Ownership

[Commentary] Recently, US District Judge Richard Leon raised the question of whether an arbitration condition would be enough to address the potential harms from the AT&T-Time Warner merger. This proposal would create a mechanism where both sides in a fee dispute concerning Time Warner programming would present a rate to a third-party arbitrator, who would pick the one that was more reasonable. AT&T-Time Warner would not be permitted to take channels off the air and cut the distributor off from its content during the arbitration process.

[Commentary] We are in a brave new world. Facebook and 'Big Tech' have contributed to the erosion of our democratic discourse. We need to have these new titans assume responsibilities on par to the influence they have over our information ecosystem. We need to address this bug in our democracy. Short-term policy solutions can help curb some of Facebook’s harmful effects, but the larger task before policymakers -- and all of us -- is to critically examine the long-term health of our democratic discourse.

One of the nation's oldest and most prestigious regional newspapers, The Chicago Tribune, could soon have a unionized staff. On April 11, journalists from its newsroom informed management that they are preparing to organize and that they have collected signatures from dozens of colleagues. This is a historic move at a paper that, for decades, had taken a hard-line stance against unions.

Setting aside that some people might actually like the option of paying for services in exchange for enhanced privacy protection, history tells us that advertising can support free content just fine without needing to know every detail of our lives to serve us unique ads tailored to an algorithms best guess about our likes and dislikes based on multi-year, detailed surveillance of our every eye-muscle twitch. Despite the unfortunate tendency of social media to drive toward the most extreme arguments even at the best of times, “privacy regulation” is hardly an all or nothing proposition.

[Speech] You either believe broadcasters should be allowed to innovate, or you don’t. And we do. So last November, the Federal Communications Commission adopted rules authorizing the Next Gen TV transmission standard. By allowing use of this standard on a voluntary, market-driven basis, we’ve opened the door to a substantially improved, free, over-the-air television broadcast service and fiercer competition in the video marketplace.

Facebook’s tracking stretches far beyond the company’s well-known targeted advertisements. And details that people often readily volunteer — age, employer, relationship status, likes and location — are just the start. The social media giant also tracks users on other sites and apps. It also collects so-called biometric facial data without users’ explicit “opt-in” consent, and helps video-game companies target “high-value players” who are likely to spend on in-app purchases.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's appearance before Congress turned into something of a pointed gripe session, with both Democratic and Republican senators attacking Facebook for failing to protect users’ data and stop Russian election interference, and raising questions about whether Facebook should be more heavily regulated. Of specific interest were the revelations that sensitive data of as many as 87 million Facebook users were harvested without explicit permission by a political consulting firm, Cambridge Analytica, which was connected to the Trump campaign.

Several Republicans with knowledge of Cambridge’s business said that fallout from the Facebook scandal — combined with widespread doubts about the accuracy of Cambridge’s psychological profiles of voters — had effectively crippled the firm’s election work in the United States. “They’re selling magic in a bottle,” said Matt Braynard, who worked alongside Cambridge on the Trump campaign, for which he served as the director of data and strategy, and now runs Look Ahead America, a group seeking to turn out disaffected rural and blue-collar voters. “And they’re becoming toxic.”

Sinclair Broadcast Group has once again mobilized its local television stations to criticize media competitors, accusing CNN of "dishonesty and hypocrisy."  CNN media reporter Brian Stelter had came down hard on the network for its  mandated messaging condemning "one-sided news stories" and "bias." Many Sinclair journalists weren't happy with their corporate leaders either. Sinclair Chief Executive Chris Ripley tried to reassure employees in an internal memo, writing that local journalists had borne the brunt of the "politically motivated" backlash.

Sinclair Broadcast Group CEO Chris Ripley apologized to employees for having to endure what he called “politically motivated attacks” over the company’s recent promos. In a memo sent to staff, Ripley defended the scripts that anchors at more than 60 Sinclair stations were compelled to read, telling staff that the practice “is not unique to Sinclair, however, the blowback we received for doing so certainly is.”