Regulation

The Walt Disney Co. may be gearing up for its traditional celebration of Pride month, but on Tuesday a long-time executive has hit the House of Mouse with a lawsuit of discrimination based on sexual orientation. “Plaintiff has direct and repeated complaints to HR about the discrimination he has endured while employed by Defendants and, concomitantly, the related failures to promote him and to pay him at the same level as other department heads,” says the complaint filed in L.A. Superior Court by attorneys for Joel Hopkins.

Gray Television is pushing the FCC to classify over-the-top video providers as MVPDs so they will have to negotiate carriage with stations. That is according to a presentation to FCC Commissioner Nathan Simington and his media adviser, Adam Cassady, by Gray counsel and former FCC commissioner Robert McDowell.

The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in Miami federal court, contends that Netflix intentionally misled Dershowitz, one of the lawyers once representing Epstein, regarding his appearance in the series Filthy Rich. The suit also claims Netflix defamed him by falsely asserting that he had sex with one of Epstein’s many victims.

NAB Deputy General Counsel Patrick McFadden discusses Microsoft’s promises to deploy TV white space devices even as Microsoft seeks to overturn recently adopted FCC rules allowing broadcasters to further the deployment of NextGen TV services and improve service to television viewers.

The famed attorney alleges that the cable news network provided misleading coverage of his arguments during the Donald Trump impeachment trial.

But the Justice Department is not commenting on whether a seemingly off-the-cuff remark by President Biden is now a policy directive.

Microsoft has asked the FCC to reverse its decision, made under then-chairman Ajit Pai, to allow broadcaster signals from distributed transmission systems to go “significantly” beyond a station’s current authorized service area as those broadcasters roll out their NextGen TV broadcast transmission standard. It claims the “fatally unclear” decision was based on faulty assertions.

Sally Jenkins: “Someone on Capitol Hill, please explain why the dystopian, reform-resistant NCAA should get one more dime or tax favor from an American electorate that is more than half female. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) has remarked that we need to recognize the NCAA ‘for the civil rights issue that it is,” a system in which “80 to 90 percent of the adults who are getting rich off college athletics are White men.’ While we’re at it, let’s recognize how it uses and demeans women.”

Lawmakers passed a bill named for Javier Ambler II, who died in 2019 after officers arrested him in front of a Live PD television crew. If the governor signs it, this would mean the end of police cooperation with reality TV shows.

The BBC is engulfed in one of the biggest crises in its 100-year history after an independent inquiry concluded that former reporter Martin Bashir (r) deceived his way to a Princess Diana interview and the broadcaster failed to properly investigate his wrongdoing. Former Supreme Court judge Lord Dyson’s inquiry elicited a blistering statement from Prince William, who was excoriating about the BBC’s failings. The future King said the 1995 Panorama interview “contributed significantly” to the “fear, paranoia and isolation” of his mother in her tragic final years.

The lawsuit alleges that McDonald’s refusal to contract with Allen’s Entertainment Studios Networks and Weather Group “is the result of racial stereotyping through McDonald’s tiered advertising structure that differentiates on the basis of race.” McDonald’s announces plans to accelerate “the allocation of advertising dollars to diverse-owned media companies, production houses and content creators.”

In its complaint, filed Wednesday in federal court in California, the FTC said thousands of Frontier Communications customers have complained that the company was not delivering promised speeds. Customers said they couldn’t use the internet service for the online activities they should have been able to.

The motion characterizes Dominion’s complaint as threatening “the deeply enshrined protections for the free press” and outlines two key reasons for dismissal.

Makan Delrahim, who as the Justice Department’s antitrust chief during Donald Trump’s administration challenged AT&T’s combination with Time Warner, has a different view of the planned spinoff of WarnerMedia. “I wish both companies and Mr. Zaslav and Mr. Stankey the best,” Delrahim said, referring to David Zaslav, the CEO of Discovery, and John Stankey, the CEO of AT&T.

Broadcasters are telling the FCC that over-the-top video providers can’t be relied on to relay emergency alerts, saying that, at least currently, the technological challenges make it “extremely burdensome, and likely infeasible, to update the EAS system to enable alerts to consumers provided through the internet, including through streaming devices.”

Virginia, Florida, Arkansas and Maryland are among dozens of states that have introduced bills to curtail the power of Amazon, Google, Facebook and Twitter.

President Joe Biden on Friday revoked former President Donald Trump’s controversial executive order that aimed to regulate social media companies’ editorial policies. The now-repealed “Order on Preventing Online Censorship” directed government officials to consider issuing rules that could tie web companies’ protection from lawsuits to the companies’ content-moderation policies.

Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) told an audience of broadcasters this week that she was trying to fight the trend of broadcasting workforce losses due to the pandemic and “information age changes” (translation: Big Tech), including by proposing a big government investment in local news.

TVNewsCheck‘s quarterly quick briefing on the legal and regulatory proceedings affecting broadcasters from communications attorneys David Oxenford and David O’Connor.

The Senate Commerce Committee on Wednesday approved the nomination of Lina Khan to be a member of the Federal Trade Commission, clearing the way for a vote by the full Senate that would make her, a prominent critic of the tech giants, one of its most powerful regulators. The nomination of Khan, 32, has buoyed progressive hopes that President Biden will try to rein in Silicon Valley.

Acting FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel wants broadcasters to promote their over-the-top (broadband) competition, but in a good cause. In an OTT video speech to the National Association of Broadcasters virtual State Leadership Conference this week, Rosenworcel praised broadcasters as vital first informers, including providing key help for small businesses, encouraging vaccinations, and other pandemic-related help, then hit them up for a public interest favor.

Everyone knows that a fundamental principle of American democracy is the First Amendment — guaranteeing many freedoms to U.S. citizens including freedom of the press and freedom of speech.  It is one of those concepts that underlies our society, but is often mentioned only in passing, and rarely considered in practice.  Few people — even broadcasters and other media companies — have cause to think about First Amendment principles in their day-to-day operations.  The concepts embodied by the First Amendment are almost a given — except when they aren’t.

The National Association of Broadcasters took the gloves off in a recent meeting with FCC engineering staffers over TV white spaces — the use of broadcast spectrum for unlicensed uses like wireless broadband — calling it a failing experiment.

The FCC has unanimously approved the framework for the $7.17 billion Emergency Connectivity Fund for remote learning service and devices. Acting FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel last week circulated the draft rules to the other commissioners Those rules do not allow for using the money to fund either the presumably immobile desktop computers or for hyper-mobile smart phones.