Lauren Frayer

Sprint and another Windstream filed a lawsuit against the Federal Communications Commission for the agency's recent decision on business data services.

The companies are seeking relief "on the grounds that the [FCC’s] Report and Order is arbitrary, capricious, and an abuse of discretion," according to a filing in the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit. Richard Levy, a law professor at the University of Kansas, said the court would not determine whether the FCC adopted the correct policy, but whether it is consistent with statute. "Those kinds of filings go the agency's way, more often than not," he said. "Occasionally, they will be able to demonstrate some sort of flaw in what the agency did." As the petitioners, Sprint and Windstream requested that the court reverse, annul or set aside the FCC's Report and Order, and provide additional relief as determined proper. If a flaw is found, Levy said, the agency still may be able to readopt the policy with a better explanation to support it or to revise the policy. Usually, the court will not completely reverse it. In Sprint's case, he added, "The best case is to have it reversed. Sometimes it's worth it even if the only impact is to delay a regulation for a couple of years."

Free Press and a coalition of media-rights groups petitioned the Federal Communications Commission to stay its ruling reinstating an obsolete television-ownership rule. The rule in question, called the “UHF discount,” allows broadcasters to exceed the national ownership cap by discounting the actual population coverage of their UHF broadcast stations for purposes of calculating their stations’ reach.

The FCC under Chairman Ajit Pai voted in April to put this rule back on the books to pave the way for runaway broadcast-industry consolidation, like the Sinclair-Tribune merger that was announced earlier this week. These conglomerates hope to exploit the discount to leap over the 39 percent national audience-reach cap Congress put in place. In their petition to the agency, Common Cause, Free Press, Media Alliance, Media Mobilizing Project, the National Hispanic Media Coalition, Prometheus Radio Project and the United Church of Christ Office of Communication, Inc. explain that this is a dangerous outcome stemming from a bad agency decision. The UHF discount is a technically obsolete loophole that allows the FCC to underestimate the true reach of broadcast companies. It’s technically obsolete because while UHF stations once had weaker signals, today stations broadcasting on these channels actually have better signals thanks to the Digital TV transition that occurred a decade ago. As the groups’ filing makes clear, “Reinstatement of the UHF discount opens the door for rapid and massive consolidation despite a congressional directive that there should be a limit on the scope of national ownership.”

[Commentary] Internet providers have long offered an open internet experience. Along with web companies like Facebook and Google, internet service providers support open internet rules preventing blocking, throttling or unfair discrimination of online traffic. There is little objection to these common-sense consumer protections, but widespread resistance to the fiction that the government needs to impose outdated public utility regulation to assure openness. What we object to is regulating dynamic internet networks in the same way we regulate failing infrastructure like electricity, water, roads and bridges. Public utility regulation has failed America, and it’s foolish to apply it to the internet, the one infrastructure bright spot that has fueled America’s global competitiveness. The Federal Communications Commission is right to work toward restoring light-touch regulation before the information superhighway becomes marked with potholes.

[Powell, a former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, is president and chief executive of NCTA, the Internet and Television Association]

Verizon Communications will buy Straight Path Communications for about $3.1 billion, after beating rival AT&T in an unusually intense bidding war for the wireless-spectrum holder.

On the morning of May 10 as controversy swirled over the president abruptly firing his FBI chief amid an investigation of possible ties between Donald Trump's 2016 campaign and Russia, the president met in the Oval Office with none other than Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. But the meeting was closed press, meaning the rotating pool of photographers, reporters and camera operators who follow the president weren't allowed in. Yet photos of the three laughing and smiling were soon published by the Russian state news agency TASS. The Russian foreign ministry also tweeted photos of the meeting.

Asked by the print pooler why members of the Russian media were allowed into the meeting but no U.S. press was permitted, a White House official said, "Our official photographer and their official photographer were present, that's it," meaning TASS was considered the Russians' "official photographer."

Anyone seeking further confirmation that Donald Trump’s presidency is primarily a media story need look no further than the surprise firing of FBI Director James Comey. According to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, Comey was essentially let go for talking to the press. That’s almost surely not the real reason he was fired, but in this case, the media is both a smokescreen and a clue.

Comey’s ouster falls perfectly in line with the administration’s broader positions on media control, leaks, and leakers. It also offers more evidence, in case anyone needed it, of Trump’s overweening desire to control the news cycle.

[Commentary] "What's it like to work at a local newspaper?” That’s the question we asked journalists across the United States at the end of 2016, as part of a new study supported by the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University.

The conclusions, derived from an online survey of 420 journalists at small-market newspapers (with a circulation of under 50,000), reveal a cohort that is actively embracing digital technologies and wants to know more about their potential. As a group, they’re also more optimistic about their future than might be expected and keen to challenge the “doom and gloom” narrative about the local news industry.

[Christopher Ali is an assistant professor in the Department of Media Studies at the University of Virginia. Damian Radcliffe is the Carolyn S. Chambers Professor in Journalism at the University of Oregon.]

A coalition of groups, including GLAAD, CAIR and Common Cause, has written to the heads of Fox News, CNN and MSNBC calling for more diversity in the guests booked for morning political talk shows. "At a time when our communities continue to be the victims of hate crimes, the media must do better in representing the broad spectrum of America," wrote the members of the Coalition Against Hate. CAIR, for example, said: "Networks must work harder to include Muslim representation and avoid providing platforms to those who would condition Americans to fear and hate their Muslim neighbors." All the groups pointed to a Media Matters analysis of cable news coverage in January and March that concluded that white men were the overwhelming percentage of guests on those top cable news nets, while black, Latino, Middle Eastern, Asian-American, and LGBTQ guests are woefully underrepresented. "At a time when these communities are disproportionately impacted by the political climate—including as targets of a growing wave of hate crimes—it is imperative that your networks do better to reflect the full diversity of our country."

The nation’s political divide has been on full display in the news media in the hours since FBI Director James Comey’s abrupt ejection from his post May 9 — and the lines are brighter than ever.

On CNN, the legal journalist Jeffrey Toobin was in full-on meltdown mode, denouncing President Trump’s firing as “a grotesque abuse of power” and “the kind of thing that goes on in non-democracies.” Over on Fox News, the mood was more sanguine — even celebratory. “This was overdue, and everyone in Washington knows that,” Tucker Carlson declared at the top of his 8 pm broadcast, before introducing a series of guests who echoed his excitement.By May 10, the left-leaning HuffPost featured a one-word, all-capital headline: “Nixonian.” The right-leaning Breitbart News approvingly declared President Trump’s move “the latest in a political outsider’s crusade against entrenched Washington.”

A vast majority of Americans—95 percent—say they are concerned about businesses’ collection and sale of their personal information without permission, according to a survey taken after the recent rollback of federal privacy rules for broadband providers. The Federal Communications Commission privacy rules had required providers such as Comcast and AT&T to get affirmative consent from subscribers before collecting or selling their data. Since President Donald Trump signed a bill into law rescinding those rules, the public debate over internet privacy has escalated.

The survey, published May 4 by software company Anchorfree, asked 2,000 consumers their views on internet access and privacy. Although 90 percent of Americans say internet access must be safe and secure, they are divided as to who should be responsible for ensuring such security. Two out of five Americans say the federal government is responsible, while another two out of five point to network providers, the survey said.