Appeals Court Tosses FCC's Media Ownership Rules

from the does-it-really-matter? dept

You may recall that, four years ago, the Kevin Martin FCC pushed through (despite massive complaints from people) some incredibly meek media ownership rule relaxations. As you may know, there were existing rules that said the same company couldn't own a newspaper along with a local TV station. The reasoning behind this was the fear that a single operator of both the paper news and broadcast news would dominate the local news dissemination business and could influence the public too much. Of course, in the age of the internet, that seems really silly. And the FCC's rule change was incredibly minor. As we wrote at the time:

In the top 20 media markets, newspapers can merge with a single radio or TV station -- but not if that TV station is one of the top 4 stations in that market. In other words, newspapers who are struggling to get beyond just being newspapers can finally expand into other media areas. I can't understand why people are freaked out about this. At best, a newspaper can now own a tiny radio or TV station. The fear of only one point of view getting through is totally laughable for a variety of reasons. First, there are more sources of media than ever before in history -- by a long shot. To think that a single TV station or newspaper can dominate the conversation is laughable. Second, since it can't involve a top 4 TV station, it's hard to believe that this new entity will have all that much dominance in the market.

But people still went crazy about this and lawsuits were filed. Over in the Third Circuit, a court has now dumped the new rules on what appears to basically be a technicality. Apparently, the FCC ""failed to meet the notice and comment requirements of the Administrative Procedure Act" to make this change. The standard procedure requires 90 days of response time, but Kevin Martin only gave people 28 days to comment.

Again, this whole thing seems pretty silly. Even if people still rely on broadcast news, this simply isn't going to have that big of an impact.

Filed Under: broadcasters, cross ownership, fcc, limits, media ownership, newspapers

Group Asks FCC Commissioners To Promise Not To Go Work For AT&T If They Vote To Approve T-Mobile Merger

from the name-and-shame dept

Following the story of FCC commissioner Meredith Atwell Baker joining Comcast as a lobbyist just a few months after approving that company's buyout of NBC Universal, the group Free Press is asking the remaining FCC commissioners to take a pledge that, if they vote to approve the AT&T/T-mobile merger, they won't then take a lobbying job with AT&T. Of course, if any of them took the pledge, it's not clear what's to stop them from then breaking the pledge...

Filed Under: fcc, lobbying, merger
Companies: at&t, t-mobile

FCC Commish-Turned-Lobbyist Can't See What All The Controversy Is About

from the tone-deaf-to-the-very-end dept

FCC Commissioner Meredith Attwell Baker has been receiving a ton of criticism for taking a high level lobbying job at Comcast just months after approving its huge merger with NBC Universal. The response has been almost universally to condemn Baker in a move that smacks of the corruption of regulatory capture and the revolving door between corporations and the government that regulates them. I had been wondering if all of this publicity would lead to Baker backing down and no longer taking the job (only to take a similar job, more quietly, down the road). But, instead, it looks like she's digging in her heels and insisting that nothing (nothing!) improper is going on here. She claims she hadn't even considered taking a job until months (months!) after the merger was approved:

Until late this spring, my plan was to seek renomination for a second term as Commissioner. That was true all through the winter during consideration of the Comcast/NBCUniversal transaction and in the months after it was completed.

Not once in my entire tenure as a Commissioner had anyone at Comcast or NBCUniversal approached me about potential employment. When this opportunity became available in mid- April, I made a personal decision that I wanted to give it serious consideration.

Nowhere in Baker's statement does she even come close to acknowledging the concerns that people have raised. Instead, she claims that she's been extra ethical in that she's "gone further" than what the law requires:

I have not only complied with the legal and ethical laws, but I also have gone further. I have not participated or voted any item, not just those related to Comcast or NBCUniversal, since entering discussions about an offer of potential employment. Because of this, I plan to depart the Commission as soon as I am able to ensure an orderly wind-down of my office.

Well, isn't that nice.

Filed Under: fcc, lobbying, meredith attwell baker
Companies: comcast

What Corruption Looks Like: FCC Commissioner Takes Job At Comcast Months After She Voted To Approve Its Deal With NBC Universal

from the revolving-doors dept

A lot of folks are shaking their heads after learning that FCC commissioner Meredith Attwell Baker is leaving her post to take a lobbying job at Comcast just a few months after she voted to approve Comcast's massive purchase of NBC Universal. Now, let's be clear: there's nothing illegal in her taking this job. While she can't lobby the FCC for two years, she can lobby Congress or other parts of the government. And, it doesn't mean that she's corrupt at all. But it's this kind of move that makes people trust our government less and highlights why so many people believe that our government is corrupt.

