FCC backs off newsroom study

The Federal Communications Commission will amend a proposed study of newsrooms in South Carolina after outcry over what some called "invasive questions," the commission's chairman said Friday.

The survey was meant to study how and if the media is meeting the public's “critical information needs” on subjects like public health, politics, transportation and the environment. Now, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said questions about news philosophy and editorial judgment will be removed from the survey and media owners and reporters will no longer be questioned.

(On Media: Trump vs. BuzzFeed, Savage vs. Hannity)

The uproar caught on fire after one of the Republican commissioners, Ajit Pai, penned an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal last week blasting the survey and saying the government had no place in newsrooms. The FCC is required by law to conduct media studies.

"Any suggestion the Commission intends to regulate the speech of news media is false," FCC spokeswoman Shannon Gilson said Friday in a statement, adding that a revised study will be released within the next few weeks. Additionally, she said media owners and journalists will no longer be asked to participate in the pilot study.

(Also on POLITICO: The changed politics of late-night TV)

"Any subsequent market studies conducted by the FCC, if determined necessary, will not seek participation from or include questions for media owners, news directors or reporters," she said. 

Via: Politico

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FCC: Lifeline Program Fraud and Abuse Surpasses Two Million Subscribers

In a continuing crackdown on the federal government's Lifeline program, sometimes known as "Obama phones," the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has revealed that fraud and abuse in the program exceeded two million subscribers. New rules were established after it became clear that subscribers and providers were taking advantage of the system:

The FCC’s Enforcement Bureau has worked aggressively to enforce these new rules since their adoption, taking actions worth over $15 million, in addition to today’s $32.6 million in proposed forfeitures. Numerous additional investigations are ongoing. Moreover, over 2 million duplicate subscriptions have been eliminated, and the FCC’s reforms are on track to save the Fund more $2 billion over three years.

The two million is up from a figure of 1.1 million in an FCC press release just a month ago.

The Lifeline program was started in 1985 to allow low income household to have basic and emergency phone service, but has grown dramatically since its inception.  The Wall Street Journal reported in February that payments ballooned from $819 million in 2008 to more than $2.2 billion in 2012.  The Journal investigation also found that the kind of fraud uncovered by the FCC in its current action was rampant:

Via: Weekly Standard

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Tech at Night: Even Dianne Feinstein tells it like it is about Edward Snowden. We have two new FCC Commissioners.

RESIZE:AAA

Tech at Night is coming when it’s plenty light out this afternoon, because I need to start getting some sleep in preparation for my 25 hour broadcast as part of the Extra Life children’s hospital charity event.

The FCC got two new commissioners this week, a good one in Michael O’Rielly, and a likely bad one in Tom Wheeler. This came only after Ted Cruz got the answers he was looking for. Then again, under Barack Obama that’s the best we could hope for.

It’s very rare that I agree with a gun grabber like Dianne Feinstein but come on, she’s annoying the right people by calling out Snowden as the traitor he is.

Anyway, now that we have a new FCC Chairman, we can at least hope he’ll take on sensible goals. I won’t hold my breath, but we can hope.

Certainly a government that fails so badly to manage its own Internet projects shouldn’t seek to gain more power over the whole Internet.

Oh look, Bitcoin crooks stealing from other Bitcoin crooks. It turns out the drug runners of the Bitcoin community aren’t even cooperative with each other, but will instead rob each other.

It’s good to see a repudiation of the blame the victim approach that so many take these days with respect to copyright reform. One can think copyright is too long but still think the freeloaders online are parasites hoping that Atlas won’t shrug.

Sometimes patent reform is a thorny issue. I’m on record saying that software patents shouldn’t be targeted specifically for erosion, that patent trolls hinder innovation instead of helping it, and that the problem with patents is that too many bad ones are issued. Well, it turns out these principles are coming into conflict under the Democrats’ ill-conceived America Invents Act. I wish we could just repeal that whole law and make the problem go away, then deal sensibly with patent issues.

Via: Red State

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Bozell Column: The New Broadcast Profanity, 'Redskins'?

