Ownership

So far in 2017, the lawyer Douglas Wigdor, a conservative Republican, has filed 11 suits against Fox News for defamation, sexual harassment and racial discrimination.

Television viewers have long been familiar with Fox’s public product, but for more than a decade, there have also been persistent glimpses of its private culture as numerous women have come forward accusing men like Roger Ailes — or the host Eric Bolling, who was ousted this month after sending lewd text messages to female colleagues — of predatory sexual misconduct. As Ailes did before he died in May, Bolling has denied the allegations. The accusations by Wigdor’s clients — former news anchors, former news analysts, former accounting department employees — have only deepened the portrait of a toxic culture. One of the people he represents, a regular guest political commentator, says the network retaliated against her after she lodged a rape claim against a Fox Business host. Another, a Bangladeshi payroll worker, says a colleague once referred to him as a “terrorist.” In lawsuits that run to nearly 300 pages, there are charges that the network fired a freelance reporter at Fox 5 News, its New York affiliate, after she became pregnant; that Fox’s former comptroller repeatedly ridiculed black and Hispanic colleagues; and that some Fox journalists conspired with the White House to produce fake news.

A rift is growing between the tech industry and civil society, and "it will probably only continue to get more pronounced," says Craig Aaron of Free Press. "Companies like Google and Facebook have amassed so much power over what we watch see and read every day. If you're a true public interest group that worries about media power like we do, you have to have an eye on these guys." One major flash point: privacy. Then there are antitrust issues, many of which got their start in governmental oversight.

Uber has been stripped of its London licence in a surprise move that has triggered an outcry from drivers at the ride-hailing company and Conservative politicians. The firm’s application for a new licence in London was rejected on the basis that the company is not a “fit and proper” private car hire operator. Uber said it planned to challenge the ruling by London’s transport authority in the courts immediately. This means Uber cars will not disappear from the streets immediately and will continue to operate for its 3.5 million users in the capital until the firm has exhausted the appeals process – which could take months. The current licence expires on 30 September but Uber has 21 days to appeal and can continue to operate until that process expires.

After years of largely avoiding regulation, businesses like Facebook, Google and Amazon are a focus of lawmakers, some of whom are criticizing the expanding power of big tech companies and their role in the 2016 election.

The attacks cover a smattering of issues as diverse as antitrust, privacy and public disclosure. They also come from both sides, from people like Stephen Bannon, President Trump’s former chief strategist, as well as Sen Elizabeth Warren (D-MA). Many of the issues, like revising antitrust laws, have a slim chance of producing new laws soon. But they have become popular talking points nonetheless, amplified by a series of missteps and disclosures by the companies. The companies, recognizing the new environment in Washington, have started to fortify their lobbying forces and recalibrate their positions.

Google is spending $1.1 billion to hire a team of engineers from the smartphone business of the struggling Taiwanese manufacturer HTC in a bid to bring more hardware expertise to its own mobile technology operations.

HTC said many of its estimated 2,000 employees affected by the deal were already working with the search giant on smartphones. Google leaned on HTC to manufacture its first Pixel smartphone, which was released last year, and is working with the company to produce the next version of the phone, which is expected to be announced on Oct. 4. Bringing on the team from HTC is a sign that Google is doubling down on plans to produce its own hardware. Company executives have said it is important to tightly couple its artificial intelligence software, like the voice-controlled Google Assistant, with a range of devices. The two sides did not disclose how many engineers and other key employees would head to Google as part of the deal. But Peter Shen, HTC’s chief financial officer, said the remaining company would still have more than 2,000 research and design staffers, down from about 4,000. As part of the agreement, Google will also secure a nonexclusive licensing deal for some of HTC’s intellectual property.

President Donald Trump has previously threatened to break up Comcast while repeatedly taken aim at one of its rivals, AT&T, as the wireless giant inches closer to purchasing Time Warner. But Comcast’s leading voice in Washington, DC — David Cohen — said that the regulatory climate for big mergers remains as friendly as ever in the nation’s capital, no matter what President Trump himself has said.

“Overall, this president and this administration is likely less hostile to horizontal growth or even vertical growth in the telecom space and elsewhere,” said Cohen. By horizontal, Cohen meant mergers that open companies to new lines of business; with respect to vertical, he was referring to deals that combine two companies that directly compete against each other. “I don’t think that’s a license for ‘anything goes,’” Cohen continued. But, he added there’s “pretty clearly going to be less hostility and a greater willingness to allow the market to work.”

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai told House Commerce Committee Democrats that there has been no inappropriate coordination between the Trump White House, Sinclair and the FCC over the Sinclair/Tribune merger -- and that there has been no pattern of preferential treatment shown Sinclair in a deal whose vetting has been by the book and on a timetable common to such transactions, including under other regimes.

The chairman said his meetings with the President—there have been two of them—were on the order of a job interview in one instance and a second meeting after he had the job, and neither of which was any issue involving Sinclair Broadcast Group discussed. He did say he had met with Sinclair three times since the November election, but in only one meeting were pending issues discussed and that one was followed by the requisite ex parte notification. Pai also said two members of his staff had met with Sinclair execs as well, with an ex parte filed for the one meeting for which it was required.

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.