Regulation

Some of the unflattering private messages among the network’s hosts and executives may never become evidence when Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation case against Fox News goes to trial.

Fox News media reporter Howard Kurtz said Sunday that the defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems against the network is a “major test of the First Amendment,” just weeks after announcing that Fox would not let him cover the case.

The Senate came in for plenty of criticism Friday for its failure to pass House-passed legislation extending the FCC’s spectrum auction authority beyond March 9. That came at a House Communications Subcommittee hearing on spectrum policy. House Energy & Commerce Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) had teamed with ranking member Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) to co-sponsor the legislation (H.R. 1108) extending authorization to May 19, which passed the House Feb. 19.

The media regulator was once more adversarial and had various rules it could enforce, but there’s little in the way of expectations it will act about how Fox News misled viewers about the 2020 election.

The longtime magazine columnist who accused former President Donald Trump of raping her in the 1990s can use the Access Hollywood tape as evidence at trial in her defamation case, a federal judge ruled Friday. The Manhattan judge also rejected Trump’s effort to block the columnist, E. Jean Carroll, from using the testimony of two other women who previously accused him of sexual assault.

There is no question that Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation lawsuit against Fox News has embarrassed the network. But what matters legally speaking is whether Dominion can prove Fox meets the standard for defamation. And it’s worth combing through the evidence on that thus far.

Wall Street Journal editorial: “Gigi Sohn withdrew her stalled nomination for the FCC on Tuesday after Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) announced his opposition. Chair Jessica Rosenworcel will now have to advance her progressive agenda without a wingman, but her effort to kill a major media acquisition on the sly shows what she’s up to.”

A San Diego Superior Court jury on Thursday awarded former news anchor Sandra Maas nearly $1.6 million from KUSI owner McKinnon Broadcasting, finding that the station had violated equal pay laws by paying her substantially less than her longtime co-anchor. The jury also found for Maas in her whistleblower claim, in which she argued that her contract was not renewed because she pushed back against the company for the pay disparity. But it found that KUSI had not discriminated against her based on age or gender, nor had it engaged in malice.

Citing some of the Justices in the recently argued Gonzalez case, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee Privacy Subcommittee, said that there appears to be an “emerging concensus” that Congress has to do something abourt what he called an outdate construct that has led to toxic, algorithm-driven content. That came in his opening remarks in a hearing on Big Tech and Section 230 prompted by the Supreme Court oral argument in the case, which revolved around whether social media can be held liable for abetting terrorist speech.

Various unions that opposed the Standard General-Tegna merger have told the FCC that it should not review a Media Bureau decision to refer the deal to an administrative law judge over FCC questions about the deal’s impact on retransmission consent and localism. That came in a petition filed Thursday by NABET-CWA and The News Guild, which oppose the merger.

A former Fox executive was convicted Thursday of paying tens of millions of dollars in bribes to nab broadcasting rights to the World Cup and other top soccer matches. A second ex-executive was acquitted. A Brooklyn federal jury deliberated four days before returning the verdicts.

Now that Gigi Sohn has withdrawn her nomination for the open seat on the FCC, the musical chairs game of guess the new nominee begins. One name that has surfaced as a possible, confirmable candidate is a familiar one — Anna Gomez. Her resume includes a stint as head of the National Telecommunications & Information Administration, the FCC’s opposite number overseeing government-controlled spectrum, as well as experience at the FCC as onetime head of the International Bureau. She also has experience on Capitol Hill and at the White House, and was a partner at communications firm Wiley, which has accounted for a number of FCC commissioners and chairs, including name partner Dick Wiley.

WWE is in talks with state gambling regulators in Colorado and Michigan to legalize betting on high-profile matches, according to people familiar with the matter. WWE is working with the accounting firm EY to secure scripted match results in hopes it will convince regulators there’s no chance of results leaking to the public, said the people, who asked not to be named because the discussions are private.