Conservatives begin by revering tradition; liberals often by trashing it. In fact, it doesn’t bother liberals that something they found acceptable one day is declared -- by them -- repugnant the next. It’s taken only a few days of liberal media agitation for MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell to announce that Washington Redskins owner Daniel Snyder is “the George Wallace of the NFL.”

Snyder saying he’ll never change his team's name has somehow become historically comparable to George Wallace’s “segregation forever.” It’s suddenly so offensive, apparently, that the leftists who have gone to court to make the airwaves safe for every profanity imaginable, in the name of free speech and tolerance, are now petitioning the Federal Communications Commission to ban “the R-word” from television.

They’re urging the broadcasters to “self-regulate” the team name out of existence. But why would you petition the FCC to urge the media to “self-regulate”? It's non-sensical -- unless  “self-regulation” is merely a first step. The “anti-censorship” Left is just getting started.

Reed Hundt, an FCC chairman under Bill Clinton, led a number of former FCC officials in a letter to FCC acting chairwoman Mignon Clyburn (the daughter of Rep. Jim Clyburn) asking the FCC to use its muscle to force Snyder to surrender. They demand Clyburn apply the agency’s “unquestioned authority to convene an open forum with broadcasters to determine whether they should self-regulate their use of the term ‘XXXskins’ when referring to the Washington D.C football team.”  

The word “Redskins” is so apparently offensive they’ve made the team sound like a porn film. Here is the insanity: They'd be less offended -- and in some circles of the libertine community,  openly supportive – if Snyder renamed the team the “Foreskins.”

These liberals are not reflecting a nation's outrage. They are attempting to create it.

Only 11 percent of Americans (and ten percent of “native Americans”) are offended by “Redskins,” so Hundt & Co. are left with the weak argument of championing American apathy: “63% of those surveyed either would approve of broadcast TV stations not using the current name or do not care if broadcasters stop using that name. Only 37% would disapprove of broadcasters if they no longer used the name. Several media leaders, including Peter King (Sports Illustrated) and Mike Wise (Washington Post), have already recognized this shift and agreed to abandon use of the term ‘XXXskins.’”

Via: Newsbusters

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FCC Orders Cable Co. to Switch Lineup, Cites Channel Flipping Phenomenon

In a recent example of Obama government run amok, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)—with five presidentially appointed commissioners—has ordered a private cable company to put a paid news channel in a particular spot on the lineup.

It seems bizarre that a federal agency is wasting resources meddling into such matters, but this is government on heavy duty steroids. Since Obama moved into the White House, the bloated government has taken over the nation’s healthcare system (ordering private citizens to purchase a product or service they may not want), banned school bake sales to control our kids’ diet and intruded into many other aspects of private life.

Heck, the administration even violated the nation’s cherished free press by secretly obtaining the work and personal phone records of reporters and editors at one of the nation’s largest news organizations. This is the sort of thing you see in communist regimes and dictatorships (like China and Cuba), a deplorable act few imagined would ever take place in the United States. Even liberals who otherwise praise Obama called the spying an “unacceptable abuse of power.”

It’s as if there is no stopping the madness of this unprecedented government intrusion into private life. So, why not tell cable companies where to place channels? Seems benign compared to some of the other stuff Big Brother has done since Obama became the nation’s commander-in-chief. The FCC, which governs mass media communication via television, radio, cable, satellite and wire, didn’t like where one major cable company placed a certain financial news outlet so it ordered the private business to move the channel.

Because of the government shutdown the FCC’s website is unavailable so the order can’t be accessed, but a news reportoutlines how it all went down. Cable companies often group channels with similar themes so that they are located in adjacent spots in the lineup. In this case the cable company, Comcast, isolated Bloomberg News in a neighborhood far away from other news outlets and the company claimed it was hurting business. Bloomberg hired a bunch of lobbyists to pressure the FCC, claiming discrimination because Comcast owns the business news channel CNBC, a popular competitor that has a great spot on the lineup.

Via: Judicial Watch

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