Mo’Nique has filed a lawsuit alleging that Paramount and CBS owe her millions in profit participation from her show The Parkers. The show ran for five seasons on UPN, from 1999 through 2004. The show’s creators — Ralph Farquhar, Sara Finney-Johnson and Vida Spears — filed a similar lawsuit last June, alleging that CBS had engaged in various forms of “financial malfeasance” to artificially inflate expenses and suppress profit payments. The network settled that case out of court in November.
With jury selection closed to the media and public, Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric Davis announced by Thursday afternoon that the interview process had produced a large enough pool from which to choose 12 jurors and 12 alternates for the defamation trial brought by Dominion Voting Systems. The seating of jurors will begin Monday morning, followed by opening statements from lawyers.
Amid ban threats, letter to CEO suggests steps that could ameliorate concerns.
PBS has not tweeted from its main Twitter handle since April 8, following Elon Musk’s decision to label the outlet “government-funded news.” PBS joins NPR, another major editorially independent outlet that receives some government funding, in halting its Twitter activity in light of the new label.
The judge presiding over a voting machine company’s defamation lawsuit against Fox denied the company’s request Wednesday to hold separate trials — one for Fox News and another for the network’s parent company.
Exclusives
Newly revealed recordings of Maria Bartiromo’s conversations with Sidney Powell, Rudy Giuliani and others have left a Delaware judge again upset with Fox’s legal team. Judge Eric M. Davis indicated that he would appoint a special master to investigate Fox’s representations to the court, including declarations made in December over the extent of discovery materials that have been produced to Dominion Voting Systems in their $1.6 billion defamation case. Davis said that he was “very concerned” that Fox made it seem as if it had met its discovery obligations.
She’s slotted to speak on Monday, April 17. NAB CEO Curtis LeGeyt said: “With the FCC sitting at the forefront of so many critical issues facing our members today, this will provide a unique opportunity for broadcasters across the country to hear directly from the chairwoman on her thoughts on the state of the industry and her vision for the future.”
Attorneys defending Fox in the $1.6 billion defamation case brought by Dominion Voting Systems over alleged false claims about the 2020 election withheld critical information about the role company founder Rupert Murdoch played at Fox News, a revelation that angered the judge when it came up at a Tuesday hearing. It was not clear whether the development would affect a trial scheduled to begin Thursday with jury selection.
The Biden administration is looking to potentially regulate artificial intelligence (AI) and algorithmic processes. On Tuesday (April 11), the National Telecommunications & Information Administration, the White House’s chief communications policy advisory arm, put out a request for comment on just how that might come about.
We’re Here, Queen of the Universe and, of course, RuPaul’s Drag Race nudge drag toward the mainstream. But just as these shows flourish, so too does anti-drag legislation in a number of U.S. states.
The commission’s International Bureau is reorganizing into a Space Bureau and Office of International Affairs. The Space Bureau will focus on “policy and licensing matters related to satellite and space-based communications and activities,” and the Office of International Affairs, which will coordinate FCC work with foreign and international regulatory authorities.
A ranked-choice voting process allowed media companies and some participating vendors to agree on a list of the top 10 security priorities for the technology vendors serving the media industry. Key concerns included securing the media supply chain and complying with new insurance company rules requiring companies to regularly audit their security vendors.
Major League Baseball filed a motion last week to the Texas bankruptcy court overseeing the restructuring of Diamond Sports Group, the Sinclair subsidiary that manages the Bally Sports regional sports network channels, demanding that the Cleveland Guardians and Minnesota Twins be paid for their TV rights or released from their Bally Sports contracts. Meanwhile, baseball’s Arizona Diamondbacks, who haven’t received their Bally Sports rights payment either, filed a separate but similar motion on their own behalf.
A lawsuit filed against the SAG-AFTRA Health Plan, which claimed that changes to eligibility for benefits “illegally discriminated” against older members, has been settled. The suit was filed in federal court in December 2020 by former SAG President Ed Asner and nine other SAG-AFTRA members. The Health Plan, which had been facing staggering deficits, said that the changes were necessary to keep it from going broke. Asner died in 2021, but a federal judge allowed the case to continue.
A settlement has been reached in a Venezuelan businessman’s defamation lawsuit against Fox News and host Lou Dobbs over statements accusing him of helping tilt the 2020 presidential election. In a letter to U.S. District Court Judge Louis Lee Stanton filed in the Southern District of New York over the weekend, lawyers for the two parties wrote they had reached an agreement to resolve the matter. Financial terms of the agreement were not specified.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Rep David Cicilline lead group highlighting effect on jobs and competition in the industry and reduced choice for media consumers.
Arkansas on Thursday joined Utah in passing legislation that would ban minors under 18 from most large social media platforms, without parental consent. The bill also would explicitly require social media platforms to verify all users ages.
A federal judge denied Dish Network’s motion seeking to have 17 words describing how much Dish was willing to pay Circle City to carry its Indianapolis television stations deleted from the court’s decision dismissing Circle City’s discrimination suit against Dish. Circle City claimed that after it acquired WISH and WNDY from Nexstar Media Group, Dish wanted to cut how much it paid for the stations retransmission rights because Circle City was a Black-owned media company, leading to a blackout of the stations.
The voting machine company has filed a $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox for its coverage of baseless election fraud charges in the 2020 election.
Star hosts for Fox News like Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity as well as Lachlan Murdoch may also appear in person at the high-profile Dominion Voting Systems trial, which is set to start April 17.
Top Republicans on FCC oversight committees say the FCC’s Media Bureau decision to designate the Standard General-Tegna deal for hearing before an administrative law judge was unfair and a violation of a congressional charge to “promote competition and reduce regulation.” They want the FCC to answer a host of questions related to the decision.
The upcoming trial in a voting machine company’s defamation lawsuit against Fox News for airing false allegations of vote fraud in the 2020 presidential election will not include testimony about the Jan. 6 uprising at the U.S. Capitol, a judge ruled Wednesday.
A bipartisan group of 27 U.S. senators, led by Sens. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) and Todd Young (R-Ind.), sent a letter Wednesday to FCC ChairJessica Rosenworcel urging the commission to take an active role in expediting the continued rollout of the ATSC 3.0 standard, aka NextGen TV.
One of Standard General’s appeals to get its acquisition of Tegna approved by the FCC before its financing expires on May 22 was dismissed Monday by a panel of U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit judges.
Whether Fox executives and hosts heeded the guidance of the network’s esteemed research and fact-checking unit could be pivotal in the $1.6 billion Dominion Voting Systems defamation case.
Fox Is Not A News Network But A Propaganda Outlet
Eugene Robinson: ” ‘Fox News’ is a misnomer. Rupert Murdoch’s cable network isn’t really a news organization. It just plays one on television — and deserves to lose the $1.6 billion Dominion Voting Systems defamation lawsuit that soon will go to trial. I generally root for the defendant in libel and defamation suits. Journalism is a human endeavor, which means that however hard we try to get everything right, sometimes we fail. The Supreme Court has rightly set a high bar for plaintiffs who claim they were wronged by the media, recognizing that the First Amendment’s protection of press freedom must allow for tough reporting, sharp commentary and honest mistakes. This case, for me, is a glaring exception. What Fox did to Dominion was not journalism. It was more like a mugging.”
