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  2. December 2015

December 2015

A Guide To Broadcasters' Obligations During Election Campaigns

[Commentary] Now that NBC stations have reportedly given free air time to five Republican presidential candidates because of Donald Trump’s recent appearance on "Saturday Night Live", this is a good time to take a look at the Federal Communications Commission’s regulation of political broadcasting matters.

There are two important preliminary points. First, although this post refers to “broadcasters,” some of these rules also apply to satellite services DishTV and DirecTV and to the local operations of cable systems. For the sake of simplicity, this post will not deal with these circumstances. Second, there is a tendency to focus upon major federal elections, especially Presidential races. In fact, many of the most important applications of these rules are at the local level, especially in smaller communities, where a local station can have a powerful influence over city council, mayoral and similar races.

[Andrew Jay Schwartzman is the Benton Senior Counselor at the Public Interest Communications Law Project at Georgetown University Law Center's Institute for Public Representation (IPR)]

EU Presses Tech Companies over Surveillance, Security

European Union officials are pressing big US tech companies to free up surveillance access to their user data in the wake of November’s attacks in Paris, marking a continued shift in the debate over privacy and security within the bloc. Firms including Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, Apple, and Alphabet’s Google were meeting on Dec 3 with a raft of government and law-enforcement officials from the EU and member states including France to discuss deepening their cooperation in fighting terrorism, people familiar with the meetings said.

Government officials and tech executives say the meetings -- including one in Paris with French Prime Minister Manuel Valls and another in Brussels dubbed the EU Internet Forum -- focus in large part on how tech firms can move more swiftly to remove propaganda and recruitment messages by Islamic State and other terror groups from social-media websites. But EU officials are also raising a more divisive topic: Whether tech firms should build back doors into encryption tools that could be used by terrorists to plan future attacks. “Communication between terrorists is increasingly taking place using highly sophisticated encryption techniques and this needs to be addressed,” one EU official said ahead of the meeting.

Comcast, NBC Bring Video Descriptions to ‘The Wiz Live!’

Billing it as a first for a live entertainment broadcast show in the US, Comcast said it will include video descriptions with NBC’s production of "The Wiz Live!", an element that will make the show accessible to people who are blind or visually impaired. During NBC’s live broadcast, set to start Thursday, Dec. 3 (also the International Day of Persons with Disabilities) at 8 pm, the video description component will provide a narration track that’s included between the natural pauses in dialogue that describes visual elements of show, such as facial expressions, settings, information about costumes, and stage direction (this brief video offers a more thorough explanation).

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said, "During this time of year, we’re reminded that everyone should have access to the joy of the season. That’s why it’s ‘genius’ that Comcast and NBC Universal will enable Americans with vision loss to enjoy a live broadcast show, The Wiz Live!, through visual description technology. Now, Americans with visual impairments across the country will be able to fully experience a lion get his courage, a scarecrow get his brain, and a tinman find his heart through this technology. It’s a historic first for live TV entertainment.”

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