Ownership

By now you’ve probably heard that this is a golden age for journalism — how The New York Times and The Washington Post are warring for scoops in ways reminiscent of the Watergate era; how an information-hungry public is sending subscriptions and television news ratings soaring, reinvigorating journalists and reaffirming their mission (“Democracy Dies in Darkness” and all that).

But the story isn’t complete if it doesn’t include Univision News, one of the most striking examples I’ve seen all year of a news organization that is meeting the moment. It is the leading news source for Hispanics in the United States, citizen and noncitizen alike — a core audience that has an almost existential stake in the Trump administration’s policies. These include moves to starve “sanctuary cities” of federal funds and to end the Obama-era attempt to protect from deportation the undocumented parents of citizen children — which, Univision was first to report, the administration did on June 15.

A half-dozen consumer groups have asked the federal government to take action against Navient, a student loan servicer, and have accused the company of “harassing and abusing” borrowers with repeated automated telephone calls, even after being asked to stop. In a request filed on June 12 with the Federal Communications Commission, the National Consumer Law Center and other groups accused Navient of calling borrowers’ cellphones multiple times a day, and often many times a week, totaling hundreds or in some cases thousands of calls over a period of months or years.

The groups asked the FCC to take enforcement action against Navient for violating the Telephone Consumer Protection Act by making repeated “robocalls” to student loan borrowers and other consumers. The letter asks the agency to force Navient “to stop making robocalls to consumers from whom it does not have consent to call, or consumers whose consent has been revoked.”

A former CenturyLink employee claims she was fired for blowing the whistle on the telecommunications company's high-pressure sales culture that left customers paying millions of dollars for accounts they didn't request, according to a lawsuit filed in Arizona state superior court. The company's shares fell the most in six weeks on the news, while the shares of merger partner Level 3 Communications Inc. also dropped sharply.

The plaintiff, Heidi Heiser, worked from her home for CenturyLink as a customer service and sales agent from August 2015 to October 2016. The suit claims she was fired days after notifying Chief Executive Officer Glen Post of the alleged scheme during a companywide question-and-answer session held on an internal message board. The complaint alleges CenturyLink "allowed persons who had a personal incentive to add services or lines to customer accounts to falsely indicate on the CenturyLink system the approval by a customer of new lines or services." This would sometimes result in charges that hadn't been authorized by customers, according to the complaint.

In a very short one page decision, the US Court of Appeals rejected the requests filed by public interest groups to stay the effect of the Federal Communications Commission’s decision to reinstate the UHF discount. For the foreseeable future, this decision will free many broadcast television groups to acquire more television stations as UHF stations (which most TV stations now are) count for only half their audience reach in assessing compliance with the 39% limit on the national audience share that any TV owner can have.

While, contrary to some press reports, this does not signal the Court’s final approval of the FCC’s decision to reinstate the discount, it does suggest the direction which the Court is likely to take in its assessment of this Commission decision. This decision does not end the case. The public interest groups can continue to pursue their appeal though full briefing and oral argument and a full court decision. However, the rejection of the stay certainly increases the odds that the FCC will ultimately prevail in its defense of the reinstatement of the UHF discount.

The New York Times issued a correction to an editorial after it was widely criticized for incorrectly linking the 2011 shooting of Rep Gabby Giffords (D-AZ) to a map circulated by Sarah Palin's political action committee which showed certain electoral districts under crosshairs. "An earlier version of this editorial incorrectly stated that a link existed between political incitement and the 2011 shooting of Representative Gabby Giffords," the Times' correction said. "In fact, no such link was established." In a tweet, the Times further added, "We're sorry about this and we appreciate that our readers called us on the mistake."

The editorial, titled "America's Lethal Politics," implied that the man who shot Giffords, Jared Lee Loughner, was inspired by Palin's map. It further claimed that in the shooting of Rep Steve Scalise (R-LA) and several others at a practice for a Congressional baseball game there was "no sign of incitement as direct as in the Giffords attack."

