Ownership

The News Media Alliance, which represents the newspaper industry, laid out a potential antitrust case against its foes, Google and Facebook, in comments filed with the Federal Trade Commission. The organization outlined legal considerations — including non-price harm to consumers, such as the newspaper industry’s ability to sustain journalism — and explained “how they connect to a potential antitrust case against one or more platforms.” 

House Commerce Committee Ranking Member Frank Pallone Jr. (D-NJ) has asked Federal Communications Commission Inspector General David Hunt to investigate what he said was FCC Chairman Ajit Pai's failure to disclose a conversation he had with White House General Counsel Don McGahn about the Sinclair-Tribune merger, suggesting it could have been a "coverup." Ranking Member Pallone is wondering why Chairman Pai did not disclose the conversation during an earlier House FCC oversight hearing.

Key leadership of the Federal Communications Commission's Advisory Committee on Diversity and Digital Empowerment (ACDDE) have a big problem with the way the FCC has structured the new diversity incubator program they otherwise support, a problem they say could "destroy" the program. That warning came in a call the week of Aug 13 between committee members James Winston and David Honig and Matthew Berry, chief of staff to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai.

Housing Sec Ben Carson accused Facebook of enabling illegal housing discrimination by giving landlords and developers advertising tools that made it easy to exclude people based on race, gender, zip code or religion -- or whether a potential renter has young children at home or a personal disability. The action, which comes after nearly two years of preliminary investigation, amounts to a formal legal complaint against the company and starts a process that could culminate in a federal lawsuit against Facebook.

[Commentary] Corporate concentration in the United States is not only increasing inequality but also undermining competition and consumers’ standard of living. Politically, the commensurate lobbying influence of big tech, big finance and other large conglomerates has created what political scientist Francis Fukuyama calls a “vetocracy” — where vested concerns have amassed the clout to choke off legislative reforms that would diminish their spoils.

[Commentary] Millions of Americans use social media to get their news, and that number is growing rapidly by the year. But when they log on, they don’t always get the full story. Powerful social media companies are filtering the information that users receive on their platforms. As a result, the picture we get of politics is partial and distorted, like a carnival mirror. Twitter’s subtle censorship targeted conservatives, and seemingly only conservatives.

The Trump administration's consideration of tariffs on Chinese printed circuit assemblies and connected devices would cost the economy $520.8 million and $2.4 billion annually for the 10 percent and 25 percent tariffs, respectively, according to a new study commissioned by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA).

You can boil Facebook’s election plan down into three main challenges:

Public-radio companies PRX and PRI are merging in a bid to capitalize on the surging popularity of podcasts and other digital formats as listeners and content creators migrate away from traditional broadcast radio.

The Trump era has now seen two major media mergers halted or almost stopped — Sinclair Broadcast Group’s combination with Tribune Media, and AT&T’s acquisition of Time Warner. Both transactions met with turbulence from the feds, but that does not signal that media consolidation will be slowed in the coming years — far from it. In fact, getting far less attention are moves that likely will encourage more media mergers and acquisitions down the road. Here are a few examples: