Daily Digest 11/13/2017 (AT&T, Time Warner, and so much more)

President Donald Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner is still upset with CNN. Kushner met with Gary Ginsberg, a top executive at Time Warner, CNN’s parent company. In the meeting, Kushner told Ginsberg CNN should fire 20 percent of its staff because of its coverage of the 2016 presidential election. A White House official said that Kushner’s remark wasn’t serious, and that he “was simply trying to make a point.” It seems like the Trump administration’s feud with CNN isn’t going away. When Kushner took more control of his father-in-law’s presidential campaign, he started complaining to CNN executives about its Trump coverage. He was particularly angry after CNN fact-checked a speech Trump gave on June 22 and threatened to keep campaign members from appearing on the network.

A group of Democratic Sens is demanding answers from the Trump administration over news reports that the Department of Justice asked AT&T to sell CNN as a condition for allowing a merger between AT&T and Time Warner. Senate Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee Ranking Member Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and a group of fellow Democrats sent a letter Nov 10 to President Donald Trump and Assistant Attorney General Makan Delrahim over the possibility of "undue interference" by Trump in the agency's antitrust enforcement.

[Commentary] For over four decades, the Federal Communications Commission has restricted the ability of broadcast media outlets to also own newspapers, and vice versa, in the same market, under what is known as the newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership rule. This rule was established in 1975 with the stated purpose of preserving and promoting a diversity of viewpoints. Arguably, it made sense at the time. But with the internet now dominating the news landscape, the rule is no longer needed, and may actually be undermining the diversity of viewpoints it was intended to foster. The FCC is scheduled to vote at its meeting Nov 16 to repeal the newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership rule. This common-sense move is not only long overdue.

The Federal Communications Commission is attempting to mediate the broadband redlining complaint filed against AT&T by attorney Daryl Parks on behalf of "Cleveland broadband consumers," according to Parks, who says he is ready to talk, but also to sue. According to Parks' office, they are scheduled for a Nov. 13-14 session with AT&T and FCC staffers to try and resolve the complaint. "It is my sincere desire to resolve these matters during the November 13 - 14 FCC staff monitored mediation session," said Parks. "However, I am preparing to litigate and win on behalf of my clients and our communities."  To that end, Parks says he has employed several lawyers, including Andrew Jay Schwartzman of Georgetown University Law Center, a veteran public interest attorney specializing in communications access issues, saying while he hopes mediation is the ticket, "we are preparing to fight and win.

Public Knowledge joined Communications Workers of America and 20 rural, consumer, civil rights, labor, and other groups in a letter urging Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai to retain the agency’s tech transitions rules that protect consumers while providers like Verizon transition from copper to fiber networks. The agency plans to roll back these consumer protections on November 16, effectively downgrading rural America. Public Knowledge also joined Communications Workers of America, Institute for Local Self Reliance, National Digital Inclusion Alliance, National Hispanic Media Coalition, and Kentucky Resources Council in an ex parte filing urging the FCC to protect the public interest by maintaining the agency’s existing copper retirement notification rules.

We demonstrate that exposure to the news media causes Americans to take public stands on specific issues, join national policy conversations, and express themselves publicly—all key components of democratic politics—more often than they would otherwise. After recruiting 48 mostly small media outlets, we chose groups of these outlets to write and publish articles on subjects we approved, on dates we randomly assigned. We estimated the causal effect on proximal measures, such as website pageviews and Twitter discussion of the articles’ specific subjects, and distal ones, such as national Twitter conversation in broad policy areas. Our intervention increased discussion in each broad policy area by ~62.7% (relative to a day’s volume), accounting for 13,166 additional posts over the treatment week, with similar effects across population subgroups.

Democratic Reps are pushing the Federal Elections Commission to take more aggressive action in curbing foreign influence in US elections.  Eighteen members of Congress led by Democracy Reform Task Force Chair Rep John Sarbanes (D-MD) urged the FEC in a letter on Nov 9 to treat political advertisements on social media platforms in the same way that it treats TV or radio ads. Rep Sarbanes and company argued that with such measures in place, foreign manipulation of social media platforms during the 2016 U.S. election would not have happened.  “There is reason to believe that if we had a more effective disclaimer regime for political internet advertisements during the 2016 election cycle, a portion of the illicit foreign campaign spending might have been prevented,” the lawmakers wrote.