Dropping a bombshell on the US grocery industry, online shopping giant Amazon.com said it agreed to buy Whole Foods Market for $13.7 billion in cash. The deal’s announcement instantly sparked a selloff in the stocks of other major US supermarket and big-box chains on expectations that Amazon would bring its low-price expertise and technology prowess to bear with Whole Foods, putting further downward pressure on prices in the already hyper-competitive $611-billion US grocery industry.

Amazon’s brazen bid to buy Whole Foods for $13.7 billion will bring the e-commerce giant toe-to-toe with President Donald Trump, who once slammed the company as a threat to competition — and threatened it would have such “problems” under his watch. Looming over the customary antitrust review are President Trump’s own comments.

Sitting down with conservative commentator Sean Hannity in May 2016, Trump explicitly challenged Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, in large part because of his ownership of the Washington Post. "He thinks I'll go after him for antitrust," Trump said at the time. "Because he's got a huge antitrust problem because he's controlling so much, Amazon is controlling so much of what they are doing.” President Trump continued: "He's using the Washington Post, which is peanuts, he's using that for political purposes to save Amazon in terms of taxes and in terms of antitrust." In December 2015, Trump essentially called Bezos's ownership of the Post a tax-dodging scheme for his "no-profit company, Amazon." (The Post is owned by Bezos personally and is not part of Amazon.) Months later, at a campaign rally in Texas, the president issued his most direct threat to the e-commerce titan. "Believe me, if I become president, oh do they have problems, they are going to have such problems,” President Trump said.

Netflix is reentering the fray over network neutrality, saying it will participate in an online protest in July designed to draw attention to a high-stakes fight over the future of the Internet. The streaming video company said that it will “never outgrow” its advocacy for net neutrality, the idea that Internet service providers should not arbitrarily manipulate online content as it travels to consumers' screens.

On July 12, Netflix will join Amazon, Reddit, Mozilla and a host of others in modifying its website. The user-facing changes are expected to highlight the benefits of regulations approved by the Federal Communications Commission in 2015.

Washington (DC) was quick to respond to the court decision not to block the Federal Communications Commission's reimposition of the UHF discount, at least while it decides a court challenge to that decision under FCC chairman Ajit Pai. The decision allows deals like the Sinclair-Tribune merger to proceed, which without the discount would have exceeded the FCC's 39% cap on national audience reach.

"The FCC’s order eliminating the UHF discount [voted last fall by a Democratic majority and against the Republicans' dissent] was made without a comprehensive review of broadcast media ownership rules. [The National Association of Broadcasters] supports the Court’s decision denying the stay request.” Chairman Pai had said the discount decision by the Democrats was reversed because it did not also include considering the impact on the 39% cap. “The UHF discount has long outlived its usefulness,” said former FCC chairman Michael Copps, currently a special adviser to Common Cause. “Reinstating it was a huge, unwarranted gift to Big Broadcast. So it is disappointing that the court did not rein in the broadcast-friendly majority at the FCC. We remain committed to halting the wave of media consolidation the FCC majority has sought to unleash.”

The US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit denied the emergency stay motion filed by public interest groups that sought to prevent the Federal Communications Commission from implementing its decision to reinstate the so-called UHF discount that the groups claim will “make it easier for the nation’s largest television ownership groups to acquire additional stations, and crowd out diverse and local voices.” A stay would have prevented the UHF discount from going into effect while the court hears the case on its merits. Restoring the UHF discount to its national ownership rule, in effect, raises the limit on household coverage of TV station groups from 39% to 78%.

The decision is good news for Sinclair Broadcast Group, which needs it to implement its proposed agreement to buy Tribune Media for $3.9 billion and assumption of debt. That deal would increase Sinclair's household reach to 72%. The FCC had urged the court to deny the stay, saying the public interest groups’ request fell "far short" of meeting the criteria for a stay.