DirecTV has confirmed that it will appeal a federal judge in New York’s decision to throw out its antitrust lawsuit against Nexstar Media Group. The pay TV company has accused Nexstar of conspiring to fix broadcast retransmission license fees through management services agreements with smaller station groups Mission Broadcasting and White Knight.
Les Moonves has settled his debts with the City of Los Angeles, at least financially. In a meeting of L.A.’s Ethics Commission Wednesday afternoon, the body voted for a second time on a payout from the multi-millionaire former CBS boss. Unlike the Feb. 21 meeting, this time the proposed settlement passed.
A group of actors filed a class action lawsuit Tuesday against Casting Networks, one of a handful of websites that connects actors to commercial auditions, alleging that the platform functions as an illegal pay-for-play system. Casting Networks offers actors a free tier and two premium tiers. The paid options allow actors to upload more video to their profile and to submit for unlimited roles.
Bill Schultz claims he was fired in retaliation for pushing back against executives at Al Roker Entertainment, who allegedly undercut a PBS-mandated diversity program.
Voting technology company Smartmatic and the far-right network One America News said Tuesday that they had settled a defamation lawsuit stemming from the outlet’s lies about the 2020 election. “The case has been resolved pursuant to a confidential agreement,” OAN attorney Chip Babcock told CNN. Both parties declined to share details about the settlement.
LinkedIn and two advertisers have agreed to settle a long-running battle over the social media platform’s allegedly inflated ad metrics, according to papers filed Monday with a federal appellate court. Settlement terms have not been disclosed. The move likely brings an end to a dispute dating to 2020, when the tech company TopDevz and recruiting platform Noirefy alleged in a class-action complaint that LinkedIn’s erroneous metrics allowed it to charge inflated prices for ads.
Exclusives
Faith Stowers, a former Vanderpump Rules cast member, accused NBCUniversal on Friday of racist harassment and retaliation, becoming the latest Bravo star to sue over her treatment on a popular reality show. Stowers appeared on Seasons 4 and 5 of the series, which aired from 2015 to 2017. In her lawsuit, she alleges that castmate Lala Kent brandished a knife at her during an argument in Season 4, held it to her neck and threatened to “cut a bitch.”
A former ABC director of development is taking the network, parent company Disney and John Ridley to court for gender, racial and economic discrimination, claiming they firing her when she complained about the alleged situation. In a nine-claim complaint filed Wednesday in Los Angeles Superior Court, Asta Jonasson says she was pink-slipped in 2022 after more than a decade at ABC after putting in writing her frequently mentioned grievances about being overlooked for promotions and underpaid.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Donald Trump is suing two co-founders of Trump Media & Technology Group, the newly public parent company of his Truth Social platform, arguing that they should […]
Facebook “Watch” looked like a Netflix killer in 2017, but antitrust prosecutors claim it was shut down to protect advertising deals.
Activist Disney investor Blackwells Capital has filed a lawsuit against the media giant over what it sees as an inappropriately cozy relationship with another shareholder, ValueAct Capital. In the lawsuit filed Thursday in Delaware Chancery Court, Blackwells lays out concerns about whether ValueAct has been paid to take a pro-Disney position in a brewing proxy fight with activists. Blackwells and Trian Fund Management have both agitated for fresh voices on Disney’s board of directors ahead of next Wednesday’s annual shareholder meeting, when ballots in board elections will officially be tallied.
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey has sued Media Matters in an attempt to protect Elon Musk and X from the nonprofit watchdog group’s investigations into hate speech on the social network. Bailey’s lawsuit claims that “Media Matters has used fraud to solicit donations from Missourians in order to trick advertisers into removing their advertisements from X, formerly Twitter, one of the last platforms dedicated to free speech in America.”
Ibrahim Samra says he was fired from WWJ-TV has filed suit against the station, alleging he was discriminated and retaliated against after complaining about what he saw as its anti-Arab bias.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in New Jersey, alleges that Apple has monopoly power in the smartphone market and uses its control over the iPhone to “engage in a broad, sustained and illegal course of conduct.” The lawsuit — which was also filed with 16 state attorneys general — is the latest example of the Justice Department’s approach to aggressive enforcement of federal antitrust law that officials say is aimed at ensuring a fair and competitive market, even as it has lost some significant anticompetition cases.
Abbott Elementary and its creator and star, Quinta Brunson, are out of legal detention. A judge in New York dismissed a lawsuit against Brunson, 34, and ABC filed by writer Christine Davis in 2021, claiming the hit sitcom was a “veritable knock-off” of her show This School Year. According to the court decision, the judge found that “no discerning observer would find the works to be substantially similar.”
A federal judge in New York on Wednesday tossed out DirecTV’s price-fixing case against three TV station owners – including Nexstar Media Group – on the basis that the satellite TV provider lacked antitrust standing to wage the court battle. DirecTV “has failed to show that it suffered ‘a special kind of antitrust injury,’ and therefore lacks antitrust standing to bring this suit,” U.S. District Judge P. Kevin Castel said in a 17-page opinion.
Former President Donald Trump filed a defamation lawsuit against ABC News on Monday, arguing that the anchor George Stephanopoulos had harmed his reputation by saying multiple times on-air that the former president had been found liable for raping the writer E. Jean Carroll.
On the two-year anniversary of the attack in Ukraine that claimed the lives of Fox News photojournalist Pierre Zakrzewski and contractor Oleksandra “Sasha” Kuvshynova, the network was accused Thursday of being culpable for the fatal incident by engaging in “reckless and negligent conduct” that put the crew in harm’s way. The network was also accused of launching “a campaign of material misrepresentations and omissions to hide its own accountability for the disaster and shift blame” to then-security contractor Shane Thomson, who allegedly warned against the crew entering the dangerous zone near Kyiv where they were killed.
