Ownership

If Congress grants an exception to legacy news publishers to pressure Google and Facebook, it might lead to the kind of concessions publishers have won in Europe. In the US, pressure on Facebook and Google has been successful in helping publishers gain traction, but the culture of European publishing and the vigor of its regulatory environment is totally different from the free-market roots of the US news industry.

Whatever the outcome, a larger question remains about the right relationship between journalism and the most powerful companies in the world. This is a long-term issue, which is unlikely to be settled by one group or cartel gaining regulatory concessions but, rather, by a more profound change in the regulatory and commercial environment.

Three of the largest internet service providers and the cable television industry’s primary trade association have spent more than a half-billion dollars lobbying the federal government during the past decade on issues that include network neutrality, according to a MapLight analysis.

Comcast, AT&T, Verizon and the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA) have spent $572 million on attempts to influence the Federal Communications Commission and other government agencies since 2008. The amount represents more than $100 for each of the 5.6 million public comments on the FCC’s proposed elimination of net neutrality rules. Despite the resources devoted to the rollback by the big internet service providers, net neutrality advocates haven’t been totally bereft of support in the nation’s capital. Amazon, the world’s largest online retailer, has spent $41.1 million lobbying in the nation’s capital. Facebook, which boasts 2 billion unique monthly users, has spent almost $43.3 million.

Google operates a little-known program to harness the brain power of university researchers to help sway opinion and public policy, cultivating financial relationships with professors at campuses from Harvard University to the University of California, Berkeley. Over the past decade, Google has helped finance hundreds of research papers to defend against regulatory challenges of its market dominance, paying stipends of $5,000 to $400,000, The Wall Street Journal found.

Some researchers share their papers before publication and let Google give suggestions, according to thousands of pages of e-mails obtained by the Journal in public-records requests of more than a dozen university professors. The professors don’t always reveal Google’s backing in their research, and few disclosed the financial ties in subsequent articles on the same or similar topics. The funding of favorable campus research to support Google’s Washington, D.C.-based lobbying operation is part of a behind-the-scenes push in Silicon Valley to influence decision makers. The operation is an example of how lobbying has escaped the confines of Washington’s regulated environment and is increasingly difficult to spot.

Microsoft introduced an initiative, the Microsoft Rural Airband project. Microsoft will invest an unspecified amount of money with existing rural broadband carriers to bring broadband to 2 million people in rural America by 2022. Microsoft will help fund projects that use TV white spaces spectrum for wireless broadband. It’s a technology they believe in and have deployed in 20 projects across the globe, serving about 185K subscribers.

TV white spaces spectrum is in the 600 MHz band and offers good propagation and distance characteristics. Microsoft is also calling on federal, state, and local governments to play a role. They are advocating appropriate spectrum use policies with the FCC to ensure nationwide unlicensed use of three channels below the 700 MHz band. They are calling on matching funds from any federal and state infrastructure spending to include TV white spaces technology options.

Even while under fire for requiring its outlets to run conservative content, Sinclair Broadcast Group is increasing the "must-run" segments across its affiliates featuring former Trump White House official Boris Epshteyn to nine times a week. The move comes as the company is seeking to dramatically expand its holdings by purchasing Tribune Media for $3.9 billion, which would make it the largest local television operator in the country, with more than 200 stations.

But Sinclair's unusual practice of requiring all its stations to run reports dictated from the corporate offices has been flagged by critics of the Tribune acquisition and even become a subject of late-night TV ribbing by HBO's John Oliver. Epshteyn was hired by Sinclair as chief political analyst in April after a short ride in the White House overseeing the choice of Trump surrogates for TV appearances. Now, on Sinclair, he is offering his own political commentary. His "Bottom Line with Boris" segments already air three times a week, but will now triple in frequency, featuring a mix of his political commentary as well as "talk backs" with local stations and interviews with members of Congress. The segments will have a “billboard,” meaning they’re sponsored, but will not be sponsored content, a Sinclair spokesperson said. Epshteyn’s segments are “must runs,” so all the Sinclair stations across the country will air them along with their other “must-run” segments including conservative commentary from Mark Hyman and the Terrorism Alert Desk segments. Epshteyn reliably parrots the White House's point of view on most issues.

