FCC

Comcast Cronyism – How Politicians are Sending Letters Written by Comcast to the FCC as Evidence of Grassroots Support for Time Warner Merger

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Screen Shot 2015-01-27 at 11.55.08 AMOn August 21st, 2014, Mayor Jere Wood of Roswell, Georgia, sent a letter to the Federal Communications Commission expressing emphatic support for Comcast’s controversial effort to merge with Time Warner Cable. Not only did the mayor’s letter express personal excitement for the gargantuan deal — which critics say will create a monopoly that will harm millions of consumers — but it also claimed that the entire town of Roswell adored Comcast. “When Comcast makes a promise to act, it is comforting to know that they will always follow through,” Wood’s letter explained. “This is the type of attitude that makes Roswell proud to be involved with such a company,” the letter asserts, “our residents are happy with the services it has provided and continues to provide each day.”

Yet Wood’s letter made one key omission: Neither Wood nor anyone representing Roswell’s residents wrote his letter to the FCC. Instead, a vice president of external affairs at Comcast authored the missive word for word in Mayor Wood’s voice. According to email correspondence obtained through a public records request, the Republican mayor’s office apparently added one sign-off sentence and his signature to the corporate PR document, then sent it to federal regulators on the official letterhead of Roswell, Georgia.

– From The Verge article: Exclusive: Politicians are Supporting Comcast’s TWC Merger with Letters Ghostwritten by Comcast

So what does a mega corporation do when there’s no grassroots support for a mega merger? Invent grassroots support, naturally.

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At Least 17 Fake Cellphone Towers Capable of Invasive Spying Have Been Discovered Across America

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Screen Shot 2014-09-04 at 11.12.08 AMWhen Lee Goldsmith drives by one of the many fake cellphone towers being discovered throughout the U.S., his $3,500 CryptoPhone 500 will immediately display the warning message in the thumbnail image to the left.

When you drive by the same fake towers, known as “interceptors,” your run of the mill iPhone or Samsung Galaxy won’t alert you to any potential security breach. And that’s exactly how those people who installed these interceptors, whoever they are, like it.

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FEC Chairman Lee E. Goodman Warns of Forthcoming Government Media Censorship

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When I first read this story I wasn’t sure whether to highlight it or not. While the claims made by Federal Elections Committee (FEC) Chairman Lee E. Goodman are extraordinarily frightening, sometimes people with strong partisan leanings can exaggerate threats and so I like to be careful. I’m not certain if this is the case with Mr. Goodman, but since it is his word against other folks at the FEC and I don’t work there, it’s hard to know what the true state of affairs is.

Nevertheless, the fact that Ajit Pai, a commissioner at the FCC, recently warned in a Wall Street Journal editorial of government plans to “monitor” media organizations, makes me concerned enough to post on it. I highlighted the Ajit Pai editorial back in February in my post: The Obama Administration Plans to Embed “Government Researchers” to Monitor Media Organizations.

As far as the Goodman comments, The Washington Examiner reports that:

Government officials, reacting to the growing voice of conservative news outlets, especially on the internet, are angling to curtail the media’s exemption from federal election laws governing political organizations, a potentially chilling intervention that the chairman of the Federal Election Commission is vowing to fight.

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The Obama Administration Plans to Embed “Government Researchers” to Monitor Media Organizations

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Last week, I highlighted the fact that the latest Press Freedom Index showcased a 13 point plunge in America’s press freedom to an embarrassing #46 position in the global ranking. If the authoritarians in the Obama Administration have their way, this country is set to fall much further in next year’s index.

Incredibly, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is set to roll out something called the Critical Information Needs study, which will embed government “researchers” into media organizations around the nation to make sure they are doing their job properly.

No this isn’t “conspiracy theory.” It is so real, and represents such a threat to the First Amendment, that a current FCC commissioner, Ajit Pai, recently wrote an Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal, warning Americans of this scheme. He writes:

News organizations often disagree about what Americans need to know. MSNBC, for example, apparently believes that traffic in Fort Lee, N.J., is the crisis of our time. Fox News, on the other hand, chooses to cover the September 2012 attacks on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi more heavily than other networks. The American people, for their part, disagree about what they want to watch.

But everyone should agree on this: The government has no place pressuring media organizations into covering certain stories.

Unfortunately, the Federal Communications Commission, where I am a commissioner, does not agree. Last May the FCC proposed an initiative to thrust the federal government into newsrooms across the country. With its “Multi-Market Study of Critical Information Needs,” or CIN, the agency plans to send researchers to grill reporters, editors and station owners about how they decide which stories to run. A field test in Columbia, S.C., is scheduled to begin this spring.

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Revolving Door 2014: Former Head of the Federal Communications Commission Joins Carlyle

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What better way to kick off 2014 than with the first (and most certainly not last) egregious example of USA banana republic revolving door crony capitalism. In this case, the crony in question is former head of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Julius Genachowski, who was earlier today named Managing Director and partner in the U.S. Buyout team … Read more

FCC Rule Change Would Favor Big Media

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Here we go; more centralization, consolidation, and corruption as America barrels its way toward serfdom.  The best part of this saga is that Obama was one of the most vocal Senators against such rule changes when George W. Bush was in office, but not a peep from him now.  Bernie Sanders (Vermont Senator) and Michael Copps (FCC commissioner from 2001 to 2011) wrote an excellent Op Ed in Politico.  Here are excerpts:

A cornerstone of American democracy is a free and open press providing diverse viewpoints. As Thomas Jefferson said in 1823, “The only security of all is in a free press. The force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted to be freely expressed.” In America today, however, a trend toward corporate media consolidation is drowning diverse opinions and eliminating local control.  In 1983, 90 percent of the American media was owned by 50 companies. Today, 90 percent is controlled by just six corporations: General Electric, News Corp., Disney, Viacom, Time Warner and CBS.

The Federal Communications Commission may be on the verge of making a bad situation worse. It is considering a rule change that would clear the way for even more media consolidation. All Americans should be deeply concerned.

The failed 2007 bid to change the rules came after a similar 2003 effort to weaken the limits on cross-ownership that prevented a handful of media conglomerates from completely dominating ownership of the news outlets in our communities. Those proposals met with 3 million public comments, 99 percent of which opposed the FCC’s proposal.

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