When you have a massive revolving door, in which the people voting on important deals for companies are likely to get massive salary increases in jobs from those same companies a few months later, it's certainly going to make plenty of people assume corruption, even if there isn't any. So even if it's not corruption in the classical sense, it's hard not to see this as a form of regulatory capture. Baker's term is up in June, but it had been expected she would be re-nominated and would stay. But, making this decision so soon after voting on such a huge deal for the FCC certainly raises some questions about when she started talking to Comcast about a job and when she even decided she was looking for a different job.

Filed Under: corruption, fcc, meredith attwell baker
Companies: comcast, nbc universal

Obama Administration Asks Supreme Court To Determine If FCC Can Fine ABC For Showing Charlotte Ross Naked

from the questions-of-our-time dept

There have been a series of legal questions concerning the FCC's right to fine TV companies for "indecency" on broadcast television. If you haven't been playing along with the home game, hopefully this will catch you up. While the FCC didn't do much in the way of fines for TV for a while, over the past decade, it suddenly took an interest (mainly under the leadership of former boss Kevin Martin). So, it issued fines over things like some "fleeting expletives" during awards shows (rockers saying "fuck!" on live TV), Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction and NYPD Blue's decision to display actress Charlotte Ross's bare behind in a shot. Back in 2007, the Second Circuit appeals court ruled that the FCC's rules on fleeting expletives were invalid because they were arbitrary and capricious. The Supreme Court, however, reversed, saying that the rules didn't seem all that arbitrary or capricious at all. However, none of those rulings touched on the First Amendment questions. Instead, they just focused on the validity of the FCC's rules in general.

So, now all of these cases are making their way through the courts again, with the Second Circuit again rejecting the FCC's fines in both the fleeting expletives case and the NYPD Blue case, stating that even if the rules are not arbitrary and capricious, they do violate the First Amendment, and create a chilling effect on speech. The ruling on fleeting expletives was especially good, and was clearly written with the Supreme Court in mind, knowing that it would almost certainly hear this case, eventually.

Some had thought that the Obama Justice Department might just let this matter drop, as it wasn't a huge concern. However, it has now petitioned the Supreme Court to review both cases, and to support the FCC's right to censor broadcast TV.

Of course, as the Second Circuit made clear in its ruling, the whole purpose of the FCC issuing such fines is outdated and silly. It was based on the fact that only the TV networks could really reach such a wide audience and thus had to be carefully monitored. In this digital era with the internet, does it really matter if someone hears a stray curse on TV? It's just as likely that they'll find much worse online. And, in fact, as we've pointed out, the FCC's action and subsequent lawsuits have driven a ton of views of the clip of Ross's bare butt online. In fact, at one point, it was one of the top videos on YouTube. That makes the whole FCC process seem pretty pointless if the idea is to try to "block" access to this content, doesn't it?

Filed Under: fcc, fleeting expletives, fleeting nudity, free speech, indecency

Supreme Court Says AT&T Has No Right To 'Personal Privacy'

from the don't-take-it-personally dept

Last year, we wrote about an important case in which AT&T bizarrely claimed that it had personal privacy rights over information the FCC collected in an investigation concerning AT&T overbilling the government. An organization had made a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request on the info, but AT&T protested that, as a corporation, it had a personal right to privacy. As we noted, that seemed like a pretty ridiculous claim, but the appeals court accepted it. We were therefore happy to see the Supreme Court pick up the case last fall, and now it has unanimously ruled against AT&T (8 - 0, with Kagan not taking part, since she filed the original brief for the federal government in support of the FCC). Considering the complaints some have made about the Supreme Court taking the idea of "corporate personhood" too far, I think plenty of people (who don't work for AT&T) will agree that this ruling makes plenty of sense. A corporation has a right to keep certain information secret and confidential, but the idea it has a "right to privacy" makes no sense.

The actual ruling (embedded below) is quite interesting in noting, while corporations may be "persons," that does not automatically afford them "personal" rights.