Two Amazon Prime Video users claim the company violated a federal video privacy law by allegedly sharing information about their online video viewing with other Amazon-affiliated companies, and with outside businesses. In a class-action complaint, Virginia resident Meredith Beagle and Louisiana resident Jordan Guerrero allege that Amazon Services regularly discloses personally identifiable information to its parent company, Amazon Inc., “for audience measurement purposes, marketing purposes, market research purposes, advertising purposes, and other data collection and analysis purposes.”
The court found that 20th Television may have engaged in religious discrimination against the actor, who was denied an exemption from the vaccine.
So You Think You Can Dance co-creator and former judge Nigel Lythgoe has been accused of sexual assault for the fourth time in less than three months. “Lythgoe’s sexual assault and battery were so traumatizing that Plaintiff no longer feels like the confident, capable, and independent woman that she was before the incident,” says Jane Doe of the alleged 2018 incident in a filing Tuesday in Los Angeles Superior Court.
Brian Beneker, a script coordinator on the show who claims “heterosexual, white men need ‘extra’ qualifications” to be hired on the network’s shows, is represented by a conservative group founded by Trump administration alum Stephen Miller.
Musk said the prominent AI start-up had put profits and commercial interests ahead of seeking to benefit humanity.
A federal judge held veteran investigative reporter Catherine Herridge in civil contempt on Thursday for refusing to divulge her source for a 2017 series of Fox News stories about a Chinese American scientist who was investigated by the FBI but never charged. U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper in Washington imposed a fine of $800 per day until Herridge complies, but the fine will not go into effect immediately to give her time to appeal.
The largest TV station group in the U.S. is suing in an effort to alter current federal rules that limit its ability to grow in local markets. Nexstar Media Group filed the action in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, faulting the FCC for freezing or tightening TV station ownership rules in disregard of controlling law that points to deregulation as competition to broadcasting takes hold. “The [FCC’s] order exceeds the [FCC’s] statutory authority because it tightens media ownership rules in spite of the statute’s clear deregulatory purpose and the lack of basis for such tightening,” Nexstar said in its Feb. 23 petition for review.
Cable-affiliated internet service providers (ISPs) are challenging new federal digital discrimination rules in federal court in Washington, the second major legal case to target the rules. The suit was filed Friday in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit by NCTA – The Internet & Television Association and ACA Connects, which combined represent hundreds of broadband ISPs, the vast majority of them small.
Katie Puris, who was the Global Head of Brand & Creative at TikTok, alleged in a lawsuit filed this week in a Manhattan federal court that she was fired in 2022 after making internal complaints about gender and age discrimination linked to what she called a preference among company executives for hiring young people.
Zucker’s lawsuit claims that producer Albert Alarr enjoyed filming aggressive sex scenes and threesome sequences.
The lawsuit accused the fast food giant of failing to live up to a pledge to increase spending with Black-owned media from 2% to 5% by the end of this year.
The lawsuit Carano filed with help from X, formerly Twitter, in federal court in California alleges her wrongful termination from the Star Wars galaxy Disney+ streaming series after two seasons over a post likening the treatment of American conservatives to the treatment of Jews in Nazi Germany.
Showtime retorts that there is “no plausible basis” for the claim, which focuses on the participation of Georgette Jones, the titular couple’s daughter, and her part in a previous non-disparagement agreement.
The Hollywood Creative Alliance (formerly known as Hollywood Critics Association) is suing the Critics Choice Association for defamation in response to the org’s recent call for members to resign from the HCA in order to stay members of the CCA. According to court documents, the HCA claims the CCA has defamed the organization in an “attempt to boycott and steal members of the HCA” and is seeking “preliminary and permanent injunctive relief” along with “appropriate compensatory remedies and fees and costs” in response to the organization’s actions.
New Baltimore Sun owner and Sinclair Broadcast Group Executive Chairman David Smith has been quietly involved in a lawsuit accusing Baltimore City Public Schools of defrauding taxpayers, documents show. Smith has had several discussions with the plaintiffs and their attorneys about the suit and is behind a corporation paying the plaintiff’s legal fees, according to documents obtained by The Baltimore Banner. All the while, Baltimore’s WBFF, Sinclair’s flagship station, has covered the case extensively without disclosing Smith’s role. A WBFF spokesperson said that WBFF reporters and staff did not know of Smith’s involvement in the lawsuit, and that the station will add disclosure to its stories. (Doug Wells/AP)
The Oregonian/OregonLive reported that an attorney who represents plaintiffs in the case sent the documents to one of its reporters on Jan. 19 and then asked for them back. When the news outlet declined, the attorney filed a court motion requesting they be returned. U.S. Magistrate Judge Jolie Russo approved the motion on Friday and ordered the news outlet to return the documents.
Matthew P Bergman’s firm has filed cases against Snap, TikTok and others, with a novel argument – that the products are harmful by design.
The lawsuit filed in federal court in Los Angeles on Thursday asks that a judge order the podcast outlet, Dudesy, to immediately take down the audio special, George Carlin: I’m Glad I’m Dead, in which a synthesis of Carlin, who died in 2008, delivers commentary on current events. (Gregory Bull/AP)
The court’s order advanced claims from both sides. The dispute centers on allegations that Fox, in an attempt to boost ratings, capitalized on the popularity of former President Donald Trump by fabricating a narrative that Smartmatic caused him to unfairly lose the election.
The National Football League isn’t officially saying anything yet, but the league just suffered a major loss. Failing to get the nearly decade-long antitrust lawsuit over the lucrative Sunday Ticket package thrown out of court, the Roger Goodell-run NFL is going to trial for potentially $6.1 billion just over a week after this year’s Super Bowl.