Republicans and Democrats offer starkly different assessments of the impact of several of the nation’s leading institutions – including the news media, colleges and universities and churches and religious organizations – and in some cases, the gap in these views is significantly wider today than it was just a year ago.

The national survey by Pew Research Center, conducted June 8-18 among 2,504 adults, finds that partisan differences in views of the national news media, already wide, have grown even wider. Democrats’ views of the effect of the national news media have grown more positive over the past year, while Republicans remain overwhelmingly negative. About as many Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents think the news media has a positive (44%) as negative (46%) impact on the way things are going in the country. The share of Democrats holding a positive view of the news media’s impact has increased 11 percentage points since last August (33%). Republicans, by about eight-to-one (85% to 10%), say the news media has a negative effect. These views have changed little in the past few years. While a majority of the public (55%) continues to say that colleges and universities have a positive effect on the way things are going in the country these days, Republicans express increasingly negative views. A majority of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents (58%) now say that colleges and universities have a negative effect on the country, up from 45% last year. By contrast, most Democrats and Democratic leaners (72%) say colleges and universities have a positive effect, which is little changed from recent years.

A group of news organizations will begin an effort to win the right to negotiate collectively with the big online platforms – Facebook and Google -- and will ask for a limited antitrust exemption from Congress in order to do so.

It’s an extreme measure with long odds. But the industry considers it worth a shot, given its view that Google and Facebook, regardless of their intentions, are posing a bigger threat economically than President Trump is (so far) with his rhetoric. That’s how David Chavern, the chief executive of the News Media Alliance, put it. The Alliance, the main newspaper industry trade group, is leading the effort to bargain as a group. But it has buy-in across the spectrum of its membership, bringing together competitors like The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post, as well as scores of regional papers like The Star Tribune of Minneapolis, which face the gravest threats.

The small army of career antitrust officials is marching toward a great unknown. For one thing, the Justice Department officials still don’t have a boss who will have the final say on whether to approve or block AT&T’s purchase of Time Warner.

President Trump’s pick for assistant attorney general in charge of antitrust matters, Makan Delrahim, has been held up in a logjam of nominees in the Senate. And President Donald Trump himself, who said during the 2016 campaign that he opposed the deal, is another wild card. A senior administration official said that members of the White House were discussing how they might use their perch over the merger review as leverage over Time Warner’s news network, CNN. All of that has effectively put into limbo the most significant business deal before the Trump administration, a benchmark for business transactions going forward. In turn, that has cast a cloud over the business world, which is watching the lengthy regulatory process with intense interest.

Sen Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) has warned attorney general Jeff Sessions that any political interference in the Justice Department's review of the AT&T-Time Warner merger would be "unacceptable." Sen Klobuchar was responding to a report in the New York Times that White House advisors have discussed leveraging the deal against Time Warner-owned CNN, which President Donald Trump has hammered as fake news—most recently in a tweet featuring him pummeling a figure with a CNN logo for a head.

President Trump said as a candidate his White House would oppose the deal. In a letter to AG Sessions, sen Klobuchar said that while she has "serious questions" about the deal's impact, "the transaction should be judged solely on its impact on competition, innovation, and consumers, not as 'leverage' for political gain." She added: “Any political interference in antitrust enforcement is unacceptable. Even more concerning, in this instance, is that it appears that some advisers to the President may believe that it is appropriate for the government to use its law enforcement authority to alter or censor the press. Such an action would violate the First Amendment.”

The Federal Communications Commission is opening up the docket on the Sinclair Broadcasting Group’s proposed acquisition of Tribune Media for the public to weigh in. The FCC is currently reviewing the $3.9 billion deal between the two media companies to determine if it is in the “public interest.” Parties interested in making their case regarding the merger heard can, as of July 6, make “ex parte” presentations to the FCC, which will be publicly disclosed on the agency’s website. The presentations can come in the form of oral or written arguments.

Critics of the deal have argued it might harm the public by significantly consolidating the local news media market, where both Sinclair and Tribune have large holdings. In its public notice, the FCC said the merger would slightly exceed the 39 percent national audience reach limit. The companies, however, have told the FCC that they “will take such actions to the extent required to comply with the terms of the Merger Agreement and the national television ownership limit (including the UHF Discount), in order to obtain FCC approval of the Transaction.”