Adjectives typically reflect the meaning of corresponding nouns, but not always. Sometimes they acquire distinct meanings of their own. The noun "crab" refers variously to a crustacean and a type of apple, while the related adjective "crabbed" can refer to handwriting that is "difficult to read," Webster's Third New International Dictionary 527 (2002); "corny" can mean "using familiar and stereotyped formulas believed to appeal to the unsophisticated," id., at 509, which has little to do with "corn," id., at 507 ("the seeds of any of the cereal grasses used for food"); and while "crank" is "a part of anaxis bent at right angles," "cranky" can mean "given to fretful fussiness," id., at 530.

Even in cases such as these there may well be a link between the noun and the adjective. "Cranky" describes a person with a "wayward" or "capricious" temper, see 3 Oxford English Dictionary 1117 (2d ed. 1989) (OED), which might bear some relation to the distorted or crooked angular shape from which a "crank" takes its name. That is not the point. What is significant is that, in ordinary usage, a noun and its adjective form may have meanings as disparate as any two unrelated words. The FCC's argument that "personal" does not, in fact, derive from the English word "person," but instead developed along its own etymological path, Reply Brief for Petitioners 6, simply highlights the shortcomings of AT&T's proposed rule.

"Person" is a defined term in the statute; "personal" is not. When a statute does not define a term, we typically "give the phrase its ordinary meaning." Johnson v. United States, 559 U. S. ___, ___ (2010) (slip op., at 4). "Personal" ordinarily refers to individuals. We do not usually speak of personal characteristics, personal effects, personal correspondence, personal influence, or personal tragedy as referring to corporations or other artificial entities. This is not to say that corporations do not have correspondence, influence, or tragedies of their own, only that we do not use the word "personal" to describe them.

Certainly, if the chief executive officer of a corporation approached the chief financial officer and said, "I have something personal to tell you," we would not assume the CEO was about to discuss company business. Responding to a request for information, an individual might say, "that's personal." A company spokesman, when asked for information about the company, would not. In fact, we often use the word "personal" to mean precisely the opposite of business-related: We speak of personal expenses and business expenses, personal life and work life, personal opinion and a company's view.

Justice Roberts, who wrote the decision, then goes on to pick apart each argument made by AT&T as to why it should be allowed "personal" privacy, leading to the rather obvious punchline that you have to think the Justices had in mind to use from the very beginning:

We reject the argument that because "person" is defined for purposes of FOIA to include a corporation, the phrase"personal privacy" in Exemption 7(C) reaches corporations as well. The protection in FOIA against disclosure of law enforcement information on the ground that it would constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy does not extend to corporations. We trust that AT&T will not take it personally.

Filed Under: corporations, fcc, foia, personal privacy, personhood, privacy, supreme court
Companies: at&t, fcc

How The FCC Got Millions To See Charlotte Ross's Naked Behind... And Then Lost In Court

from the nice-work,-FCC dept

We had just discussed how two separate appeals courts were trying to determine whether or not the FCC's indecency fines over "fleeting nudity" on TV were legal. The case involving Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" is just beginning, but the other case, involving Charlotte Ross's bare behind being shown on NYPD Blue has now concluded with the (not surprising) decision to toss out the $1.43 million fine the FCC issued against ABC. This wasn't all that surprising, given that the courts had already struck down FCC fines over "fleeting expletives," and had suggested that fleeting nudity would fall under the same analysis. Even the FCC had admitted that under the ruling concerning "fleeting expletives," the NYPD Blue fine was probably a goner. It's still appealing the original ruling about fleeting expletives, however, so it's not over yet.

Of course, the history of almost all of these cases all tracks back to the infamous Parents Television Council (PTC), the group that is famous for flooding the FCC with bogus "complaints" from its members who never actually saw the content in question, but were urged on by the PTC to send complaints. We recently had noted that PTC was coming under some serious scrutiny concerning some of its more questionable practices.

However, what we still found most amusing about this particular case is the fact that when Kevin Martin (who headed the FCC when the original fine was issued) decided to pursue this fine over Charlotte Ross's nudity, all it really did was drive a tremendous amount of interest in people seeing what the clip was about. In other words, in trying to fine ABC for "indecency," the PTC and Kevin Martin helped to publicize the video, which for a while was apparently the most popular video on YouTube. And now, not only did the PTC and Kevin Martin help millions of people learn about ways to see Charlotte Ross' bare behind, but the FCC got absolutely nothing for it, given this latest ruling.

Filed Under: charlotte ross, fcc, fines, first amendment, free speech, indecency, tv
Companies: fcc, parents television council, ptc