Regulation

The online fact-checker, is retracting 54 stories and has suspended its cofounder after looking into accusations of plagiarism against him. David Mikkelson used a pseudonym, his own name and the Snopes byline to publish the pieces.

The court says the FCC’s arbitrary and capricious’ move failed to consider potential health effects beyond cancer.

A Discovery Inc. executive said Friday that the U.S.-owned company will fight hard to keep control of a television network it owns in Poland, a $3 billion investment that is threatened by a new media bill that passed in parliament this week.

Broadcasters are taking the Federal Communications Commission to U.S. court over its decision to boost disclosure requirements for foreign government-sponsored programming.

Broadcasters are trying to capitalize on momentum in Congress to restore the minority tax certificate program. Bills from Reps. G.K. Butterfield (D-N.C.) and Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) have been introduced that would do just that.

Between confusing copyright laws and the ability to easily lift and use video, audio and photographs for their own purposes, many companies in the media industry either don’t understand or don’t take seriously enough the risks of repurposing creative materials. Here are the top copyright pitfalls you should make sure your company understands, and avoids.

A nationwide EAS test is scheduled for Wednesday, Aug. 11, at 2:20 p.m. ET, with “day of test” information to be filed with the FCC on ETRS Form Two by Aug. 12. The FCC issued a reminder last week, and FEMA sent an announcement of the test out yesterday, so do a last check of your equipment to be sure that you are ready to receive the test when it comes your way (or to report on any failure if for any reason it does not arrive as expected).  And don’t forget the final test date due on ETRS Form Three by Sept. 27.

Dominion Voting Systems has filed defamation lawsuits against Newsmax, One America News Network and Patrick Byrne, the former CEO of Overstock, over their advancement of conspiracy theories that company had a role in rigging the results of the 2020 presidential election. The lawsuits against One America, Newsmax and Byrne each seek more than $1.6 billion in damages.

“No finding of liability and no fine is appropriate in this case,” Gray says in its 48-page filing involving its Anchorage stations.

A federal judge on Monday said Netflix Inc. must face a defamation lawsuit by former Manhattan prosecutor Linda Fairstein over her portrayal as a racist and unethical villain in When They See Us, a 2019 series about the Central Park Five case.

In a letter to Senate leadership, all 50 state broadcaster associations are calling for passage of the Local Journalism Sustainability Act. They said the bill “would provide local newsrooms a lifeline that would enable them to sustain, and in some cases, significantly improve the critical public service these local media outlets provide their communities.”

The FCC Enforcement Bureau has issued a $20,000 fine against ESPN for “willfully violating the commission’s rules that prohibit the transmission of false or deceptive emergency alert system” tones during a program. The FCC said the violation occurred during the airing of 30 for 30: Roll Tide/War Eagle on Oct. 20, 2020.

The city of Jackson, Miss., will be required to pay more than $170,000 in legal fees to NBC affiliate WLBT’s parent company, Gray Television, after the Mississippi Ethics Commission ruled the city violated state law by taking more than a year to provide public records to WLBT. The fine represents the largest amount of money levied against a public body by the commission in Mississippi history, and will be one of a handful of times that the commission has required a public body to pay legal fees.

Mike Richards is in advanced negotiations to become permanent host of “Jeopardy!” But in what has become a familiar pattern for public figures, older incidents of questionable actions from his past quickly became a hot topic of conversation on social media.

The Local Journalism Sustainability Act proposes certain benefits for local newspaper subscribers, as well as benefits to advertisers who advertise on local media — both broadcast and print. For advertisers who place advertising in either a local newspaper or on a local broadcast stations, a tax credit of up to $5,000 would be available to certain small businesses who use local media to get their advertising messages to their communities.

A federal judge has officially dismissed a class-action complaint accusing YouTube and other companies of violating children’s privacy, paving the way for an appellate court to intervene in the matter. The legal battle began in 2019, when California resident Nicole Hubbard sued YouTube and various companies that had channels on the video platform — including Hasbro, the Cartoon Network, Mattel, and DreamWorks — for allegedly tracking her 5-year-old child in order to serve targeted ads.

President Joe Biden name checked The Walt Disney Co., Netflix, Google, Fox Corp. and other private companies for instituting new vaccine requirements for their employees. As he referred to the alarming rise in COVID-19 cases as the “pandemic of the unvaccinated,” the president also sought to single out major corporations that in recent weeks have instituted their own types of mandates.

Life felt a lot like TV judicial nonfiction as an appeals court poured ice cold water on efforts to drag the big salary of Judge Judy into the profits dust-up between CBS and Rebel Entertainment Partners over the now shuttered syndicated show. “It’s always gratifying when the correct judgment is affirmed,” Sheindlin said.

The messy legal battle over Netflix’s Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich docuseries has now gotten down and dirty. In a flurry of filings Monday, the streamer, director-showrunner Lisa Bryant, executive producer Joe Berlinger, and producers RadicalMedia and Leroy & Morton Productions all denied Alan Dershowitz’s claims of defamation and more made in May this year when he said he was hoodwinked into appearing in the high-profile series in 2019.

John Fawcett, who works on the Kudlow show hosted by Larry Kudlow on Fox Business Network, claims in his lawsuit filed in state Supreme Court in Manhattan that “sexual harassment, sex discrimination, and racial discrimination are still tolerated at Fox.”

The Walt Disney Co. clapped back at Black Widow star Scarlett Johansson, slamming the actress’ breach of contract lawsuit for showing “callous disregard for the horrific and prolonged global effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.” In a court filing on Thursday, Johansson said Disney’s decision to send the Marvel movie to Disney Plus at the same time it was released in theaters cost her millions of dollars in backend compensation.

The film star says the decision to release the film simultaneously on Disney Plus and in theaters cost her $50 million.

Big 12 Commissioner Bob Bowlsby alleges conference media rights partner ESPN conspired to damage the league by luring Texas and Oklahoma to the SEC as detailed in a cease and desist letter sent to the network on Wednesday.

The FCC has officially imposed the maximum per-violation fine of $512,228 each for all but one of the stations it had identified in a September 2020 notice of apparent liability as violating the FCC’s requirement of good faith retransmission consent negotiations. The 18 stations had been the target of a complaint by AT&T and its DirecTV DBS service alleging they had unreasonably delayed those negotiations including failing to respond to AT&T proposals.

A federal judge eviscerated arguments by more than 40 state attorneys general that Facebook had a monopoly.