The sinister take-over of the FCC and our news sources

I want to amend/correct something I wrote yesterday about the proposed TimeWarner and AT-T merger.  I was partially incorrect in saying the Trump administration's opposition to the merger was political in that their threat to deny the merger was based on wanting to force TimeWarner to sell off CNN under the Antitrust Act.  That is, to avoid a monopoly in one industry achieved though a merger of competitors.  That is what Trump says;  but he's not factual.

While it may be true that Trump wants to retaliate against CNN, it's not true that it could fall under antitrust laws.   The proposed merger would be what is called a "vertical" merger, which does not involve merging companies that compete with each other to any significant degree;  and, therefore, it would not reduce the competition and harm the public by higher prices.

As clarified in a New York Times article, AT-T is a communications company that deals in a process, not content.  Time-Warner is an entertainment, news, and information corporation -- i.e., content.  The two do not have any competing businesses.   So there is no antitrust problem, and insiders who understand this had been baffled by the uproar.   Apparently it's once again our president intruding inappropriately in something he either does not understand or intentionally is trying to obfuscate for his own reasons.

What is of concern, however -- and it may be this that Trump is trying to conceal by creating a distraction with something else -- is that the Federal Communications Commission is about to do something that could create a semi-monopoly in the television industry.    The FCC has just voted 3 to 2 along party lines to eliminate the rule that prevents a single company from owning a newspaper and television and radio stations in the same town.  They also changed a rule that now will allow one company to own as many as two of four tv stations in the same market.

Both of these would change decades long regulations that have protected the independence and diversity of our news sources.   The FCC is operating under its new chairman, Ajit Pai, a Trump appointee.   He strongly favored these changes.  And now some Democrats are calling for an Inspector General investigation of Mr. Pai and his relationship with the Sinclair Broadcasting Group, which will benefit greatly in spreading conservative media content from these changes.

Never heard of Sinclair?   I hadn't either until recently when this issue became news.   What they have done is to quietly acquire local tv stations in small cities throughout the country, and they definitely push a conservative content that is to the right of Fox News.

In addition, the New York Times reported that, last April, Sinclair paid $3,9 billion for the Tribune Media Company in a merger that "would allow Sinclair to reach 70 percent of American households."  This merger brought to Sinclair its 39 local television stations and 10 newspapers, including the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times.   These FCC changes will give them license to expand that network, so that they could conceivably own half the television coverage, as well as the major newspaper and radio stations in small town America.

The FCC's Pai argues that our digital age has changed everything, that social media and internet news do not come under the old regulations, so the need to restrict ownership of mainstream media to protect media freedom is no longer the same.   The other side of that argument is that social media does not produce content, and the internet's "content" does not come under journalistic standards, as do the tv and newspaper outlets.   The problem with that rebuttal is that Sinclair does produce content and controls what content its local stations air.  It's part of their agreement that they will air the content sent out from the central station -- and that content is a strong, right-wing opinion presented as fact.

Needless to say, the Sinclairs are wealthy Trump supporters.    It's in areas like this, and the dismantling of the EPA, that Trump is doing his most lasting damage.  It's going to be very hard to reinstate all that he is destroying.

Ralph