

1) The FCC’s scheme to kill Net Neutrality
2) Anti-Net Neutrality legislation
3) Mega media mergers
4) Local news crisis
5) Lies, lies and more lies: The proliferation of fake news — which Trump embraces — is making it hard to get the truth out about these attacks on our rights to connect and communicate, what’s at stake and what we can do about it.

The Federal Communications Commission’s Media Bureau has asked Sinclair to back up a bunch of its pledges to bring its proposed $3.9 billion purchase of Tribune stations within the FCC's current media ownership rules, including the duopoly and national ownership cap, as well as of the benefits of the deal. The FCC also wants more supporting material to back up claims about benefits to the ATSC 3.0 transmission standard transition and assertions the deal would offer greater value to MVPDs. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has signaled he thinks the ownership regulations need loosening, but Media Bureau Chief Michelle Carey, in a letter to Sinclair dated Sept. 14, signaled that Sinclair needs to get a lot more specific about what exactly it will do to comply with the current rules.

[Commentary] The Federal Communications Commission has finally gotten around to asking Sinclair how it intends to comply with the national and local ownership rules. The merger puts it in nominal violation of the caps and it will have to do something to get below them. I applaud the FCC move as the public has the right to know just how Sinclair plans to proceed.

[Commentary] Every day a new front emerges in Big Tech’s battle against fake news. Signs of trouble reared their head during the election, when hyper-partisan misinformation began materializing on Facebook. Months later it became known that many of these sites had been weaponized in a larger misinformation campaign spearheaded by external players, including the Russian government.

While they make head nods toward trying to fix the misinformation problem, the tech giants refuse to own up to these issues–citing the privacy of their clients and their own proprietary ad systems. While it may seem noble that the big tech companies are taking up the charge, their current attempts will likely produce little effect. The problem rests in the very advertising systems these companies created. No amount of content tagging or ad category de-incentivizing is going to stop the beast unless a bigger upheaval begins to take root.

[Cale is a Brooklyn-based reporter.]

Verizon is disconnecting another 8,500 rural customers from its wireless network, saying that roaming charges have made certain customer accounts unprofitable for the carrier. The 8,500 customers have 19,000 lines and live in 13 states (Alaska, Idaho, Iowa, Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Utah, and Wisconsin), a Verizon Wireless spokesperson said. They received notices of disconnection this month and will lose access to Verizon service on October 17.

"These customers live outside of areas where Verizon operates our own network," Verizon said. "Many of the affected consumer lines use a substantial amount of data while roaming on other providers’ networks and the roaming costs generated by these lines exceed what these consumers pay us each month." "We sent these notices in advance so customers have plenty of time to choose another wireless provider," Verizon also said. We wrote about an earlier wave of disconnections in June. The affected customers are supported by Verizon’s LTE in Rural America (LRA) program, which relies on a partnership between Verizon and small rural carriers who lease Verizon spectrum in order to build their own networks.