Regulation

A former Senate Intelligence Committee aide was arrested on Thursday in an investigation of classified information leaks where prosecutors also secretly seized years’ worth of a New York Times reporter’s phone and email records. The former aide, James A. Wolfe, 57, was charged with lying repeatedly to investigators about his contacts with three reporters.

The brains behind Housewives, Drag Race and more dissect the former Apprentice star’s White House.

Jeanine Pirro has a top-rated Fox News show and a forthcoming book — Lies, Leakers, and Liberals — but she still wants to be President Donald Trump’s attorney general. A former prosecutor and judge, Pirro has repeatedly told Trump’s aides and advisers over the past 18 months that she’s interested in taking over as the nation’s top law enforcement official, according to four people familiar with the conversations.

President Donald Trump appointed Miami’s former mayor and self-described Cuba “hardliner” Tomás Regalado to run Radio and TV Martí, a sign that tougher U.S. policies could be in store for the island regime and its Latin American allies.

Facebook and Google failed to comply with a Washington state law requiring companies to maintain publicly available information about political ads, state Attorney General Bob Ferguson alleges in new lawsuits against the tech companies.

The FCC says it plans to collect $322,035,000 in regulatory fees for FY 2018, which includes proposing to lower the cable rate and raise the DBS rate in its ongoing effort to equalize the payments between the two, as cable operators have pushed for.

21st Century Fox will be allowed to take over European pay-TV firm Sky as long as it divests Sky News to Disney or another company, British politicians have ruled. Comcastt swooped in earlier this month to make a higher offer for Sky than Fox. The latter, aided by Disney, must now decide whether to make an improved offer for the satellite broadcaster.

Facebook is fending off questions from lawmakers and regulators about partnerships that allowed device makers access to data on users and their friends.

States are pushing their own net neutrality laws and rules in defiance of the FCC’s repeal, heightening the possibility that supporters will be waging another legal battle over the popular Obama-era regulations. A total of 29 states have proposed their own open internet legislation, according to Gigi Sohn, a fellow at Georgetown Law who’s been tracking the initiatives.

A Pennsylvania pension fund claims Shari Redstone’s National Amusements Inc. breached its fiduciary responsibility by interfering in a CBS board vote that diluted the heiress’ grip on the media giant.

The president proposes the current assistant bureau chief of the FCC’s Enforcement Bureau to fill the seat previously held by Democrat Mignon Clyburn.

Sinclair Broadcast Group has provided the FCC with information in response to the commission’s request for information following Sinclair’s latest, and expected to be last, variation on its Tribune merger proposal.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Thursday pardoned a conservative commentator he claims “was treated very unfairly by our government!” and announced he’s thinking about clemency for Martha Stewart […]

Now that CBS shareholders have been teased with the possibility of wresting control of the broadcast company from Shari Redstone, they are going to court to make it happen.

AT&T is dropping a court challenge to the Federal Trade Commission’s authority over telecommunications providers, ending a legal battle that critics said could have left the post-net neutrality internet with little oversight.

For radio and TV stations with five or more fulltime employees in Arizona, Idaho, Maryland, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Ohio, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, Wyoming and the District of Columbia, June 1 brings the requirement that you upload to your online inspection file your Annual EEO Public Inspection File Report. For TV stations that are part of Employment Units with five or more fulltime employees in Arizona, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming, you also need to submit your EEO Form 397 Mid-Term Report.

President Trump on Wednesday accused ABC of a double standard in its decision to cancel the hit sitcom Roseanne, following a racist tweet Roseanne Barr sent earlier in the week. “Bob Iger of ABC called Valerie Jarrett to let her know that ‘ABC does not tolerate comments like those’ made by Roseanne Barr. Gee, he never called President Donald J. Trump to apologize for the HORRIBLE statements made and said about me on ABC. Maybe I just didn’t get the call?” Trump tweeted.

The laswsuit alleges that last week’s special, The Last Days of Michael Jackson, illegally uses significant excerpts of his most valuable songs, including Billie Jean and Bad, and music videos, including Thriller and Black or White. It says the special also used clips from a documentary and feature film belonging to the estate.

Some high-profile broadcast groups have been telling the FCC they would be OK with moving the 39% national ownership cap to 50% from 39%, rather than eliminating it altogether. In filings at the FCC, Hearst, Scripps, Raycom, Gray, Graham, Quincy, Dispatch  and Morgan Murphy say they can support both a 50% cap and eliminating the UHF discount for future broadcast groups, so long as current groups that would be over that 50% cap without the discount are grandfathered.

It is long past time for our nation’s highest court to lurch into the 21st century and allow live televised coverage of all of its hearings and decision announcements. The cable consortium C-SPAN has indicated it is willing to do so, just as it does in Congress. So what’s the hang up?

Shari Redstone’s National Amusements fired back at CBS and its CEO, Leslie Moonves, in a new filing this morning in the companies’ legal brawl in U.S. District Court in Delaware. “This case is about extraordinary, unjustified and unlawful actions by certain of the Directors” of CBS, the complaint says, “to unilaterally dilute the voting rights of its controlling stockholder, NAI, for all purposes and for all time. It is undisputed that the Director Defendants’ actions are unprecedented under Delaware law.”

NEW YORK (AP) — The makers of “Sesame Street” are suing the promoter of a new Melissa McCarthy movie, saying it’s abusing the famed puppets’ sterling reputation to advertise the […]

The FCC adopted a rule in 2013 requiring broadcasters to present aurally on a secondary audio stream all emergency information provided visually during programming other than during regularly-scheduled newscasts and newscasts that interrupt regular programming. In 2015 it granted some temporary waivers. On Friday, the commission granted a request for a five-year extension of the current waiver until May 26, 2023.

The FCC this week issued its 2018 Regulatory Fee Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that puts in motion the process for payment of regulatory fees which will likely be due sometime in September.