July 2011

The Third Circuit ruling on the Federal Communications Commission's ownership rules puts an exclamation point on the need to wrap up the FCC's review of ownership regulations, said FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell.

"Now that the commission has some guidance from the Third Circuit, it is all the more imperative that we move ahead with all deliberate speed with our statutory obligation to review our media ownership rules," he said. "The remands from yesterday's decision can, and should, be taken care of in the course of that review, and I would hope that our work would be conducted with deregulation in mind, as section 202H requires." (That is the section of the Communications Act that requires the FCC to review its rules to determine if they are "necessary in the public interest as the result of competition.")

In a series of articles looking at the evolution of media in a digital age, The Economist comes to the conclusion that new media — and in particular the explosion of blogs and other social media tools like Twitter and Facebook — is taking society back to where it was in the 18th and 19th centuries, before the development of newspapers and other mass media platforms.

This is a phenomenon that Om Malik described as the “democratization of distribution” in a recent post. But is this future in which everyone is (or can be) a publisher a good thing, or does it lead to the so-called “Foxification” of media? The Economist‘s series includes an overview of the media industry and separate pieces looking at the concept of crowdsourcing — or the “people formerly known as the audience,” to use a phrase coined by journalism professor Jay Rosen — as well as the influence of Wikileaks, the alleged death of newspapers, the rise of pay walls and the idea that transparency is replacing objectivity. These are all issues that we have written about as well, including the idea that Wikileaks is a journalistic entity, and that social media makes journalism more human, whether media outlets like it or not.

In a blow to Tribune Company as its seeks to emerge from bankruptcy proceedings, the media company may be forced to divest broadcast or newspaper operations in several markets, including Chicago, following a federal appeals court decision.

The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia overturned part of the Federal Communication Commission’s 2008 revamp of U.S. media-ownership rules that made it easier to own a newspaper and a broadcast outlet in the same market. The court said that the FCC’s retooling of the cross-ownership rules had failed to meet public notice and comment requirements. Chicago-based Tribune has waivers from the FCC allowing it to operate broadcast outlets in five markets where it also owns or has stakes in newspapers: Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, South Florida and Hartford, Conn. While pending Tribune requests to keep waivers may be put on hold until the company exits bankruptcy proceedings, the court decision likely will make it tougher to argue for keeping the waivers in the future, said Angela Campbell, a professor at Georgetown Law in Washington who also is director of the Institute for Public Representation and a lawyer representing organizations that challenged the new rules.

A judge said TerreStar Networks can sell itself to Charles Ergen's Dish Network Corp. for $1.375 billion -- Ergen's latest big-ticket purchase in a personal shopping spree through the New York bankruptcy court. Judge Sean H. Lane of U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan approved the sale to Dish, which was named the high bidder for TerreStar late last month when no competing bidders emerged. "It sounds like a good result for the case," Judge Lane said. The deal is subject to regulatory approval. Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP's Arik Preis, a lawyer for TerreStar, told Judge Lane of some minor tweaks it made to satisfy small objections, including one from Space Systems/Loral Inc. No parties objected to the sale at the hearing.