Regulation

Interactive Advertising Bureau CEO David Cohen on Monday reiterated the organization’s call for a national privacy law that would override state laws. “If we don’t get public policy right and regulation right, nothing else really matters,” he said at the IAB’s public policy and legal summit here. He added that efforts to shape policy were “priority No. 1” for the ad group.

Its official. On Sunday night, the White House sent out a note that it had informed the Senate it has withdrawn the nomination of Gigi Sohn to fill the vacant chair on the FCC, which has been at a 2-2 political tie for more than two years since Joe Biden became president, which usually would mean a Democratic majority.

A U.S. District Court Judge on Friday dismissed lawsuits brought by Circle City Broadcasting charging that DirecTV and Dish discriminated against Circle City because it was a Black-owned business. Circle City owner Dujuan McCoy said he planned to appeal the decision. He also said he would work to prevent DirecTV and Dish from merging.

Superior Court Judge Eric Davis ruled Friday that neither Fox nor Dominion Voting Systems had presented a convincing argument to prevail on whether Fox acted with malice without the case going to trial. But he also ruled that the statements Dominion had challenged constitute defamation “per se” under New York law. That means Dominion did not have to prove damages to establish liability by Fox.

Opponents of the Standard General-Tegna merger say the companies’ application for “emergency” expedited court review of the FCC’s designation of the deal to a hearing before an administrative law judge should be rejected. In opposition to an expedited court review of the FCC decision filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, The NewsGuild, the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians-CWA, United Church of Christ and Common Cause, told the court that the designation is not an appealable final order.

Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) have reintroduced House and Senate versions of the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation (CALM) Modernization Act, which would extend limits on TV commercial ad loudness to ads on streaming services. Their 2010 CALM Act directed the FCC to ensure that ads on TV were not louder than the surrounding programming.

A bipartisan group of U.S. senators introduced a bill on Thursday aimed at cutting Google and Facebook’s clout in online advertising, an early sign that lawmakers will press on with efforts to rein in Big Tech in the new congress.

Dominion and Fox News met but could not agree on $1.6 billion defamation case from bogus 2020 election fraud claims. Experts say a settlement is still possible.

Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott instructed journalists to not fact-check Donald Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election, saying it “has to stop now.” It’s the latest update in the news organization’s ongoing defamation battle with Dominion Voting Systems.

Standard General is getting an accelerated proceeding from the D.C. Court of Appeals after filing a lawsuit against the FCC that in part seeks to overturn the commission’s move to send the firm’s proposed acquisition of broadcaster Tegna to an administrative law judge for further review.

Florida lawmakers on Monday advanced a controversial bill that would require social media platforms to warn users under 18 that the platforms may harm their mental health. The proposed bill would also require social media companies to warn underage users that the platforms may have “addictive qualities” and “present unverified information.” Also, platforms would be obligated to warn minors that their data may be collected and shared.

Jim Geraghty: “At issue in the lawsuit is not whether you like Fox News, or whether you think it did a good job of covering Trump’s claims that the election was stolen, or whether Fox employees thought their co-workers belonged in an asylum. At issue is whether any of the potentially defamatory statements about Dominion came from Fox News employees, rather than guests such as Trump, Giuliani and Powell, and whether Fox hosts’ comments were knowingly false statements of fact, rather than expressions of opinion.”

Standard General said it filed a lawsuit asking a U.S. Appeals Court to order the FCC to reverse a decision by its Media Bureau to extend the review of its acquisition of Tegna and to instruct the commission to approve the $8.6 billion deal. “That superficially procedural directive (the hearing order) is in substance a denial of the broadcasters’ license-transfer applications,” Standard General said in its filings. “And by refusing to countermand the Media Bureau’s action — despite the broadcasters’ urgent requests — the FCC has embraced that de facto denial as its own. The commission will thus derail the deal without having  to justify that denial and back it up with substantial record evidence.”

In a request for declaratory ruling filed by the Florida Association of Broadcasters, an interesting question has been posed to the FCC – can other political advertisers who buy time during the LUR period be entitled to “lowest unit rates” rates if they are “authorized” by the political candidate?  Normally, such non-candidate political ads (usually referred to as issue ads) are charged much higher rates than those charged to candidates.

The Federal Trade Commission on Thursday announced a proposal to change its rules to include a provision that would make it easier for consumers to cancel recurring subscription services. And while streaming services clearly fall into that category, one analyst doesn’t anticipate a rule change would have much impact on major SVODs. The main reason, TVREV’s Alan Wolk said, is that SVODs already make it fairly easy to cancel.

Fox News cut ties with Abby Grossberg Friday, Variety has learned, citing disclosure of privileged corporate information, after the booker and producer for such hosts as Tucker Carlson and Maria Bartiromo alleged in court filings earlier this week that she was coerced by executives into providing misleading testimony in the $1.6 billion defamation suit that Dominion Voting Systems has levied against the Fox Corp.-backed outlet.

A federal appeals court has upheld the constitutionality of the way the FCC hands out billions of dollars in subsidies for broadband and other advanced communications services.

William Barr: Victory for the plaintiff would severely weaken the First Amendment protection all news media enjoy.

The Florida governor’s antipathy toward media has been a key part of his brand during a rise in GOP politics. Free speech advocates fear a new libel bill goes too far in codifying that attitude. Pictured: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis at his roundtable discussion on “legacy media defamation,” which marked the start of a new legislative push to make it easier to sue for libel.

Soo Kim, managing partner of Standard General, calls the FCC Media Bureau’s decision to refer his company’s proposed $1.6 billion acquisition of Tegna to review by an administrative law judge an “unaccountable power grab.”

Lawyers for Fox News and Dominion Voting Systems tangled Wednesday over the high bar to prove defamation in a $1.6 billion lawsuit that has embarrassed the conservative network over its airing of false claims related to the 2020 presidential election. The argument is at the heart of each side’s attempt to persuade a Delaware judge that he should grant summary judgment in its favor and avoid a jury trial scheduled to start next month that would focus in part on media protections afforded in a nearly six-decade-old libel standard.

FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel wants cable and satellite TV subscribers to know just how much they are paying to defray the broadcast-TV retransmission and regional sports net fees their providers must pony up for programming, and to help them compare traditional video costs with those of streaming services. Rosenworcel has proposed an item to the other commissioners that would require cable and satellite providers to “specify” an “all-in” price for video service both in promotional materials and on subscribers’ monthly bills.

Abby Grossberg, who sued Fox News alleging discrimination and a hostile workplace, says she was “coerced, intimidated, and misinformed” while preparing for her deposition in the $1.6 billion Dominion defamation case.

The tensions over the Chinese-owned social media app will come to a head on Thursday, when the company’s chief executive testifies on Capitol Hill. The TikTok app has 150 million users in the United States, but some fear that its Chinese parent company might give Beijing access to American users’ data. (Anjum Naveed/AP)

The decision comes just 11 days after a Salt Lake City jury awarded parental-control tech maker ClearPlay nearly half a billion dollars over two technologies used in Dish’s AutoHop commercial-skipping feature.

California lawmakers this week are launching a plan to force digital giants like Facebook and Google to pay publishers for news content, taking a contentious global fight to the state level. Pictured: Assemblymember Buffy Wicks (D-Oakland) has led several state-level efforts targeting the tech giants. (Rich Pedroncelli/AP)