In a remarkable series of depositions that have been made available from much-scrutinized litigation between voting-technology company Dominion Voting Systems and Fox Corp., top officers at Fox and its most lucrative subsidiary, Fox News Media, are grilled over whether they have direct responsibility for stories, talent and reporting that airs on Fox News Channel or Fox Business Network. In many instances, the executives say they do not.

FBI Director Christopher Wray on Wednesday reaffirmed to lawmakers that TikTok poses a national security and privacy concern, potentially collecting and controlling the data of millions of Americans and swaying public opinion. Wray, who was testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee on worldwide threats, agreed with lawmakers that TikTok, which is owned by Chinese-based company ByteDance, has the ability to collect information on American citizens if it wanted to.

As they look to bolster support from the FCC, broadcasters would do well to get behind its Advanced Emergency Information component.

In a rare rebuke of the Fox News ratings leader, the White House said Carlson is “not credible.”

Siding with Meta Platforms, a judge has dismissed claims that the social media platform violated the federal video privacy law by allegedly disclosing names of users who watched real-time streaming video. In a ruling issued late last week, U.S. District Court Judge Jon Tigar in the Northern District of California said the 35-year-old video privacy law applies to recorded broadcasts, not live streams.

In sworn questioning in January by lawyers for Dominion Voting Systems released Tuesday, Murdoch was asked, “Do you believe that the 2020 presidential election was free and fair?” “Yes,” he replied, according to a transcript. “The election was not stolen,” he said later. Dominion is suing Fox News for $1.6 billion, saying the network crippled the company’s business by broadcasting false claims from Trump’s lawyers that Dominion had changed votes in the 2020 election.

Gigi Sohn, President Biden’s nominee to the FCC, withdrew her name Tuesday after two years of partisan gridlock delayed her confirmation. In a statement, Sohn said she asked Biden to withdraw her nomination after discussions with her family and “careful consideration.” She said the “unrelenting, dishonest and cruel attacks” on her character and career from cable and media lobbyists “have taken an enormous toll on me and my family.”

The six-year-old suit accused the defendants of unfairly benefitting from Charter’s $78.7 billion purchase of Time Warner Cable in 2015.

Hazel Dukes, president of the NAACP New York State Conference and former NAACP national president, has joined a growing chorus of critics of the FCC Media Bureau’s decision to designate Standard General’s proposed $8.6 billion acquisition of Tegna for hearing.

The Justice Department will expand its stable of data experts charged with analyzing how businesses use and abuse consumer data to violate U.S. antitrust law, the agency’s antitrust chief told CNN in an onstage interview Monday. DOJ’s antitrust division plans to post additional job listings for data scientists and analysts, Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter said at a Washington conference.

March may not have any of the regular FCC filing deadlines, but there are still plenty of regulatory activities going on this month that should grab the attention of any broadcast or media company. Initially, there are several FCC proceedings in which there are dates in March worth noting.

In a strategy shift, the Biden administration is increasingly pointing to Congress to give it more legal power to deal with TikTok and other technology that could expose Americans’ sensitive data to China.

Standard General’s latest legal maneuvers are “highly unlikely” to succeed in rescuing Standard General’s proposed acquisition of Tegna, which is close to being killed by a long regulatory review, according to former FCC Chief of Staff Blair Levin.

Utah lawmakers last week passed a package of bills that would prohibit social-media companies from allowing minors under 18 to have accounts, without parental permission, and would ban the companies from serving any ads to minors. In addition to those restrictions, the Social Media Regulation Act (SB 152) would require social media companies to verify all current and prospective users’ ages, and would force social media companies to allow parents to access all content and interactions of their underage children’s accounts.

“It is ironic that Fox is relying on a landmark case that was designed to help the news media play the watchdog role in a democracy and is under attack by Gov. DeSantis, Donald Trump and other figures who have been untethered in their attacks on journalists as enemies of the people,” said Jane Hall, a communication professor at American University.